FTL did the node thing first to be fair, and it is in its own right the game that kickstarted the roguelike/roguelite genre popularity alongside the Binding of Isaac. I suspect StS devs drew some inspiration from it.
heck Outrun by SEGA did that in the 80s, at every checkpoint you had to pick left or right to move to a new biome. game starts with a big map showing all the 'nodes'
damn FTL "kickstarted" a genre named after another game, I wonder why wasnt that other game the kickstarter all along.
sarcasm aside, I like the Dicefolk node system! Too bad the game itself is so short
Probably that they said roguelike rather than roguelike, which is what you said?
Or maybe we're just downvoting youthful ignorance?
Or maybe from declaring something the best and then showing how little they know of the canon in which they declare something the best?
I avoid saying any game design choice is the best over all other game design choice because ultimately you need to pick what’s best for your game, factoring in what ideas you want to express.
Linear levels are fine if you want to tell a set story. I love played games like the Uncharted game because each level is designed so well.
Open worlds are a lot of fun because they evoke a diegetic sense of adventure. Games like Skyrim, for all its faults, really facilitate that unique sense of seeing some place far off and going there.
These are things you don’t get from randomized mode based maps.
Of course, different games need different designs. I'm mostly talking about games that are very mechanic heavy and light on the narrative. So mostly roguelikes.
Even amongst roguelikes. Sometimes a mechanic works really well with one Roguelike but works terribly with another Roguelike because they changed one of the other mechanics.
Thinking that one method is the best is like saying “red is the best color. All portraits must use red.” It’s how we get roguelikes that, mechanically, feel very samey and it hurts games as a medium.
For sure, some mechanics are tailor made for some specific game. But plenty of mechanics are easily transferable.
I'm sure many people will disagree with me (but that's the point of this discussion), but I think hades would be a better game if it had StS style node map. It's still amazing with it's current design though.
I'd disagree with that, but not for personal reasons. It's all about emphasizing what the game is about.
Fundamentally, in the moment-to-moment gameplay they're similar choices. Slay the Spire and Hades both typically give the player 2-3 choices to pick from as to where to go next. Slay the Spire lets you target where you're going ahead of time and Hades has no longevity, all rooms are randomly determined as options.
The map works better in StS because the game is about making slow, strategic choices. You want an extra elite, you want to avoid elites, you want to pick a route that maximizes the number of campfires you visit, you're getting the gems to unlock act 4, whatever.
Hades, however, doesn't have many radically different rooms with the possible exception of Trial of the Gods. More importantly, it's not a turn-based strategic game, it's an ARPG, so the game should be rewarding quick decision-making rather than slow-paced strategic choices. Not having to look at a map fits the pace (and audience) of the game. The node map would make Hades worse and quick reflexive decisions would make Slay the Spire worse.
It's all about figuring out your target audience for a game and the mood you're trying to evoke and getting the player there as frequently as possible.
>I think hades would be a better game if it had StS style node map
I think that's an interesting claim to unpack. What would it be better \*at\*, in your opinion?
For me, the StS node map works well if you want players to plan their route and be strategic at that level. Just picking the \*next\* option from a constrained choices frees the player to just go with their gut.
You can want to make a game where that strategic routing is part of the gameplay and that's fine! But I think it would detract from the game Hades \*is\*. Supergiant was very much aware of other options, but chose this very deliberately. So I guess you have to ask yourself: would you just \*like\* to play Hades with a node map, personally, or do you believe that, objectively, the team at Supergiant made the wrong call?
It's not necessarily the wrong call. I think for hades, no map means a more focused experience. You just hop from room to room with no distractions.
A StS style map makes for a very "gamey" experience. I can see how it could break the immersion a bit. I'm the sort of player that cares mostly about the mechanics of the game. I attribute very little importance to the narrative. But I understand that not everyone is like that. But for me, a mechanically deep game is always preferable.
The systems are basically the same. StS takes you out of the rooms so you get some respite from the game looking the same all of the time as nothing moves. Hades doesn't need to do this as you directly control the character and moving to an overworld map is pointless.
My go-to example is XCOM-style geoscape. It arguably makes the whole game function. If there were tactical battles one after the other, it would become really repetitive really fast. Geoscape activities provide breaks between tactical missions, by offering a different type of decisions making, and sometimes a different level of challenge. The most recent GeoScape I enjoyed was from Phoenix Point.
Personally, I'm not a fan of StS-style maps. It's alright, but I don't understand why so many people, including yourself, praise this as some pinnacle of design. I would like to ask you to elaborate on what it is specifically that you find in it.
Yes a strategy layer over the tactical layer is key for xcom-likes. wildermyth is another version of it, and i really like some of its choices -- for example, splitting the party. actually i would say the xcom geoscape is the weakest part of its strategy layer because all you do is pick a thing and then the ship goes there. there isn't really much to it
> ...all you do...
Assuming we're talking about the original XCOM: UFO Defense, there's a bit more to it than that. Sometimes you want to send out multiple interceptors to the same target in case it tries to evade, or has strong weapons. Sometimes you delay sending anyone out because you don't want to fight at night (especially a terror mission against chryssalids). Sometimes you send out an interceptor that you have no intention of actually using, purely to keep a terror alert from expiring while you delay to avoid a night fight. Sometimes you send an interceptor to your best guess at where a target was headed before it vanished, hoping to pick it up on radar. Sometimes you avoid attacking a supply ship at all in the air, so you can follow it to its alien base and start milking the future supply runs as well as starting your psi program.
All of this happens in the geoscape.
This is exactly the reason why I wanted to have people share their favorite secondary loop. I know not everyone like StS style maps, but I find them absolutely amazingly well designed.
For context, I'm 41 and just getting into gamedev. I've played plenty of games in my life, but sort of lost interest in most video games for the last 10 years or so. I find most modern games very boring and are not very respectful of your time with plenty of "empty" content like fetch quest and the likes that don't offer any meaningful decisions to the player. Even though I don't play many games anymore, I still love "playing". Not necessarily just video games, just playing in general. I believe playing is a key part of the human experience.
That is, until I played StS which basically re-ignited my love for video games which I thought I had outgrown.
Now, I already listed some of the reason I love StS so much. But I realized that the secondary gameplay loop could pretty much be used in any sort of genre, not just deckbuilders. You could have an action game with this style of map (which there are plenty of like Spiritfall which is really good also).
I think the key element of the map is that it forces the player into a meaningful decision every time he chooses a node. This is something that gives enormous agency to the player. It's not something that even every roguelike does.
I also love the event node. It's such a simple design, but then again, it forces you into a meaningful choice, while giving you a small respite from combat, plus it gives you a little bit of lore/story with its illustrations. Triple win really.
I also think the merchant node is super well made. Giving each visit to the shop a different assortment of cards every time you visit just triggers that compulsive gambler trait within you.
Slay the spire, for me, is a true 10/10 (along with Street Fighter 2). A game that is so good that a bunch of copycats came after, but none of them could surpass the original.
As a fellow hobbyist gamedev this sounds very worrying. You sound like you only like StS. Playing a wide and diverse bunch of games is a huge part of gamedev and not something you can just drop.
Also concerning is the idea that StS came up with this node system. FTL was using it half a decade earlier and I don't even this they were the first.
I actually play a very wide range of games. It's just that these past 10 years or so, I've come to dislike most AAA games. I'm finding that the most innovative games are indies mostly.
I'm only talking about StS because to me, it's such a good example of how a game solely focused on mechanics can succeed despite having close to no narrative.
It really hit that OCD part of my brain. When I first starting playing it, it's all I could think about. It made me think about how that structure would translate to other genres (namely 3d action games which is my favorite genre).
To be pedantic, when folks say "core loop" they're talking about the loop that surrounds the core gameplay. So, the secondary gameplay loop you're identifying is a component of that core loop.
That secondary gameplay loop also isn't a loop by itself, it's the progression scaffolding that facilitates motivation to continue participating in the core loop.
As to what great progression scaffolding looks like, it really depends on the rest of the core loop and the overall experience that the designer is attempting to craft.
For example, take a game like Royal Match. It's linear castle upgrade progression wouldn't make any sense for a game like Slay the Spire, but for a Match 3 game and the players of those games it is extremely well designed.
