Thread by @patio11

Interesting design decisions from Popup Dungeon, a brief thread.

For context, it is a gameplay-driven tactical RPG spiritually similar to D&D 4th edition with a deeply millennial and self-aware sense of humor.

The game can “play itself”: genre fans are extremely aware of “select ability, select target.” PD will auto-target the best choice for your ability and suggest the likely place you will move to execute it, if you double click on the ability card.

It’s harder to do it manually.

Blending game design and meta game design, balancing isn’t entirely by “Designer keeps a giant spreadsheet of items/abilities/monsters and irons out with play testers” but rather “Designer creates a giant spreadsheet for a hidden point system and game spits out what a thing does”

For example, if you are creating a custom character (say, a playable dragon) and give him fire breath, the game will supply its level one damage and a curve for upgrades. If you make it AOE, damage down. Limit to once a day, damage up. Change to half DOT, base DMM down total up.

They made all of their character/level/etc creation tools embedded in the main application. They’re relatively accessible (no code and no syntax for most things) but I hope the team didn’t have to eat their own dog food, since they’re slow as heck versus a text editor.

The game is a rogue like and most game modes will throw away your character progression after one play session; the campaign is about 5 to 7 hours (and then again discards progression at end).

Meta progression is through a charm system. You’re awarded one randomly on mode win.

And you purchase others with in-game currency which is abundantly available. There are many levels of charms; score bonuses are generally linear but costs are geometric (1k, 2k, 4K...) so this functions as a great gold sink and scales through both the early and mid meta game.

Individual charms feel extremely impactful; when you successfully get a current max rank charm you’ve been trying for for your party’s build, it feels like an accomplishment and you will notice it immediately.

This is helped by the game exposing a lot of internal state/stats.

e.g. If you open your rogue with 112% life steal that will be characterized with an adjective (superb!) and the game will let you mouse over to determine how much is from her rogue weapons and how much is from your Flawed Crystal Charm of Life Steal.

The most interesting part about the charms is that most game modes auto scale: since the game has a notion of the relative power of things, if you bring a level 1 part of 2 characters into combat with five Emerald charms equipped, you’ll likely face an encounter with 2 beefy NPC.

There is one game mode which doesn’t auto scale by default, which allows you to have the power fantasy of high “level” parties face rolling kobolds in that mode but have a challenge by default everywhere else.

It’s deeply amusing to have a programmable rules engine available.

You can create custom gear like a feather which, if an enemy steps 2 paces away in your rear arc, gives you Fear and then summons a dragon.

Why would you do that? I don’t know! But it’s more fun than Sword +1.