Seven Stone Sentinels 1.1.0 Release

Seven Stone Sentinels 1.1.0

(PLAY IN BROWSER)

The judge's results are in for the 7DRL 2024 game jam! Check them out at https://roguetemple.com/7drl/2024/.

With the reviews being out, I figured it would be a good time to start working on some bug fixes, copy errors and minor balance tweaks I'd been putting off. It felt so good to be in the code base again that I ended up getting carried away and adding some new features and relics as well!

Board Size:

The biggest overall game-play change has been reducing the game board size from 10x10 to 9x9. Overall, I felt the game was a bit on the easy side so I really wanted to try to increase the challenge. I believe tightening the board size has made the game feel  more urgent and challenging. I also play a lot of 9x9 go, so it's a specific dimension that holds a very special place for me, as I spend a lot of time thinking within those constraints. I don't often have the time to play a full 19x19 game of go, so I often find myself playing games on smaller boards, and there is still a surprising amount of depth and specialized tactics that emerge at this size. The "coffee-break" size as well as the ancient China fantasy setting I think lend themselves well to the 9x9 go reference.

Another added bonus of this dimension is that there is a central tile, and I have changed the starting configuration of each round so the player will always spawn there. Enemies can begin anywhere else on the map as long as it is not adjacent to the player.

Hop-like?

After releasing the game during 7DRL, there were a lot of comparisons made to the fantastic game Hoplite by Douglas Cowley. I am embarrassed to say, but at that time I had only ever heard of the game and never actually tried it. Since then I have played it A TON and found myself constantly loading it up on my phone when I'm killing time. It really is amazing how addictive and repayable the game is despite there being such a limited player and enemy move-set. I'm hoping I am able to tap into some of the elements that make Hoplite so fun.

I think the overall challenge of Sentinels feels different since the main threat of Hoplite tends to be the ranged characters, while the main threat of Sentinels tends to be getting swarmed by enemies (which all act similarly to the basic melee type of enemy in Hoplite which don't usually pose much of a threat).

Hoplite also has much more deterministic game-play. While Sentinels is still quite deterministic, there are a few mechanics determined by RNG such as when a sentinel will use a skill and where sentinel summons get placed. Like Hoplite, you are always able to calculate if a given input will be a safe move or not. All sentinel skills that cause damage to you are telegraphed (with the lone exception of the Sharpshooter's instant skill which has a chance to poison you if they have a straight line of sight with you).

Hopefully fans of Hoplite can find something to enjoy here, and I think I may even add in relic that adds a "lunge" type attack as an homage in the future.

Streamers and Reviewers:

I wanted to give a BIG thank you to the streamers that have played Sentinels and given invaluable feedback and play-testing in the process: Kyzrati, DavionFuxa, and Canary Yellow. After working so long and hard during a game jam, being able to watch an experienced rogue-like player try your game out feels like the ultimate realization and reward for your efforts, and I'm very grateful!

New Relics:

We have added 16 new relics and re-worked many existing relics that were either too weak or too strong (cough... Haunted Visage). This puts the total count up to 52 and hopefully helps provide a lot more replay-ability and diversity to character builds. The goal of this release was to make the game harder, but give the player more powerful synergies with relics. The new relics tend to focus on game mechanics regarding:

• Effects that trigger on sentinel deaths.
• Adding more synergy with SHARD objects.
• Adding more synergy with knock-back actions. Enemies can now even knock-back into other enemies causing them to also become knocked-back!

Road Map:

The team is hoping to start working on a Steam release, while continuing to push out tweaks and bug-fixes to the itch.io version. We have never released a game on a platform other than itch.io before, so we thought it would be a good learning experience to go through that whole process. The itch.io version of Sentinels will continue to receive bug-fixes, balance-fixes and quality of life improvements, while major feature development will go towards a Steam version. Some of the features we would like to add:

• UI/QoL: There are many UI and Quality of life changes we would like to make. First off, mouse support is becoming more and more popular in modern rogue-likes and I think since the move-set is simple it could potentially feel natural to control the player with the mouse only. We want to provide more feedback to the player on which sentinel skills are on cool-down, which sentinels received level-ups and how many ticks until poison counters proc. Another big area of improvement will be to communicate to the player more information about their current relics, when they trigger, and what kind of effects an input might produce.

• CAMPAIGN MODE: This mode will have the player proceed through a series of fixed maps with weaker enemies as they try to reach the final gate to the next area. Each area will focus on one sentinel and will culminate in a final fight with them at the area gate. We hope to add some light lore and dialogue during the player progression.

• NORMAL MODE DIFFICULTIES: We would like to experiment with different game settings such as cool-down times, enemy stats and relic costs, to be able to provide easier or more difficult experiences. Furthermore, we would like to add multiple cycles for each difficulty powered with a new concept called "elite traits" which are bonus passive effects that sentinels can randomly acquire and stack on during more difficult cycles.

• STONE SENTINEL MODE: This mode will be a bonus challenge that will let us test out the original vision for the game, which is forcing the player to defeat the sentinels in a specific order.

(PLAY IN BROWSER)

We hope you enjoy playing! Thanks for checking out the game!