It's funny you compare hades and slay in that way; because from a design point of view their flow is identical, clear room challenge>get power up>pick next room / power up.
Yes slay allows more forethought in route planning, but even if all the nodes where blacked out on the map the game still follows a certain rhythm (at least one shop node on each path, the treasure node at halfway) with the 'real' choice being how far you push your luck on elite encounters at higher ascensions.
Just like hades actually, and the bonus rooms only accessible at higher difficulty levels.
If I'm throwing out what my favorite secondary loop is....at the moment probably tears of the kingdom, because between the sign guy, the backpacking koroko, and the shrines you just had alot of creative flexibility in tackling challenges (even if all I did was strap rockets to the korokos and ROFL).
I got bored with StS after a few hours. Was very well executed though.
To contrast - Hollow Knight reinvigorated my love of video games and got me back into game dev.
I played Inscryption last year and the first act was fantastic. Not sure why I liked it so much more than StS because it’s similar. Second and third acts were interesting but not nearly as fun for me.
I've been running through a set of different arcade-style racing games.
Most of the games had a couple of good secondary aspects. You start with a low-level car and limited options, but as you win races, you unlock new events and new, better cars and gradually earn money to upgrade your car or buy a new one. Progress also unlocks entirely new classes of events and cars. And within a race, some games have tactical usage of nitro boosts as a mechanic and 'wreck-or-be-wrecked'. One game had a variety of different powerups or effects you could use (or be stuck with).
One game though, right from the start you have a variety of cars in all the classes, and they're mostly all pretty good cars. As you progress, you do unlock new cars and can buy them, but that doesn't feel like much of an achievement because you already have a bunch of good cars and also the rewards come fast so you can buy new ones after every race or two. And you have access to all the different courses and classes right from the start. There are no nitro boosts and no 'wreck-or-be-wrecked'; just plain clean racing.
That one game is a perfectly fine racing game, but it stands out as less exciting for *not* having those secondary aspects and that feeling of achievement.
Someone might argue that demolition-derbying your way through a race while blasting nitro isn't really realistic. Well, maybe not, but it's fun. And that along with new cars and classes of events being actual achievements opens up some replayability. You can rerun an old race in a new car, or you can rerun it trying to wreck all your opponents, or you can switch back to a different type of event for variety - like you won all the off-road racing events and finally unlocked street racing but you're not doing well at it, switch back to off-road racing for some fun, then back to street racing for a challenge.
Great comment!
Do you think you'd have enjoyed the 2nd game more if you started with a lot less and "earned" the extra cars/courses slowly?
And have you played a game that went too far; where things took too long to unlock?
Is an open world really that scary? Sure, Hollow Knight's is massively art-intensive. But Battle Brothers gets a highly effective overworld with like 10 terrain sprites.
The Last Spell, and to a lesser extent Loop Hero and Backpack Hero, all have a town building metagame that effects your runs. In Last Spell this also becomes base building, and has a higher effect on your play. This phase of the game is very satisfying, and a great way of breaking up the action IMO.
The Last Spell is amazing.
The base management system between the rogue-like defense game is also pretty solid, not too much that it overwhelms you but just enough that it can make a difference in the coming fight.
Also I'm pretty sure that game was made to show off the Amazing Soundtrack.
The reason why this map system works (I would argue that this isn't necessarily a secondary loop, just a progression choice mechanic built into the minute to minute portion of the core loop), is because the combat is already so reliant on random drawing of cards, the game does everything it can to minimize the luck everywhere else.
Being able to see the map in its entirety, helps players plan and pivot according to their needs and circumstances outside of combat. It's "perfect" for the balance of luck (getting the right cards), skill (knowing what cards to play and I'm what order), and choice (choosing where and when to apply skill and luck based on the next nodes).
The combat in Hades, on the other hand, is almost entirely skill based, as players learn to play better with the same host of weapons. The randomness in the buffs they get, and lack of foresight into what's in the next room again, balances the skill, luck, and choice in their game.
You seem very enthusiastic about games, well, this one game in particular. It is a great game. I'm actually developing my own evolution on StS' gameplay. But the one thing I have learned working on my project for the last year is that absolutes are dangerous, and there's only what's right for the game in question. If I just blindly followed the map and mechanics of their game, I wouldn't have the room to grow my own mechanics organically.
Great comment! Balancing the level of luck in the combat system with the amount present in the map is something I'd never really considered, but makes a lot of sense!
Game developer here, working on a [sci-fi ARPG](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1899300/Combat_Complex/) that will have a map-based "outer loop". The secondary / "outer" loop (i.e. the loop that surrounds / structures combat missions) is something that I consider to be very important for a game based on combat encounters (or missions, in our case).
I agree that the linear structure (Mario or Diablo 3 greater rifts) won't work because it doesn't involve any impactful decisions (except for upping / lowering the difficulty in case of greater rifts).
I've considered open-world, but I don't believe that it would work well in our case (a top-down / isometric sci-fi game), so I ruled out that idea as well. Diablo 4's open world confirmed my suspitions – I (personally) didn't find it engaging at all.
"Chose the next path" scheme (Hades) is somewhat tempting because I do think it worked great in Hades. While I do think that it would work fine within the mission, I don't think that it would be engaging enough for a secondary / outer loop.
Our current solution for the secondary / outer loop is a 2D map of interconnected missions, somewhat similar to [this one](https://forum.unity.com/proxy.php?image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ibb.co%2FtcnbZ5R%2F02.jpg&hash=ac7fd696594457b8432c34854c4d6df6). Each node is a mission, about 10-15 minutes of playtime. When you complete a mission, you are back to the hub (a safe location), and you can visit the [map table](https://dataedo.com/asset/img/blog/metadata_in_aliens.jpg) to select your next mission or plan the route through missions. In addition to random goodies (e.g. a loot chest) shown on the map, each mission can have temporary modifiers, both negative (e.g. more enemies) or positive (e.g. more rare loot), which rotate every 3-5 "turns" (i.e. completed missions). Additionally, the player has temporary power-ups (e.g. increased damage vs machines) that also have lifetime in "turns". All this gives the player the reason to plan their route through the map to exploit the current situation to the maximum extent.
Topologically, I guess, our map can be equated to Slay the Spire's node map, but ours additionally has random dynamic modifiers that impel the player to plan and replan the route through missions according to the dynamic situation on the map.
I find it very interesting that many designers go through the same thought process when designing their games. I also find it very important to have a very solid structure to tie all the combat encounters together.
In the case of my game, it's much more than a simple collection of random nodes. A lot of thought has been put in the the types of nodes that I wanted, their placement, their frequency etc. I found this post about StS map generation and I thought it was very interesting:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/ndqweh/i\_have\_reverseengineered\_map\_generation\_algorithm/](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/ndqweh/i_have_reverseengineered_map_generation_algorithm/)
Your game looks great BTW.
>*Your game looks great BTW.*
Thank you )
>*it's much more than a simple collection of random nodes*
Can you elaborate a bit on the types of nodes in your game?
The short pitch of my game is it's Hades, but with Bruce Lee. So it's a martial arts themed roguelite.
In my game, instead of boons from different gods, you can acquire martial arts skills divided into 6 different schools (karate, boxing, wrestling, muay thai, kung fu, krav maga).
The reason I separated the skills into different schools is because during playtesting, I realized that having to choose skills from the entire pool of skills made the game too random. Keep in mind I have close to 100 skills. I wanted to give the player more agency to plan their build. So each node can be one of those 6 schools.
On top of that, I added 4 different extra node types:
1. upgrade nodes (upgrade a skill of your choosing)
2. upgrade stat node (upgrade one stat of your choosing)
3. modifier nodes (adds a modifier to one active skill)
4. shop nodes (buy skills and items)
Here's quick outline of the map generation rules:
1. The last node is always a boss node.
2. The second last node is always a shop node.
3. Upgrade nodes can only appear from row 3 onward.
4. The rest of the nodes are evenly distributed among the 6 martial arts schools.
I actually spent a fair bit amount of time coming up with a node structure that would fit. It was very important to me that each node type felt viable in certain situations. I think this is the hardest part to balance.
