Level Up!

I bet you’re wondering to yourself: Self, I wonder what that Catacomb Kids guy has been up to.

Well I’m here to tell you he’s been up to some things! A number of them indeed.

For those of you wondering where the public alpha is - and for those of you who aren’t, as well - turns out I’m making some fairly significant changes to the way certain things work, as is wont to happen when things are as in-development as this is. Normally ‘making changes’ wouldn’t be any big deal because I mean that’s what game development is, but it seemed like a dumb idea to release a version of the game that I knew would be ill-representative of what it would become, and also annoying for people to get used to a system that would change mere moments later.

Mere moments!

Therefore the public alpha is chillin’ until I get that stuff squared away. Okay?

So! What exactly are these changes I speak of?

Leveling and Stats!

Which I will now proceed to explain in detail! This might get long.

So, I am a fan of small numbers. One of my favorite people explained it well a while ago, right here.

Long story short, smaller numbers have more punch, to me. That might seem counter-intuitive, but the smaller the possible range the more weight each increment carries.

I’ve had this fondness for small numbers for quite a while now, but as compared to the game’s development - which has been chugging along for a few years at this point - the degree of this fondness is a relatively recent development. Like, okay, I really like small numbers now.

Point is, I’m shrinking the numbers. The range of each stat was roughly 0-20 before, with 20 being the high end. “Twenty isn’t that big a number,” I hear them think. But they’re wrong. Twenty is a plenty big number. The difference between 1 and 2 in a range of twenty is…too light. Too analog. Six stats, each with an effective range of 0-20, that’s an unnecessarily large amount of possible states. At least, in this game it is.

A range of 10, on the other hand, that’s a significantly small range. You increase anything by a single digit and you’ll feel it. That’s especially important in this, a game of frequent death, where you want to get back in and feel your character evolve with every advance. Maybe bigger numbers work better for those longer, less deadly games, where growth can occur over several days of play, but Catacomb Kids doesn’t guarantee an hour of life, so progress must come quickly lest frustration set in for mourning over a lost hero, claimed by depths beyond reach.

So 10 is now the high-end for stats. There’s no hard cap on anything at the moment - there never has been - so it’s certainly possible to exceed 10, but it should come at some severe costs in other areas or otherwise be difficult to achieve and maintain.

Of course this comes with a whole slew of other changes to be made regarding stats and all the things they influence – it’s not so easy as just saying 'okay everything is half of what it was now’ – but maybe I’ll expand on those details at another time.

The other thing I’ve been working on lately is Leveling.

So the leveling system has always been:

Find the Orb of Leveling on each floor → use the Orb → level up.

It’s still that. I like that a lot. It rewards various play styles equally; the stealthy and the pacifists are not at a disadvantage, because leveling up just consists of getting from point A to point B. I can also put the orb into interesting situations, like guarded by a Tough Guy, or add some sort of time limit on finding it, or put it in the clutches of a cowardly enemy that you have to hunt down. Much more interesting, I think, than just doing task x or task y a dozen times until a bar fills up.

But leveling up previously just consisted of making your Numbers Go Up. And, in addition to the numbers being too big, that’s just boring in general to me. Too disconnected from the rest of this game, where you can eat any enemy and kick doors open and boil pools of water to cook stuff. And here you are looking at numbers, not changing anything you can do, just changing…the rate at which you can do them? It was dumb.

Now, however, leveling up does more than just make numbers go up: It makes them go up slower. Haha I’m kidding. I mean it does but that’s because every time you make a number go up, the option for increasing that number goes away and becomes an option for you to do something new. Once you pick a new do-thing, the option to number-up comes back, and so it goes, back and forth until you have chosen all the number-ups and thing-dos associated with a given stat. This is weirdly phrased. Lemme just show you with pictures.

Behold, the new level-up menu!

After choosing which stat to increase, that stat is replaced with two options for boons that can be either active or passive abilities, but which will ultimately alter the way you play by opening up new venues of possibility.

Here, I chose to increase DEF.

And now I’m presented with a choice between two Defense-related boons: Dire Block, which allows you to perform a parry if you time your attack properly, and Extra Tough, which reduces damage from traps and environmental hazards (which DEF alone normally doesn’t do).

Note of course that these boons are subject to change in both name and behavior, but I think it’s a good start.

Check out this gif showing things in action!

Here I show off one of the Strength boons: Focus Strike, which allows you to charge up a powerful attack.

So Anyway,

That’s how I’ve been spending my time - some of it, at least. Many other things have been done! More news incoming in the next few days and hopefully thereafter as I try to remedy my tendency towards silence. But for now I’m gonna hurry up and try to get the game ready to submit to Indiecade, the deadline for which is tomorrow!