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Deep Down Below

My Role:

This is a solo project that has been going on since October 2024 and takes inspiration from the roguelike genre while adding my personal touch. Key mechanics revolve around turns in the game loop played on a 2D grid.​​

  • Programmed all aspects

  • Created all assets except music​. Soundtrack by Chris Felo!

Core Features:

  • Turn-based combat

  • Procedural dungeon generation

  • Recursive shadowcasting

  • Flexible class system

Key Focus:

When diving into a project, my passions lie in designing a large pool of items with a diverse variety of AI to use them. I kept my sights on workflows that make this as modular as possible while retaining efficiency, allowing me to easily create new enemies, items, and abilities. My goal was to have a game that caters to every fantasy playstyle one might have so that creativity results in unique experiences. Put together with generated dungeons, each playthrough brings new challenges to overcome.

Influences:

I love older games that stem from the original Rogue but felt like they were a bit far out from more contemporary titles, so I added modern influences from some of my favorites:

  • The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

  • Enter the Gungeon

  • Vagante​

It was important to me to make something that gives you a choice in your playstyle while not locking you to a specific role. Players can blend between classes to find unique combinations of items and abilities that will bring them to the end game.

Main Challenges:

  • ​Turn-Based System:​​

    • I created a Priority-Queue that handles turn execution so that after the player takes their turn, each enemy AI in the level follows up in order. This system has taught me a lot about proper code sequence so that enemy turns don't overlap​ with the player and vice versa. It also taught me a lot about handling Coroutines and asynchronous functions!​

  • AI:

    • This was my favorite area to program and I probably spent the most time debugging it than anywhere else. At first it was challenging to get the AI to act in their proper turn order while sticking to the world-grid, but through constant iteration and testing I was able to achieve working AI that is easily adapted for extension!

  • Dynamic Lighting System - Recursive Shadowcasting:

    • This one is big in traditional Roguelikes and was what I spent the most time on in this project. I hadn't used Recursion before, and working with the world-grid meant I had to combine nested for-loops and Octant calculations to cast light in 8 directions. I spent about a month trying different techniques and strategies to get this working correctly and in the end I was super satisfied with the result! By using this system I was easily able to create a minimap that reveals itself as you explore the level.

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