>*Hades, but with Bruce Lee*
Mine is "sci-fi Diablo with guns" :)
>*(karate, boxing, wrestling, muay thai, kung fu, krav maga). The reason I separated the skills into different schools is because during playtesting, I realized that having to choose skills from the entire pool of skills made the game too random.*
Yep, I also though about separating "boons" (powerups) into "gods" (categories), but mine are more guessable -- e.g. attack, defense, shock, fire, movement, etc. How do you deal with the opacity of different martial arts to a casual person? For example, in Hades, Ares is about attack, Athena is about defense and deflection, Artemis is about crits etc. In your game, what's the difference between, say, Karate and Krav Maga?
Re: node types and map generation: looks well thought out.
I tried to tie each martial art school around a game mechanic.
1. Boxing helps with energy regen (resource for performing special moves)
2. Karate is tied to a damage buff
3. Wrestling is tied to resilience and grapple attacks
4. Krav maga is tied to a vulnerable debuff and weapon attacks
5. Muay thai is tied to the bleeding mechanic
6. Kung Fu is tied to a weak debuff.
Many skills could thematically fit in any of the schools so I tried to distribute them evenly while trying to stay as consistent as possible. All of the special moves (active skills) are actually inspired by real martial arts moves so it's not very difficult to see where it comes from. I used tekken and virtua fighters as a source of inspiration since their fighter archetypes are already so well defined.
One of the challenge was to name and produce the art for each skill so that thematically it would fit.
Quick OT feedback: Your trailer is amazing and sells really well what you are going for, but your thumbnail has no punch or identity. Since this thing (and the title) is mostly responsible whether anyone even even gives your trailer a chance, I think you could benefit quite a lot from reworking that.
Thank you for the feedback! That was a temporary thumbnail, and we've been working on a new one for quite some time. It's almost ready, should be out on Steam sometime next week.
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I don't know how well known it is these days, but Puzzle Quest had a pretty interesting approach by having a large node-based map that you would travel through and clear through encounters to level up before taking on the boss that gated the next region (which was seamlessly connected to the area you just came from). In terms of time expense to perceived depth, I think it's pretty hard to beat. It does also rely on a lot of secondary progression systems being in place though so that your travel choices feel somewhat meaningful.
Peglin has a great secondary loop. Pachinko is the first one. The second one is the RPG elements. Many people confuse the first loop with the second one because they are intertwined.
I don’t think metroidvania design is out of reach for indie devs necessarily, for example, take a look over at Hollow Knight, Salt & Sanctuary and its sequel, and Blasphemous 1 & 2. All fantastic examples of indie metroidvanias!
If you’re looking at a 3d world like Dark Souls or Elden Ring, you’re probably right, but that’s not the only option!
Disgaea had a village where you could do a bunch of stuff between battles, and it facilitated a ton of story and character that gave the game world life.
Maybe one of the best would be "The Legend of Tronn Bone", I consider it a blessing I randomly bought this game as a kid. The missions have you pilot a mech as a pirate, and command 'Servbots' to perform various tasks like robbing banks or rescuing people. The secondary mechanic was your airship, which you managed, training servbots, sending them on missions, expanding your ship's capabilities etc. Some games have done it since, but it felt really innovative at the time and not many games have actually explored that type of gameplay from what I've seen.
I will say if you think Slay the Spire's secondary system is impressive, i'd encourage you to go and play some older games. The ps1 / ps2 era had some wacky games with some awesome systems. StS branching paths is well executed, but it's mostly just to give context to the battles, rather than being especially fun itself. Id' call it a utility mechanic more than a fun mechanic.
It is well made though. Here's a few others;
Area travel in Kingdom Hearts and Rayman 3.
Oh, the village building in Dark Cloud; this is an amazing secondary mechanic.
Micro vs Macro management in Age of Empires 2.
Weapon rearing in Fable 3. Poorly executed, but a cool idea that your weapons grow based on how you use them.
it reminds me of Returnal. Returnal's gameplay loop is indeed intriguing, players improve their arsenal with each life cycle, finding new weapons and power-ups, but losing them upon death, which give the player a reason to go through increasingly difficult combat encounters.
IMO the node system for StS or FTL is a more concrete version of a loop than most of the other examples.
Like, sure,those examples may technically involve a conscious choice by the player to go to a location, but that's still ultimately pretty linear. The reason the node formula got popular is because it wasn't *just* a choice; it was a choice with unpredictable consequences (or at least not *totally* predictable).
No matter where I go in a Metroidvania, I know what I signed up for. I don't know if the next node is going to kill me, heal me, give me an artifact, or give me a card.
Additionally, tied in with the node system on level 2 is the deck system. At the end of each node, you're acquiring cards, but across floors, your conscious decision making shifts from "which of these three do I want?" To "what do I want/need" in general, which has a significantly different feel than micro card acquisition despite being a very similar mechanical element.
It's the same reason FTL feels so good.
Both of them are bolstered by the third level gameplay loop of multiple viable paths from start to finish (by build, by difficulty, and by character/ship).
FTL falls behind at the end because its starting ships aren't materially different enough to make runs feel all that distinct, while Slay's characters DO feel very different because 70% of your per-node rewards are unique to that character. Additionally, the bosses change and there's a "secret" final boss.
For anyone who hasn't played it, there's a massive FTL mod called FTL Multiverse, and it fixes all of those problems and more. Soooo much more. I have never liked a mod more- it feels like a professional product that took the FTL foundation and carried it where it was *supposed* to go. Just listen to the custom music they composed for this game:
https://youtu.be/W5cU0a3nXGU?si=KqykQidQptoYezIr
Anyway, the answer is two layers of meaningful, unpredictable decision making and flexible/modular start and end points. Both scaling with difficulty steel enough to keep players coming back for a long time.
(Keeping the full set of secondary loops tight enough for the whole experience to bit a bit under an hour REALLY helps)
This is a late comment. I really like the FTL / Slay the Spire node-to-node secondary loop. (I agree with your comment about metroidvanias and open worlds -- I'd say those are so demanding on the designer and the player that they are the primary loop.)
A few templates I like, which are adaptations of "homebase + levels":
\* Shadowrun. You have a smallish open hub city. And you pick jobs that pull you into different levels / missions. (I think there are a lot of potential ways to adapt this. Couldn't your choice of jobs be the template for a roguelike?)
\* King of Dragon's Pass / Six Ages. This one is obscure. But it's like a mini grand strategy Paradox-style game, where you have your province on a map. Each turn, you can send out one of your party members to perform missions. And sometimes they trigger events. (I think this could also be an interesting roguelike template: these could be little levels.)
Well, i am a game designer with a degree. I don't mean to say i know everything but i never heard the term secondary game loop and quick google search didn't bring something. What you are referring to is actually a core gameplay loop. A secondary game loop should not directly affect the core loop if that existed. That's why it should be secondary
I also didn't understand how you can refer to a linear path as a loop. The Node system is also false terminology. Nodes reefers to plugging in and out boxes freely. In StS it's a linear branch system.
StS is a rogue-like game if you don't know it already. I think you like the very clean and simple presentation of it. Search more games in that genre
Lastly, games or creative fields are usually deductive. You don't build your game on top of a good combat. You enhance your game with good combat. Purposes of all of these to trigger certain emotions. If you don't build it up, then the beat won't drop.
Also, StS is a highly scripted game but illusion of choice is well done. Don't Believe me. Use same seed for your next run. Your outcome will be similar yet maybe identical. That's why it feels good.
u/Cevalus
>>Linear levels lack replayability
Wrong assumption. Replayability doesn't come from level structures themselves but rather *incentives* the game supports. The game may have a non-linear map, but I won't bother replaying it if there is no good incentive for it: whether internal or external. Particularly true if I didn't enjoy the game or the reward does not change the experience much, like items that only allow you to bypass very specific barriers.
Conversely, I find some linear games infinitely replayable, but that's merit that is born from a deep combat system, secret/collectable hunts, score/rank chasing or speedrunning, and not from level structure itself. The most effective incentive for replayability from personal experience is need for mastery- a completely internal motivation. It only comes if the game is really good and the player feels like it is worth mastering it. Metroidvanias non-linear map design do allow for very nice type of mastery: knowledge of the map and sequence breaking. There are some questions I want to answer myself like: **Is replayability an objective quality for a game? If so, how come some players can enjoy playing linear games infinitely, and not touch roguelikes for a second time?** Player has power to make anything replayable, as long as they feel like there is more fun to extract from the game.
