Thread by @rodneylives

So, more thinking about my Zelda II-ish combat idea
- You create a character to play with. In the roguelike mode, if they die, they're dead (in career mode at least).
- You decide Strength, Endurance, Agility and Intelligence. Each affects multiple aspects of the character.

Particularly, endurance increases mass, which slows you down, but is the only stat that increases health. Strength is the most generally useful, increasing mass, speed and stamina. Agility improves speed and control responsiveness. Intelligence improves responsiveness and luck.

As a character gains experience, it improves in these stats generally. This is a "slow character growth" game though, where survival over time is the best improving factor, but characters don't change a great deal.

As with all ideas I post here, feel free to use for your own projects if you think it fits. I'm just musing online because I can't sleep.

The idea is to provide multiple different routes to playing the game well, to make player skill the primary method of advancement but let different characters succeed in different ways. Also, to give players an incentive to retire characters and start new ones frequently.

Also here's an idea: random magic items that don't auto-ID, with subtle effects. Some could be bad, but the effect is minor so it's not obvious. Also however, these items aren't cursed--if you suspect it's not got a positive effect, nothing stops you from getting rid of it.

Over time your character's intelligence stat will cause them to get a hint as to whether a given item has a positive or negative influence. Once you know it would be roguelike rules: all items of the same type have the same effect, although maybe with minor differences.

One aspect of this idea is to make characters kind of disposable? If a character dies, I don't want players to feel bad; I want them back on their feet and trying again. But I still want to foster enough of a connection that players still feel joy when a character is successful.

And, I want characters to grow differently from each other, in ways that are not entirely in the player's control. The player and the character are kind of partners, with the character having kind of a bit of their own personality.

Well, it's an idea. I'm just thinking aloud.