anoxic depths day 1
I don't quite recall how it happened, but last week I went from "I'm not going to do the 7DRL challenge this year" to "I absolutely need to make this game for the challenge", but I'm happy it did. Cave diving resembles traditional roguelikes already with a hunger clock, exploration, environmental hazards, and items to survive that exploration. My quick search didn't reveal any previous cave diving or even SCUBA-themed roguelikes though, and I knew I'd be remiss to not try.
Thematically, I want players to initially feel like reckless new cave divers—potentially not even having training in standard SCUBA. After playing more, players should feel much more cautious as they seek to map their cave and retrieve the bodies of their predecessors.
The first task, then, was to try and capture that feeling of disorientation that can occur, and I've elected to try out a new 3D movement scheme. Eben Howard's EmoSquid is the main game I'm aware of that attempted full 3D movement for a player-controlled avatar with traditional 2D view. I'm using a rotational control scheme instead, and the 2D version I implemented today is promising for extending to 3D.
Previously, I've always planned to enable character creation in my kanji-based roguelikes where the player's gender determined the kanji used to represent them. It didn't take too long to implement it as part of iteration 0 with a slider to capture a range of possibilities. If time permits, I'll increase the glyphs from 俺, 僕, and 私.
Upon day one's conclusion, Anoxic Depths is a potentially fatal SCUBA pool simulator.
Crossposted at 7drl.org.