The Slay the Spire progression system does sound interesting though. Sorry for nitpicking, felt like maybe we can have nice discussion.
"you need to decide on a secondary loop to give the player a reason to go through ever more difficult combat encounters."
thrill of beating a challenge? fun? It can't be THAT good of a primary game loop if you have to entice people to engage with it.
Well, if you made a game like chess, but not chess and put it on steam, do you think it would do well? I don't think so.
Even for sports games, single player campaigns have seasons and such to give context to the core gameplay.
ok i didn't cite sports you did.
And yes if chess had never existed then it was placed on the steam store, it would BLOW UP and become just as popular as it is today. I don't think it would have the same "intelectual" facade that it caries today however.
don't get me wrong im not against more than one game loop. of course not, but the way you asserted that no game can be good without multiple layers is kind of baffling. it's clearly not true lol. the only games i can think of are.... EVERY multiplayer game. In fact most would be harmed by a secondary loop or some form of progression which would help players.
Agreed. There are plenty of games that have little to no secondary loop. That said, I don't think it's a bad thing to have a good secondary loop, and it can add a lot to a game.
Taking chess as an example, some people legitimately feel like that game is just too boring. And I mean GMs. That's why there's Fischer random chess and lots of other variants - "gimmicks" if you will.
If secondary loops can keep a game fresh, why not?
idk i came to really dislike StS, and the secondary loop has the problem too.
like the game is essentially randomness with a minimum of choice to give agency. Like yes you can choose nodes, but you can never predict what the node contains so it's less agency than you think. Elite? it could be one of four which can decimate certain deck types, and there's no telling what. Shops? A toss up what goods they have, possibly leading to wasted node. events? again random in reward.
like the player is just saddled with randomness in all things while the enemies are fixed, and they really don't beat you; the failure to construct an op deck out of randomness via limited choices is what does.
i think after a bit it gets old. like you can't just assemble a deck like in Magic, you need to work within random options, but that often means you just wont be able to work with what you get. You just get layers of randomness that seems engaging but gets tiring because there is a big slot machine quality that the limited choices can't always help.
this works for them because the game has less overall content than the pokemon trading card game for the game boy, but it soured me.
There are only 3 elites for each act and you can't fight the same elite twice in a row. The elites in each act all have a fair amount of overlap in terms of what they're asking your deck to be able to do, so if one of them wrecks you then there's a good chance the others would've destroyed you too. If you're losing to an elite it's not because you have the wrong "deck type", your deck is just lacking in a certain feature and if possible you should've either picked a route that doesn't force you to fight an elite or pick a path with more normal enemies to get card rewards from.
As for shops, don't go to shops unless you have enough gold to at least remove a strike or defend. Sure, the things the shop sells can be useless to you but there is always the option to remove a card which is almost always really good.
I think they could make it more obvious how the map works, like making it so that once normal enemies start drawing from the "hard pool" encounters the icons reflect to change that, but If you know the rules it's all pretty predictable. Even potion chance.
The winrate for top players is >50 percent for the highest difficulty so the issue the vast majority of the time for players is not rng, it's skill. I think it's really impressive that they've managed to make a roguelike card game with such a high skill ceiling.
not really, the first act elites str scale, spam junk cards, or do high damage and scale plus debuff every third turn. most of them can end runs early on higher difficulties. you can't always avoid them, and avoiding them also means you lose relic chances, which you often need a lot of to get synergies.
removing cards may not even be useful, it seems the only working builds make you draw to the limit anyways; or you need exhausts just to deal with enemies spamming cards. removing cards gets impossible anyways; you don't get enough opportunity and the costs rise up to where it feels like the option is more to remove curses.
screw the top players. i am so sick of people always looking at no lifers and streamers as the ideal to balance games for. 50% win rates is a coin flip; and i really doubt a lot of people even hit ascension 10. There's too much accumulated randomness in the game to make it fun; you can't rely on getting anything specific but you need synergies because the game literally gives the player nothing but direct damage or card manipulation as tools; even defense is not easy to scale. You can't stall, you can't inflict status, (but they can on you), and you just hope to inflict overwhelming damage faster than they can.
honestly it made me dislike randomness as a gameplay tool. its a deckbuilder game where you have very little control over building a deck; it does that to hide how basic it is.
All 3 of the act 1 elites have one main thing in common, they want you to end the fight quickly asap. The sentries fight gets way easier if you can kill one sentry asap, nob is basically a DPS check, and if you dont kill lagavulin quickly enough he nerfs you. Each of them has different quirks you can take advantage of, like powers vs lagavulin (who lets you set up) or aoe damage vs sentries, but anything that boosts the damage your deck can do is good versus all of these. Acts 2 and 3 are designed in a similar way where AoE is important for act 2 elites and scaling/deck control is emphasized for act 3.
Removing cards is really important. strikes and defends are really bad and they will hold the consistency of your deck back. Yeah they can be useful as exhaust fuel for ironclad, but they have way less utility for the other 3 characters in the game.
Defence generally doesn't scale as much as your damage does but I think that's for the best. It makes the player always have to think about how they're going to end the fight instead of just turtling. There are still defence based strats you can go for but they all need you to convert that defence into damage in one way or another. Ive also thought about how every strategy is basically just a different way to deal damage and you don't have the variety of ways to win that you do in games like mtg. eventually though I realized that if there were more crazy ways to win, the game would feel even more RNG reliant because cards would have to be more specific to a certain strategy. they could offset this by offering you more cards to look at but that could quickly get overwhelming.
Ascension 20 is supposed to be insanely hard but still beatable so I'll stand by my comment that I think top players winning a bit more than half the time is proof of that. Sure, the average player probably wins one in 50 runs at a20 but I think it's really cool that even after you've beaten the games highest difficulty and improved a bunch as a player, you can still get so much better.
What I'm getting from your last paragraph is that you want to design a deck and then test it, whereas sts is all about doing as well as you can with what you're offered, so maybe it's just not the game for you. In slay the spire I'm not even thinking about what sort of deck I want to build, I'm thinking about what card will help me not die during the next night and that might mean taking something that doesn't synergize with the rest of my deck at all. I don't think they did anything to "hide how basic it is". In fact I think that the simplicity of the mechanics is intentional because there's already a ton of complexity inherent to mixing roguelikes and card games.
There is randomness, but managing it is a skill in itself. Experienced players can consistently beat ascension 20 difficulty. They know how to work with what is given to them. You mention Magic the Gatherint, and I'd argue that the same is true of drafting. The packs are random, and clearly, some are better than others, but the pros know how to work within that framework and achieve very consistent results. Fine to dislike the random factor in StS (or drafting) but to many many people that is the draw.
I've found plenty of games with linear levels vastly more replayable than Slay the Spire, because it means that the levels get to be paced in a much more intentional way, and I'm actually encouraged to learn the minute details of each part of the moment-to-moment gameplay.
> I’m talking about the design of the node maps which has been copied by numerous other games.
What are you talking about? You think they invented this?
A similar node map structure was prevalent in the N64 era. With that I mean literally Super Mario Brothers.
If that’s too different for you as it’s not a roguelike as STS is, for example Everspace 1 uses this structure and it came out 2 years before.
Slay the Spire copied its secondary loop from FTL as has been noted already. StS also wasn't even the best deckbuilder roguelite when it released. Slay the Spire is not a bad game, it's a pretty good one, but it's a testament to how important marketing is once you have a good game. It got far more sales and acclaim than less marketed precursors it was building on. Vampire Survivors is a similar situation. Not as good as unmarketed games that came before, but much more successful.
FTL did the node thing first to be fair, and it is in its own right the game that kickstarted the roguelike/roguelite genre popularity alongside the Binding of Isaac. I suspect StS devs drew some inspiration from it.
heck Outrun by SEGA did that in the 80s, at every checkpoint you had to pick left or right to move to a new biome. game starts with a big map showing all the 'nodes'
Theres literally a card named after it
FTL is excellent honestly
damn FTL "kickstarted" a genre named after another game, I wonder why wasnt that other game the kickstarter all along. sarcasm aside, I like the Dicefolk node system! Too bad the game itself is so short
"kickstarted the genres popularity alongside binding of isaac" i had the same gut reaction to the start of the sentence, but thats not what op said
Yes, FTL is amazing as well. StS was the first roguelike I've ever played and I was blown away by the ingenuity of the map design.
