Three New Slimes Update - July 20, 2024

This is the first update of the game post-jam. 

It already feels like a completely different game. I thought I'd have some fun and name my updates this time, so this is the "Three New Slimes Update." It's pretty much exactly what it says on the cover: I added three new playable slime types to the game, among a ton of other changes.

Overall, the jam version didn't match my original idea for how I wanted the game to feel. I was hoping to evoke the feelings of games like Into the Breach (Subset Games, 2018), Shotgun King (PUNKCAKE Délicieux, 2022), and Hoplite (Douglas Cowley, 2013). A core trait that all those games share is that positioning matters, and it matters enough that each turn has some sense of strategic depth. The game I had at the end of the jam felt more like a puzzle game along the lines of Tiger Electronics 1995 handheld game Timeout, in which you have to put out a pattern of lights, but where pushing one light toggles all the adjacent lights. I also really like games about snowballing overload like Mini Motorways (Dinosaur Polo Club, 2019) and Wilmot's Warehouse (Hollow Ponds, 2019). Sime Dimension has something like this, but it's wrapped in a more roguelike framework. It has an ending, and I do hope to explore the possibility of a boss battle next.

Here are some of the other changes I made along with some thoughts about them.

New Slime Types

• I always wanted to have many slime types, but I couldn't think of a good way to give them to the player. I considered and tried a few different options. Maybe I could just have the slime mother birth more slime types, but that threw off the RnG for the basic slimes in a way that didn't feel good. I also considered having different starting builds - maybe you picked a slime mother that had 3 birthing types. What I landed on was giving new slimes as quest rewards. Along with this, I added weighted randomness to the quest rewards so that it gave you slimes as rewards a lot more often. 
  
• The slime types I added were Sturdy Slimes, Bomb Slimes, and Formless Slimes
  
  • Sturdy Slimes can push enemies. They can push enemies off the board to kill them. If enemies are pushed into something they'll bump and take damage. This felt like the most obvious new slime type to try after I identified my desire for positioning to matter more. This gives you some indirect control over enemy positioning. Now you can push enemies back sometimes instead of moving a slime away to avoid it getting attacked.
    
  • Bomb Slimes blow up and hurt all adjacent enemies for high damage. I'll be honest, this was just something that felt easy to program and made sense so I threw it in. Feels pretty good so far!
    
  • Formless Slimes allow you to merge them with any slime of the same level and you can also use them in place of other slimes for sacrifice quests. I wanted to add a slime that was beneficial along some other dimension 🥁 than attacking and slime production. This one felt pretty straightforward so I just gave it a try and it feels pretty right so far.

Attack Slimes have a different way of attacking.

• The old attack pattern, which allowed you to attack all adjacent hexes, didn't have a good way of scaling. I changed these slimes to attack along any straight line. I also added a small touch in which attack slimes bounce back to their original position UNLESS it's a killing blow. In that case, the attack slimes stay on the targeted hex. This adds a touch of added strategy because it lets you move attack slimes around for cheaper and incentivizes attacking. 

Slimes no longer have HP

• This is a big weird change that I just needed to try out. Now, instead of having HP, slimes can all take one hit, and when that happens they split into 2 slimes that are one level lower. This was a thematic idea ("slimes split in two when attacked") that felt like it would never be balanced. In my head it felt like it made slimes WAAAY too powerful. But the problem with the previous version was that losing a level 4 or higher slime felt like a run-ending move. I've wanted to do all I can to remove long, drawn out, endings where you know you're going to lose and it's just a matter of time. This new splitting behavior allows unexpected comebacks way more often. Additionally, I added the ability to reroll quests in case you were unable to complete the current quests because of the splitting. 

There's a bunch of other additions, but I feel like I've written enough : ) Happy to hear any feedback.

~ mickey