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haunter

Release this on Steam for $4.99

Promo it to some Twitch streamers and bilibili/huya streamers in China

Instant success

I legit think someone will copy this sooner or later if you don't do it.

(Generally I think any "well known"/traditional game combined with rougelite elements can be a huge success nowadays)

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I learned about chess960 the other day. It's a variant Bobby Fisher invented because he was bored with "theory" (ie wrote memorization of openings and positions) and wanted a fresh experience. Its basically just chess but you put the back rank (non-pawns) in random positions. As a result you have to (or get to) reason through things from first principles each game.

I guess this is just the random aspect of a rogue-like, but it struck me as very similar to roguelikes. The fact that the experience is different everytime makes things more playable and sparks a certain sort of joy when the randomness variables compliment eachother in effective ways which you can design a game plan around.

> I think any "well known"/traditional game combined with rougelite elements can be a huge success nowadays

This is basically the entire thesis of slay the spire and why its massively succesful.

Yes, here I was mostly trying to make the game sessions shorter, so first you have only one life not 4 or 5, and second you are limited to 7 levels (+3 extra with perks) to score as much as possible. From that, it made sense to pick the levels at random each run, because we lost the variety of going through 30 levels before game over. Then for the upgrade, i just copied what vampire survivor of interrupting the action to leave players time to think. I'm a huge fan of Nuclear throne and wish more games could be started in 5 seconds, played for 2-10minutes, and then let you go back to work. That's the real value of roguelikes for me, the short playtime (because dying after 10h sucks) and intense action with a bit of RNG forcing you to think.

> Its basically just chess but you put the back rank (non-pawns) in random positions.

I feel compelled to note that you can also put the front rank in random positions without changing the game.

Haha loved that comment.

There's a variation of this http://reallybadchess.com/ -- I kind of like it because I don't remember all the classic strategies... many of these just need to be memorized.

Thanks for your advice. I published on the play store and got 0 download. I'll try to get a good game and a few users, then bite the bullet and publish on stores. I don't think I can prevent copy cats, and the game itself is based on another game. Also, it's FOSS (AGPLv3), so this is a very easy target for an unscrupulous copycat.

Just out of curiosity, is this the cruz of packaging it up for Android?

https://gitlab.com/lecarore/breakout71/-/blob/main/app/src/m...

People will copy it even if he does.

I agree. I don't mind. I didn't invent breakout. Half of the value of my game is that it's free, ad free, lightweight and very easy to access anywhere, I doubt the copycats will be willing to do that.

Yea you can just be like the Banksy of game design. Put out a free game somewhere, easy to reach, people play it and that’s it.

First mover advantage

I published on the play store and got 0 downloads in a week. The game needs to be popular already to be noticed on those platforms. Same with steam, plus you need people to want it to even be lister. I'm not doing this for the money so dealing with the arbitrary requirements of various stores is low on my priority list.

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