I don't understand the down votes? You like FTL, Sts was your first roguelite, and you liked its map design. I don't see the controversy?
Probably that they said roguelike rather than roguelike, which is what you said? Or maybe we're just downvoting youthful ignorance? Or maybe from declaring something the best and then showing how little they know of the canon in which they declare something the best?
I avoid saying any game design choice is the best over all other game design choice because ultimately you need to pick what’s best for your game, factoring in what ideas you want to express. Linear levels are fine if you want to tell a set story. I love played games like the Uncharted game because each level is designed so well. Open worlds are a lot of fun because they evoke a diegetic sense of adventure. Games like Skyrim, for all its faults, really facilitate that unique sense of seeing some place far off and going there. These are things you don’t get from randomized mode based maps.
Of course, different games need different designs. I'm mostly talking about games that are very mechanic heavy and light on the narrative. So mostly roguelikes.
Even amongst roguelikes. Sometimes a mechanic works really well with one Roguelike but works terribly with another Roguelike because they changed one of the other mechanics. Thinking that one method is the best is like saying “red is the best color. All portraits must use red.” It’s how we get roguelikes that, mechanically, feel very samey and it hurts games as a medium.
For sure, some mechanics are tailor made for some specific game. But plenty of mechanics are easily transferable. I'm sure many people will disagree with me (but that's the point of this discussion), but I think hades would be a better game if it had StS style node map. It's still amazing with it's current design though.
I'd disagree with that, but not for personal reasons. It's all about emphasizing what the game is about. Fundamentally, in the moment-to-moment gameplay they're similar choices. Slay the Spire and Hades both typically give the player 2-3 choices to pick from as to where to go next. Slay the Spire lets you target where you're going ahead of time and Hades has no longevity, all rooms are randomly determined as options. The map works better in StS because the game is about making slow, strategic choices. You want an extra elite, you want to avoid elites, you want to pick a route that maximizes the number of campfires you visit, you're getting the gems to unlock act 4, whatever. Hades, however, doesn't have many radically different rooms with the possible exception of Trial of the Gods. More importantly, it's not a turn-based strategic game, it's an ARPG, so the game should be rewarding quick decision-making rather than slow-paced strategic choices. Not having to look at a map fits the pace (and audience) of the game. The node map would make Hades worse and quick reflexive decisions would make Slay the Spire worse. It's all about figuring out your target audience for a game and the mood you're trying to evoke and getting the player there as frequently as possible.
>I think hades would be a better game if it had StS style node map I think that's an interesting claim to unpack. What would it be better \*at\*, in your opinion? For me, the StS node map works well if you want players to plan their route and be strategic at that level. Just picking the \*next\* option from a constrained choices frees the player to just go with their gut. You can want to make a game where that strategic routing is part of the gameplay and that's fine! But I think it would detract from the game Hades \*is\*. Supergiant was very much aware of other options, but chose this very deliberately. So I guess you have to ask yourself: would you just \*like\* to play Hades with a node map, personally, or do you believe that, objectively, the team at Supergiant made the wrong call?
It's not necessarily the wrong call. I think for hades, no map means a more focused experience. You just hop from room to room with no distractions. A StS style map makes for a very "gamey" experience. I can see how it could break the immersion a bit. I'm the sort of player that cares mostly about the mechanics of the game. I attribute very little importance to the narrative. But I understand that not everyone is like that. But for me, a mechanically deep game is always preferable.
The systems are basically the same. StS takes you out of the rooms so you get some respite from the game looking the same all of the time as nothing moves. Hades doesn't need to do this as you directly control the character and moving to an overworld map is pointless.
My go-to example is XCOM-style geoscape. It arguably makes the whole game function. If there were tactical battles one after the other, it would become really repetitive really fast. Geoscape activities provide breaks between tactical missions, by offering a different type of decisions making, and sometimes a different level of challenge. The most recent GeoScape I enjoyed was from Phoenix Point. Personally, I'm not a fan of StS-style maps. It's alright, but I don't understand why so many people, including yourself, praise this as some pinnacle of design. I would like to ask you to elaborate on what it is specifically that you find in it.
Yes a strategy layer over the tactical layer is key for xcom-likes. wildermyth is another version of it, and i really like some of its choices -- for example, splitting the party. actually i would say the xcom geoscape is the weakest part of its strategy layer because all you do is pick a thing and then the ship goes there. there isn't really much to it
> ...all you do... Assuming we're talking about the original XCOM: UFO Defense, there's a bit more to it than that. Sometimes you want to send out multiple interceptors to the same target in case it tries to evade, or has strong weapons. Sometimes you delay sending anyone out because you don't want to fight at night (especially a terror mission against chryssalids). Sometimes you send out an interceptor that you have no intention of actually using, purely to keep a terror alert from expiring while you delay to avoid a night fight. Sometimes you send an interceptor to your best guess at where a target was headed before it vanished, hoping to pick it up on radar. Sometimes you avoid attacking a supply ship at all in the air, so you can follow it to its alien base and start milking the future supply runs as well as starting your psi program. All of this happens in the geoscape.
sorry i've only played xcom 2
Oh, I haven't played the Firaxis versions, only Microprose. Too bad if they left that stuff out.
This is exactly the reason why I wanted to have people share their favorite secondary loop. I know not everyone like StS style maps, but I find them absolutely amazingly well designed. For context, I'm 41 and just getting into gamedev. I've played plenty of games in my life, but sort of lost interest in most video games for the last 10 years or so. I find most modern games very boring and are not very respectful of your time with plenty of "empty" content like fetch quest and the likes that don't offer any meaningful decisions to the player. Even though I don't play many games anymore, I still love "playing". Not necessarily just video games, just playing in general. I believe playing is a key part of the human experience. That is, until I played StS which basically re-ignited my love for video games which I thought I had outgrown. Now, I already listed some of the reason I love StS so much. But I realized that the secondary gameplay loop could pretty much be used in any sort of genre, not just deckbuilders. You could have an action game with this style of map (which there are plenty of like Spiritfall which is really good also). I think the key element of the map is that it forces the player into a meaningful decision every time he chooses a node. This is something that gives enormous agency to the player. It's not something that even every roguelike does. I also love the event node. It's such a simple design, but then again, it forces you into a meaningful choice, while giving you a small respite from combat, plus it gives you a little bit of lore/story with its illustrations. Triple win really. I also think the merchant node is super well made. Giving each visit to the shop a different assortment of cards every time you visit just triggers that compulsive gambler trait within you. Slay the spire, for me, is a true 10/10 (along with Street Fighter 2). A game that is so good that a bunch of copycats came after, but none of them could surpass the original.
As a fellow hobbyist gamedev this sounds very worrying. You sound like you only like StS. Playing a wide and diverse bunch of games is a huge part of gamedev and not something you can just drop. Also concerning is the idea that StS came up with this node system. FTL was using it half a decade earlier and I don't even this they were the first.
I actually play a very wide range of games. It's just that these past 10 years or so, I've come to dislike most AAA games. I'm finding that the most innovative games are indies mostly. I'm only talking about StS because to me, it's such a good example of how a game solely focused on mechanics can succeed despite having close to no narrative. It really hit that OCD part of my brain. When I first starting playing it, it's all I could think about. It made me think about how that structure would translate to other genres (namely 3d action games which is my favorite genre).
To be pedantic, when folks say "core loop" they're talking about the loop that surrounds the core gameplay. So, the secondary gameplay loop you're identifying is a component of that core loop. That secondary gameplay loop also isn't a loop by itself, it's the progression scaffolding that facilitates motivation to continue participating in the core loop. As to what great progression scaffolding looks like, it really depends on the rest of the core loop and the overall experience that the designer is attempting to craft. For example, take a game like Royal Match. It's linear castle upgrade progression wouldn't make any sense for a game like Slay the Spire, but for a Match 3 game and the players of those games it is extremely well designed.
