It’s been wild, absurd and fun!

We took part in a Slovak game jam called MAD JAM #1, it was awesome and as a game developer I have been meaning to create a minimalist roguelite for a while. First of all I know there’s often discussion regarding what a roguelite is so let’s dive into that first.

What’s a roguelite?!

For me the defining feature of a roguelite is the marriage of temporary and permanent upgrades. The first being offered whilst playing and achieving specific tasks and the latter being an option once you’ve died and collected a currency which can be used for the permanent upgrades. Additionally things such as currencies and procedural generation also imply a solid title of the genre.

We made HENrietta, the chicken that shoots a laser out its beak. And boy did it work out super well! At first, meaning when the jam oficially ended, the game only had permanent upgrades and procedural generation and lots of bugs related to the character controller, many of which had been caused by careless implementation on my part, it should be mentioned that I’m not a programmer by trade, but wanted to experience what that’d entail.

Let’s take look at the new features and bubfixes:

New features

• Temporary upgrade system triggered upon activating a new island
• 10% chance of finding a treasure chest on an island (it gives you enemies, coins or a new perk, depending on your luck)
• Laser shooting is more clearly visually presented than before
• Acrylic ui design for pop ups
• added a 3D trail to the main character
• enemy difficulty scales with progression through islands
• credits menu option
• visual cue as to which item you’re picking up
• environment particles
• ui for the key and coins
• magical well regenerates life
• particle system for shooting
• music doesn’t stop on temporary perks screen

Bugfixes

• player no longer “slides” down slopes as if they were falling
• coins are saved between sessions
• health and damage upgrades are calculated properly (super OP before)
• chicken correctly rotates to the direction of movement
• islands can’t spawn empty anymore
• killing the last enemy by making them jump off an island gives you a key. Beforehand the player was locked in and couldn’t progress
• export is “release” instead of “debug” now

Many of the bugs exist in the jam version, but I’m leaving it available for download as the voting period hasn’t ended yet.

Have fun!