I did the thing! I finished all 13 parts of Selinadev’s Godot 4 Roguelike tutorial.

There were a good number of things that were new to me: procedural map generation, AStar navigation, custom resources, and using those custom resources to compose entities. I’m happy with the knowledge gained by working through this.

The end product is… not my cup of tea, really.

On roguelikes generally: When I was a kid, one of the computers available to me had nethack installed. I poked around a bit, but it never really clicked for me (and the same computer had SimCity! ). One turn-based roguelike I do play these days is Hoplite. I think what I like about Hoplite is that it plays almost like a board or puzzle game, the challenge is in reasoning about how to get through the level safely.

On this particular game: after adding armor, weapons, and the power-ups available when you gain a level, combat is super easy, and the challenge curve stops when you get 8 levels deep. I appreciate the 1-bit art style, but it kills me a bit that a game that includes fireballs and lighting attack’s doesn’t make those things visually interesting events– baddies take damage, maybe die, and a message is logged. This isn’t really the author’s fault, since she adapted a tutorial that builds a classic terminal/console game. It’s just a shame this leaves behind a lot of the cool stuff Godot can do.

My son/project manager designed some new enemies and other graphics to be incorporate in the game, and I want to honor that effort by integrating those assets and ideas. I’ll probably spend another week doing that and maybe looking for other ways to increase the usability and fun factor.