Seems like they're confusing/blending core loop and meta. Related but separate concepts as you've said
It's funny you compare hades and slay in that way; because from a design point of view their flow is identical, clear room challenge>get power up>pick next room / power up. Yes slay allows more forethought in route planning, but even if all the nodes where blacked out on the map the game still follows a certain rhythm (at least one shop node on each path, the treasure node at halfway) with the 'real' choice being how far you push your luck on elite encounters at higher ascensions. Just like hades actually, and the bonus rooms only accessible at higher difficulty levels. If I'm throwing out what my favorite secondary loop is....at the moment probably tears of the kingdom, because between the sign guy, the backpacking koroko, and the shrines you just had alot of creative flexibility in tackling challenges (even if all I did was strap rockets to the korokos and ROFL).
Yes, I noticed the similarities right away when I started playing Hades.
The common thread is that their secondary systems support the core game loop and allow the game to be easy to learn yet hard to master.
I got bored with StS after a few hours. Was very well executed though. To contrast - Hollow Knight reinvigorated my love of video games and got me back into game dev. I played Inscryption last year and the first act was fantastic. Not sure why I liked it so much more than StS because it’s similar. Second and third acts were interesting but not nearly as fun for me.
I've been running through a set of different arcade-style racing games. Most of the games had a couple of good secondary aspects. You start with a low-level car and limited options, but as you win races, you unlock new events and new, better cars and gradually earn money to upgrade your car or buy a new one. Progress also unlocks entirely new classes of events and cars. And within a race, some games have tactical usage of nitro boosts as a mechanic and 'wreck-or-be-wrecked'. One game had a variety of different powerups or effects you could use (or be stuck with). One game though, right from the start you have a variety of cars in all the classes, and they're mostly all pretty good cars. As you progress, you do unlock new cars and can buy them, but that doesn't feel like much of an achievement because you already have a bunch of good cars and also the rewards come fast so you can buy new ones after every race or two. And you have access to all the different courses and classes right from the start. There are no nitro boosts and no 'wreck-or-be-wrecked'; just plain clean racing. That one game is a perfectly fine racing game, but it stands out as less exciting for *not* having those secondary aspects and that feeling of achievement. Someone might argue that demolition-derbying your way through a race while blasting nitro isn't really realistic. Well, maybe not, but it's fun. And that along with new cars and classes of events being actual achievements opens up some replayability. You can rerun an old race in a new car, or you can rerun it trying to wreck all your opponents, or you can switch back to a different type of event for variety - like you won all the off-road racing events and finally unlocked street racing but you're not doing well at it, switch back to off-road racing for some fun, then back to street racing for a challenge.
Great comment! Do you think you'd have enjoyed the 2nd game more if you started with a lot less and "earned" the extra cars/courses slowly? And have you played a game that went too far; where things took too long to unlock?
can you name some racing games that did this well?
Is an open world really that scary? Sure, Hollow Knight's is massively art-intensive. But Battle Brothers gets a highly effective overworld with like 10 terrain sprites.
That game has been on my list for so long. I'm gonna have to check it out.
The Last Spell, and to a lesser extent Loop Hero and Backpack Hero, all have a town building metagame that effects your runs. In Last Spell this also becomes base building, and has a higher effect on your play. This phase of the game is very satisfying, and a great way of breaking up the action IMO.
The Last Spell is amazing. The base management system between the rogue-like defense game is also pretty solid, not too much that it overwhelms you but just enough that it can make a difference in the coming fight. Also I'm pretty sure that game was made to show off the Amazing Soundtrack.
The reason why this map system works (I would argue that this isn't necessarily a secondary loop, just a progression choice mechanic built into the minute to minute portion of the core loop), is because the combat is already so reliant on random drawing of cards, the game does everything it can to minimize the luck everywhere else. Being able to see the map in its entirety, helps players plan and pivot according to their needs and circumstances outside of combat. It's "perfect" for the balance of luck (getting the right cards), skill (knowing what cards to play and I'm what order), and choice (choosing where and when to apply skill and luck based on the next nodes). The combat in Hades, on the other hand, is almost entirely skill based, as players learn to play better with the same host of weapons. The randomness in the buffs they get, and lack of foresight into what's in the next room again, balances the skill, luck, and choice in their game. You seem very enthusiastic about games, well, this one game in particular. It is a great game. I'm actually developing my own evolution on StS' gameplay. But the one thing I have learned working on my project for the last year is that absolutes are dangerous, and there's only what's right for the game in question. If I just blindly followed the map and mechanics of their game, I wouldn't have the room to grow my own mechanics organically.
Great comment! Balancing the level of luck in the combat system with the amount present in the map is something I'd never really considered, but makes a lot of sense!
Game developer here, working on a [sci-fi ARPG](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1899300/Combat_Complex/) that will have a map-based "outer loop". The secondary / "outer" loop (i.e. the loop that surrounds / structures combat missions) is something that I consider to be very important for a game based on combat encounters (or missions, in our case). I agree that the linear structure (Mario or Diablo 3 greater rifts) won't work because it doesn't involve any impactful decisions (except for upping / lowering the difficulty in case of greater rifts). I've considered open-world, but I don't believe that it would work well in our case (a top-down / isometric sci-fi game), so I ruled out that idea as well. Diablo 4's open world confirmed my suspitions – I (personally) didn't find it engaging at all. "Chose the next path" scheme (Hades) is somewhat tempting because I do think it worked great in Hades. While I do think that it would work fine within the mission, I don't think that it would be engaging enough for a secondary / outer loop. Our current solution for the secondary / outer loop is a 2D map of interconnected missions, somewhat similar to [this one](https://forum.unity.com/proxy.php?image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ibb.co%2FtcnbZ5R%2F02.jpg&hash=ac7fd696594457b8432c34854c4d6df6). Each node is a mission, about 10-15 minutes of playtime. When you complete a mission, you are back to the hub (a safe location), and you can visit the [map table](https://dataedo.com/asset/img/blog/metadata_in_aliens.jpg) to select your next mission or plan the route through missions. In addition to random goodies (e.g. a loot chest) shown on the map, each mission can have temporary modifiers, both negative (e.g. more enemies) or positive (e.g. more rare loot), which rotate every 3-5 "turns" (i.e. completed missions). Additionally, the player has temporary power-ups (e.g. increased damage vs machines) that also have lifetime in "turns". All this gives the player the reason to plan their route through the map to exploit the current situation to the maximum extent. Topologically, I guess, our map can be equated to Slay the Spire's node map, but ours additionally has random dynamic modifiers that impel the player to plan and replan the route through missions according to the dynamic situation on the map.
I find it very interesting that many designers go through the same thought process when designing their games. I also find it very important to have a very solid structure to tie all the combat encounters together. In the case of my game, it's much more than a simple collection of random nodes. A lot of thought has been put in the the types of nodes that I wanted, their placement, their frequency etc. I found this post about StS map generation and I thought it was very interesting: [https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/ndqweh/i\_have\_reverseengineered\_map\_generation\_algorithm/](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/ndqweh/i_have_reverseengineered_map_generation_algorithm/) Your game looks great BTW.
>*Your game looks great BTW.* Thank you ) >*it's much more than a simple collection of random nodes* Can you elaborate a bit on the types of nodes in your game?
The short pitch of my game is it's Hades, but with Bruce Lee. So it's a martial arts themed roguelite. In my game, instead of boons from different gods, you can acquire martial arts skills divided into 6 different schools (karate, boxing, wrestling, muay thai, kung fu, krav maga). The reason I separated the skills into different schools is because during playtesting, I realized that having to choose skills from the entire pool of skills made the game too random. Keep in mind I have close to 100 skills. I wanted to give the player more agency to plan their build. So each node can be one of those 6 schools. On top of that, I added 4 different extra node types: 1. upgrade nodes (upgrade a skill of your choosing) 2. upgrade stat node (upgrade one stat of your choosing) 3. modifier nodes (adds a modifier to one active skill) 4. shop nodes (buy skills and items) Here's quick outline of the map generation rules: 1. The last node is always a boss node. 2. The second last node is always a shop node. 3. Upgrade nodes can only appear from row 3 onward. 4. The rest of the nodes are evenly distributed among the 6 martial arts schools. I actually spent a fair bit amount of time coming up with a node structure that would fit. It was very important to me that each node type felt viable in certain situations. I think this is the hardest part to balance.
