Hello Community,
I’ve been working on WarSphere for some time now and the free demo is now released on Steam.
You can check it out on the steam store here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2451530/WarSphere/
There is a trailer, screenshots and more description there. The demo is free, so if you want try it, I’d be super happy. Your feedback is also highly appreciated!
The games short description:
WarSphere is a fast-paced, Roguelike Top-Down Shooter. As an Armed Spherical Robotic System, you blast, loot and boost your way through procedurally generated worlds and dungeons in order to fulfill your purpose and become part of ‘the Archive’, which only marks the end of the beginning.
Story
You take the role of an NC3 AI-Chip that emulates the neural correlates of consciousness, an artificial brain, operating a highly effective Armed Spherical Robotic System, aka a WarSphere. An entity called ‘Mother’ overrides your purpose and sends you on a journey of destruction, the meaning of which will only unravel at your final destination.
Full Game Features
- Deterministic random world generation based on seeds
- 5 Worlds, with several Dungeons each and 3 difficulties
- 60+ Enemy Types
- 6 Bosses
- Randomized Elite and Minion enemies
- 20 Weapon Types
- Map Editor with integrated, rather deep, enemy modding without coding
- Replay player
- Steam Leaderboards for daily
RPG-System
The RPG system is also handmade. It includes:
- level progression
- item stats depending type (e.g. weapon, hull, etc)
- Item modifiers that modify item stats
- Character modifiers that modify player buffs, which in return modify the stats of all items
Gameplay loop
Like to be expected from a roguelike, you will die a lot and start over. The procedural random world generation will keep it interesting though. Once you complete a run (short or normal) you keep the final loadout and upgrades that you’ve acquired and use this particular configuration to engage in certain engame activities (e.g. Daily speedruns with leaderboards etc).
Demo
I’ve decided to release a demo now, even though the full game will require more time to finish. The reasoning here is to acquire some early feedback and also work on more marketing in parallel to get some more attention on the game. Marketing will primarily mean influencer outreach and hopefully get some people to stream the game. Due to procedural random world generation and the type of game it should be quite streamable though.
The demo includes:
- Prologue/Tutorial
- Act 1 (of 5) of the main game
- A daily with steam leaderboards integration
Total playtime of the demo should be 30-60 minutes depending on the skill level of the player. I at least hope that players who like the game will come back to play the daily speed runs of the demo and compete on the leaderboards.
Why I chose Monogame instead of some engine
- Like of most of you, I think in code and I enjoy being in control of the deep stuff if I need to. Monogame being open source lets me fix stuff or report to the community or even implement a hack here and there in my local repository.
- The big game engine providers don’t care about me. Even if my game would be a hit, the dimension of revenue will be insignificant compared what big studios can achieve. My personal view is that I try to avoid supplier relationships where the full power is on the side of the supplier and none on my side. Publishing through Steam certainly belongs to this category of supplier relationship, but Valve is astoundingly helpful and they offer a great service for gamers as well as for devs and publishers.
- I believe using a Game Engine might be more profitable looking at time of development and if you are in urgent need to maximize your profits, there might be no way around it. However, at some point in time a Game Engine will limit your creativity and maybe also the quality of the game due to suboptimal integration between your idea and the ready-made engine. In my case, I didn’t make WarSphere for profit but to fulfill my dream of producing and publishing a video game. Money was not a driver. With this mindset I was able to create a game exactly how I think its perfect. To follow this ambition, MonoGame was the best choice.
- WarSpheres physics engine is made from scratch. While I try to keep my code clean, I ended up adding a disgusting amount of exceptions and hacks in the physics and collision detection in order to make the game feel smooth. I don’t believe you can achieve the same level of tightly integrated game mechanics with an external ready to use component. I also believe this is why a lot of games feel clunky these days.
- Tested by quite some amount of beta testers, the game seems pretty much glitch free for now. Like I wrote before, using 3rd party components and trying to fit it in your engine will, with a very high probability, lead to glitches that are not easy or impossible to resolve.
) you will learn so much more about the fundamentals of game development, than by going with an engine. MonoGame is a blank canvas ready to be filled with your imagination without limits. If you are just starting: Go with MonoGame and make something that is small and different from the usual stuff. I think something with some randomness + highscores might be a good place to start. It’s important to finish your projects. If I could talk to myself 10 years ago I would recommend publishing a small free game on Steam, that has incredibly satisfying game mechanics, just to have that experience.
I made a lot more progress after that.