KeeperRL is now out on Steam Greenlight. If you have a minute, please help it out with a vote:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=300252382The newest dev update follows.
Over the last months I got a lot of feedback about the economy in KeeperRL. This has to do with acquiring resources (gold, wood, iron and mana), and the rules on how you can spend them on various things, like minions, buildings, technology, etc. Clearly, these top level mechanics shape much of the gameplay. Things I'm trying to achieve with them are:
- Growth of the player. His power should rise slowly, while he's overcoming various challenges. He needs to take beatings and recover, before he can win the game. I want to avoid giving him a lot of power early on, which would ruin the endgame, and putting him in a situation where he can't recover a critical resource and has to quit the game.
- Tough decisions and constant trade-offs during resource management. There must be many ways to acquire and spend each resource which will allow different strategies.
- Simplicity: the rules must be easy to follow and let the player enjoy the game, instead of figuring out what the developer had in mind.
I plan improvement in all of these areas:), that's why I'll be making some changes. The first one is that minions will no longer be created by the player, but will arrive in the dungeon from the outside. Many subtle rules will govern the frequency and types of arriving minions. Some special minions will be summoned using special means. There will be costs of keeping minions, like in good old DK. Gold will be a much more important resource now, and the significance of mana will be tuned down, and it will not be regenerated in the library anymore.
Because KeeperRL is also a game of conquest, a lot more resources will be acquired this way. Gold will be retrieved from dying heroes and plundered villages, and a big stockpile of minerals will be found in the dwarf town. Minions and imps will automatically plunder everything valuable and bring it home.
Another post will cover some more changes that are coming, meanwhile here's an overview of some of the new graphics made by Shroom.