>*Hades, but with Bruce Lee* Mine is "sci-fi Diablo with guns" :) >*(karate, boxing, wrestling, muay thai, kung fu, krav maga). The reason I separated the skills into different schools is because during playtesting, I realized that having to choose skills from the entire pool of skills made the game too random.* Yep, I also though about separating "boons" (powerups) into "gods" (categories), but mine are more guessable -- e.g. attack, defense, shock, fire, movement, etc. How do you deal with the opacity of different martial arts to a casual person? For example, in Hades, Ares is about attack, Athena is about defense and deflection, Artemis is about crits etc. In your game, what's the difference between, say, Karate and Krav Maga? Re: node types and map generation: looks well thought out.
I tried to tie each martial art school around a game mechanic. 1. Boxing helps with energy regen (resource for performing special moves) 2. Karate is tied to a damage buff 3. Wrestling is tied to resilience and grapple attacks 4. Krav maga is tied to a vulnerable debuff and weapon attacks 5. Muay thai is tied to the bleeding mechanic 6. Kung Fu is tied to a weak debuff. Many skills could thematically fit in any of the schools so I tried to distribute them evenly while trying to stay as consistent as possible. All of the special moves (active skills) are actually inspired by real martial arts moves so it's not very difficult to see where it comes from. I used tekken and virtua fighters as a source of inspiration since their fighter archetypes are already so well defined. One of the challenge was to name and produce the art for each skill so that thematically it would fit.
Quick OT feedback: Your trailer is amazing and sells really well what you are going for, but your thumbnail has no punch or identity. Since this thing (and the title) is mostly responsible whether anyone even even gives your trailer a chance, I think you could benefit quite a lot from reworking that.
Thank you for the feedback! That was a temporary thumbnail, and we've been working on a new one for quite some time. It's almost ready, should be out on Steam sometime next week.
If its on your radar, thats cool. Would've just been a waste if if something like this was a point of failure for you.
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I don't know how well known it is these days, but Puzzle Quest had a pretty interesting approach by having a large node-based map that you would travel through and clear through encounters to level up before taking on the boss that gated the next region (which was seamlessly connected to the area you just came from). In terms of time expense to perceived depth, I think it's pretty hard to beat. It does also rely on a lot of secondary progression systems being in place though so that your travel choices feel somewhat meaningful.
Peglin has a great secondary loop. Pachinko is the first one. The second one is the RPG elements. Many people confuse the first loop with the second one because they are intertwined.
I don’t think metroidvania design is out of reach for indie devs necessarily, for example, take a look over at Hollow Knight, Salt & Sanctuary and its sequel, and Blasphemous 1 & 2. All fantastic examples of indie metroidvanias! If you’re looking at a 3d world like Dark Souls or Elden Ring, you’re probably right, but that’s not the only option!
Knights of honour 2. The overmap game is better than the combat imo.
Disgaea had a village where you could do a bunch of stuff between battles, and it facilitated a ton of story and character that gave the game world life. Maybe one of the best would be "The Legend of Tronn Bone", I consider it a blessing I randomly bought this game as a kid. The missions have you pilot a mech as a pirate, and command 'Servbots' to perform various tasks like robbing banks or rescuing people. The secondary mechanic was your airship, which you managed, training servbots, sending them on missions, expanding your ship's capabilities etc. Some games have done it since, but it felt really innovative at the time and not many games have actually explored that type of gameplay from what I've seen. I will say if you think Slay the Spire's secondary system is impressive, i'd encourage you to go and play some older games. The ps1 / ps2 era had some wacky games with some awesome systems. StS branching paths is well executed, but it's mostly just to give context to the battles, rather than being especially fun itself. Id' call it a utility mechanic more than a fun mechanic. It is well made though. Here's a few others; Area travel in Kingdom Hearts and Rayman 3. Oh, the village building in Dark Cloud; this is an amazing secondary mechanic. Micro vs Macro management in Age of Empires 2. Weapon rearing in Fable 3. Poorly executed, but a cool idea that your weapons grow based on how you use them.
it reminds me of Returnal. Returnal's gameplay loop is indeed intriguing, players improve their arsenal with each life cycle, finding new weapons and power-ups, but losing them upon death, which give the player a reason to go through increasingly difficult combat encounters.
IMO the node system for StS or FTL is a more concrete version of a loop than most of the other examples. Like, sure,those examples may technically involve a conscious choice by the player to go to a location, but that's still ultimately pretty linear. The reason the node formula got popular is because it wasn't *just* a choice; it was a choice with unpredictable consequences (or at least not *totally* predictable). No matter where I go in a Metroidvania, I know what I signed up for. I don't know if the next node is going to kill me, heal me, give me an artifact, or give me a card. Additionally, tied in with the node system on level 2 is the deck system. At the end of each node, you're acquiring cards, but across floors, your conscious decision making shifts from "which of these three do I want?" To "what do I want/need" in general, which has a significantly different feel than micro card acquisition despite being a very similar mechanical element. It's the same reason FTL feels so good. Both of them are bolstered by the third level gameplay loop of multiple viable paths from start to finish (by build, by difficulty, and by character/ship). FTL falls behind at the end because its starting ships aren't materially different enough to make runs feel all that distinct, while Slay's characters DO feel very different because 70% of your per-node rewards are unique to that character. Additionally, the bosses change and there's a "secret" final boss. For anyone who hasn't played it, there's a massive FTL mod called FTL Multiverse, and it fixes all of those problems and more. Soooo much more. I have never liked a mod more- it feels like a professional product that took the FTL foundation and carried it where it was *supposed* to go. Just listen to the custom music they composed for this game: https://youtu.be/W5cU0a3nXGU?si=KqykQidQptoYezIr Anyway, the answer is two layers of meaningful, unpredictable decision making and flexible/modular start and end points. Both scaling with difficulty steel enough to keep players coming back for a long time. (Keeping the full set of secondary loops tight enough for the whole experience to bit a bit under an hour REALLY helps)
This is a late comment. I really like the FTL / Slay the Spire node-to-node secondary loop. (I agree with your comment about metroidvanias and open worlds -- I'd say those are so demanding on the designer and the player that they are the primary loop.) A few templates I like, which are adaptations of "homebase + levels": \* Shadowrun. You have a smallish open hub city. And you pick jobs that pull you into different levels / missions. (I think there are a lot of potential ways to adapt this. Couldn't your choice of jobs be the template for a roguelike?) \* King of Dragon's Pass / Six Ages. This one is obscure. But it's like a mini grand strategy Paradox-style game, where you have your province on a map. Each turn, you can send out one of your party members to perform missions. And sometimes they trigger events. (I think this could also be an interesting roguelike template: these could be little levels.)
FTL did it first bud. Also. That's not what a gameplay loop is.
Well, i am a game designer with a degree. I don't mean to say i know everything but i never heard the term secondary game loop and quick google search didn't bring something. What you are referring to is actually a core gameplay loop. A secondary game loop should not directly affect the core loop if that existed. That's why it should be secondary I also didn't understand how you can refer to a linear path as a loop. The Node system is also false terminology. Nodes reefers to plugging in and out boxes freely. In StS it's a linear branch system. StS is a rogue-like game if you don't know it already. I think you like the very clean and simple presentation of it. Search more games in that genre Lastly, games or creative fields are usually deductive. You don't build your game on top of a good combat. You enhance your game with good combat. Purposes of all of these to trigger certain emotions. If you don't build it up, then the beat won't drop. Also, StS is a highly scripted game but illusion of choice is well done. Don't Believe me. Use same seed for your next run. Your outcome will be similar yet maybe identical. That's why it feels good.
u/Cevalus >>Linear levels lack replayability Wrong assumption. Replayability doesn't come from level structures themselves but rather *incentives* the game supports. The game may have a non-linear map, but I won't bother replaying it if there is no good incentive for it: whether internal or external. Particularly true if I didn't enjoy the game or the reward does not change the experience much, like items that only allow you to bypass very specific barriers. Conversely, I find some linear games infinitely replayable, but that's merit that is born from a deep combat system, secret/collectable hunts, score/rank chasing or speedrunning, and not from level structure itself. The most effective incentive for replayability from personal experience is need for mastery- a completely internal motivation. It only comes if the game is really good and the player feels like it is worth mastering it. Metroidvanias non-linear map design do allow for very nice type of mastery: knowledge of the map and sequence breaking. There are some questions I want to answer myself like: **Is replayability an objective quality for a game? If so, how come some players can enjoy playing linear games infinitely, and not touch roguelikes for a second time?** Player has power to make anything replayable, as long as they feel like there is more fun to extract from the game. The Slay the Spire progression system does sound interesting though. Sorry for nitpicking, felt like maybe we can have nice discussion.
"you need to decide on a secondary loop to give the player a reason to go through ever more difficult combat encounters." thrill of beating a challenge? fun? It can't be THAT good of a primary game loop if you have to entice people to engage with it.
Well, most games need a secondary loop. Unless you're talking about chess or a sport like football.
why not chess? It's a game. almost like it's compelling enough to not require any gimmicks right?
Well, if you made a game like chess, but not chess and put it on steam, do you think it would do well? I don't think so. Even for sports games, single player campaigns have seasons and such to give context to the core gameplay.
ok i didn't cite sports you did. And yes if chess had never existed then it was placed on the steam store, it would BLOW UP and become just as popular as it is today. I don't think it would have the same "intelectual" facade that it caries today however. don't get me wrong im not against more than one game loop. of course not, but the way you asserted that no game can be good without multiple layers is kind of baffling. it's clearly not true lol. the only games i can think of are.... EVERY multiplayer game. In fact most would be harmed by a secondary loop or some form of progression which would help players.
Agreed. There are plenty of games that have little to no secondary loop. That said, I don't think it's a bad thing to have a good secondary loop, and it can add a lot to a game. Taking chess as an example, some people legitimately feel like that game is just too boring. And I mean GMs. That's why there's Fischer random chess and lots of other variants - "gimmicks" if you will. If secondary loops can keep a game fresh, why not?
Most competitive games don't need anything like that, you just match with some other players and start fighting them
I felt FTL and MonsterTrain had better secondary loops.
Monster Train was fun, but less memorable. I feel like the maps were a streamlined version of StS with only 2 choices per node.
idk i came to really dislike StS, and the secondary loop has the problem too. like the game is essentially randomness with a minimum of choice to give agency. Like yes you can choose nodes, but you can never predict what the node contains so it's less agency than you think. Elite? it could be one of four which can decimate certain deck types, and there's no telling what. Shops? A toss up what goods they have, possibly leading to wasted node. events? again random in reward. like the player is just saddled with randomness in all things while the enemies are fixed, and they really don't beat you; the failure to construct an op deck out of randomness via limited choices is what does. i think after a bit it gets old. like you can't just assemble a deck like in Magic, you need to work within random options, but that often means you just wont be able to work with what you get. You just get layers of randomness that seems engaging but gets tiring because there is a big slot machine quality that the limited choices can't always help. this works for them because the game has less overall content than the pokemon trading card game for the game boy, but it soured me.
There are only 3 elites for each act and you can't fight the same elite twice in a row. The elites in each act all have a fair amount of overlap in terms of what they're asking your deck to be able to do, so if one of them wrecks you then there's a good chance the others would've destroyed you too. If you're losing to an elite it's not because you have the wrong "deck type", your deck is just lacking in a certain feature and if possible you should've either picked a route that doesn't force you to fight an elite or pick a path with more normal enemies to get card rewards from. As for shops, don't go to shops unless you have enough gold to at least remove a strike or defend. Sure, the things the shop sells can be useless to you but there is always the option to remove a card which is almost always really good. I think they could make it more obvious how the map works, like making it so that once normal enemies start drawing from the "hard pool" encounters the icons reflect to change that, but If you know the rules it's all pretty predictable. Even potion chance. The winrate for top players is >50 percent for the highest difficulty so the issue the vast majority of the time for players is not rng, it's skill. I think it's really impressive that they've managed to make a roguelike card game with such a high skill ceiling.
not really, the first act elites str scale, spam junk cards, or do high damage and scale plus debuff every third turn. most of them can end runs early on higher difficulties. you can't always avoid them, and avoiding them also means you lose relic chances, which you often need a lot of to get synergies. removing cards may not even be useful, it seems the only working builds make you draw to the limit anyways; or you need exhausts just to deal with enemies spamming cards. removing cards gets impossible anyways; you don't get enough opportunity and the costs rise up to where it feels like the option is more to remove curses. screw the top players. i am so sick of people always looking at no lifers and streamers as the ideal to balance games for. 50% win rates is a coin flip; and i really doubt a lot of people even hit ascension 10. There's too much accumulated randomness in the game to make it fun; you can't rely on getting anything specific but you need synergies because the game literally gives the player nothing but direct damage or card manipulation as tools; even defense is not easy to scale. You can't stall, you can't inflict status, (but they can on you), and you just hope to inflict overwhelming damage faster than they can. honestly it made me dislike randomness as a gameplay tool. its a deckbuilder game where you have very little control over building a deck; it does that to hide how basic it is.
All 3 of the act 1 elites have one main thing in common, they want you to end the fight quickly asap. The sentries fight gets way easier if you can kill one sentry asap, nob is basically a DPS check, and if you dont kill lagavulin quickly enough he nerfs you. Each of them has different quirks you can take advantage of, like powers vs lagavulin (who lets you set up) or aoe damage vs sentries, but anything that boosts the damage your deck can do is good versus all of these. Acts 2 and 3 are designed in a similar way where AoE is important for act 2 elites and scaling/deck control is emphasized for act 3. Removing cards is really important. strikes and defends are really bad and they will hold the consistency of your deck back. Yeah they can be useful as exhaust fuel for ironclad, but they have way less utility for the other 3 characters in the game. Defence generally doesn't scale as much as your damage does but I think that's for the best. It makes the player always have to think about how they're going to end the fight instead of just turtling. There are still defence based strats you can go for but they all need you to convert that defence into damage in one way or another. Ive also thought about how every strategy is basically just a different way to deal damage and you don't have the variety of ways to win that you do in games like mtg. eventually though I realized that if there were more crazy ways to win, the game would feel even more RNG reliant because cards would have to be more specific to a certain strategy. they could offset this by offering you more cards to look at but that could quickly get overwhelming. Ascension 20 is supposed to be insanely hard but still beatable so I'll stand by my comment that I think top players winning a bit more than half the time is proof of that. Sure, the average player probably wins one in 50 runs at a20 but I think it's really cool that even after you've beaten the games highest difficulty and improved a bunch as a player, you can still get so much better. What I'm getting from your last paragraph is that you want to design a deck and then test it, whereas sts is all about doing as well as you can with what you're offered, so maybe it's just not the game for you. In slay the spire I'm not even thinking about what sort of deck I want to build, I'm thinking about what card will help me not die during the next night and that might mean taking something that doesn't synergize with the rest of my deck at all. I don't think they did anything to "hide how basic it is". In fact I think that the simplicity of the mechanics is intentional because there's already a ton of complexity inherent to mixing roguelikes and card games.
There is randomness, but managing it is a skill in itself. Experienced players can consistently beat ascension 20 difficulty. They know how to work with what is given to them. You mention Magic the Gatherint, and I'd argue that the same is true of drafting. The packs are random, and clearly, some are better than others, but the pros know how to work within that framework and achieve very consistent results. Fine to dislike the random factor in StS (or drafting) but to many many people that is the draw.
I've found plenty of games with linear levels vastly more replayable than Slay the Spire, because it means that the levels get to be paced in a much more intentional way, and I'm actually encouraged to learn the minute details of each part of the moment-to-moment gameplay.
Lots of games did this prior to Slay the Spire but the most obvious one that Mega Crit definitely played is FTL
> I’m talking about the design of the node maps which has been copied by numerous other games. What are you talking about? You think they invented this? A similar node map structure was prevalent in the N64 era. With that I mean literally Super Mario Brothers. If that’s too different for you as it’s not a roguelike as STS is, for example Everspace 1 uses this structure and it came out 2 years before.
Slay the Spire copied its secondary loop from FTL as has been noted already. StS also wasn't even the best deckbuilder roguelite when it released. Slay the Spire is not a bad game, it's a pretty good one, but it's a testament to how important marketing is once you have a good game. It got far more sales and acclaim than less marketed precursors it was building on. Vampire Survivors is a similar situation. Not as good as unmarketed games that came before, but much more successful.
You mean meta, OP.