Rpg-type game -- fight stuff, level up and buy better stuff to fight with.
Roguelike -- lots of stuff is procgen, world is infinite, and also roguelike in the sense of game over being actual game over, with a difficulty curve that reinforces that.
Map Layout
The map is laid out in "regions". Each region has four exits which let you get to other regions. Regions are laid out on a 2D grid basically with the exits connecting them - however they don't necessarily connect in a sane way because the jumps vary. Uses the phonemaze algorithm.
Regions are ~20 tiles arranged in some kind of 2D seeding pattern. Could be weird looking, could be a square. Again uses the phonemaze framework.
You have to move onto tiles to discover what they are and also the region shape. So uses the visibility framework I never added to phonemaze.
Different tiles (will be covered in their own section and the mechanics associated with them):
Exits are done phonemaze style with maybe 3 charm. The game world itself is infinite.
Abs(x)+abs(y) determines difficulty and spell scaling. you do at least know what difficulty an exit leads to.
Exits have a 50% chance of being guarded by whatever the worst enemy in your current region is. So moving regions might be a viable strategy and might not.
Battles are turn based. You get a turn and then the enemy gets a turn and this doesn't change without some good reason.
You can attack, cast a spell, use an item, swap weapons or armor or attempt to flee.
Uses Shatterloop's element framework -- different elements are weak or strong against others. This ties into your armor and spells but not your weapons, which are just raw physical damage with some interesting effects added for balance. Every enemy has an element but you don't know it until you discover it or you may have to explicitly remember.
You have health and mana. Mana allows you to cast spells and does not regenerate on its own. Health and mana levels stay outside of battles, so carrying items or being near towns is vital.
Weapons
Weapons have raw physical damage in addition to one or more effects:
Lowers enemy defense
Lowers enemy attack
Builds up a meter that allows you to take an additional turn.
Builds up a meter that makes you do more damage (2x+)
Regenerate mana
A chance of stealing items
Intimidation, which makes fleeing easier.
The more effects a weapon has, the more likely it is to break. Raw physical weapons will never break. Broken weapons do half damage with no effects. They can be repaired in towns or with very rare items that can't be bought.
Magic is one of the six elements and is similarly balanced.
Raw magical damage. Like weapons this scales as you go out of your starting area, but so do the enemies and experience and gold gained.
A prolonged effect that deals more damage over time for some amount of turns. This can stack but at a reduced rate with each new casting. The math here varies on the spell.
Chance of paralysis on enemies weak to it. Enemies recover from paralysis and are no longer susceptible to it in that battle, but can be a useful effect.
Mana cost can be less than normal
Lower enemy attack or magical defense if they're weak to the element.
Lower enemy physical defense.
Absorb health if they're weak to the element. A useful way of regenerating health when far from towns if you know what you're doing.
The more effects a spell has (even if they're weak), the more likely the spell is to break. Raw magical spells will never break. Similar system to weapons, need a town or rare item to fix it.
Phonegame uses an inventory system similar to Shatterloop's where everything is an item and you have limited (but upgradeable) storage.
The amount of item categories is limited:
Weapons
Armor (counts towards inventory even if equipped)
Spellbooks
Potions
Potion ingredients
Gems
Junk
I'm going to be sane with this project and allow for both amts and unique items with shared names.
Will cover anything not yet covered in its own section.
Each item has a weight that adds to your total, if you go too high you can't carry additional items and have to sell or store what you have.
Carry limit upgrades are a shop service, cost money and can only be done once per town. You can however increase the scope of it while simultaneously increasing the money as much as you want -- the caveat is you can't use that town for that again. It is a homogeneous service that does not increase in price or scope as you move around regions.
Towns offer a banking service that allows you to store items with different fee structures based on storage, retrieval or weight. All the banks are linked so you can get your items out anywhere, and you can swap bank plans at any time as you move around and discover better ones.
Gems are items that allow you to permanently upgrade weapons or spellbooks. They can upgrade base value beyond the value of the gem, decrease weight, or contribute to intrinsics. Each intrinsic is listed and some limited amount of gems is procgenned to cover all bases between them, in a categorical way and then random intrinsics from there.
Regions have different percentages of the different gem types, which means you can move around to find certain gems more frequently as treasure or buyables -- higher percentages means the shop price is lower and the loot chance is higher.
Items have a Max Prettiness stat (which is hilarious), which is the amount of times you can upgrade it before you can't anymore. This can be improved with auras pretty much infinitely.
Potions are essentially a magic system. They should be able to affect every system in the game like with shatterloop magic, though hopefully the systems are way way way more limited (getting more complicated by the post unfortunately).
Potions can:
Restore health or mana.
Affect stuff in the world or enemies if flung.
Affect you in various ways if drank.
Affect items if poured over them.
Effects can be temporary or can grant permanent "Auras" - there's a shop service to turn auras back into potions for a fee, and loot can potentially come pre-aurized.
Potions don't require mana to use, they're essentially free.
Potionmaking
Potions can be made from ingredients which are themselves loot or buyable. All the different effects are distributed across ingredient items the way shatterloop does it. Like gems, regions have different percentages of the different items, affecting loot chance and buyable price. Some just can't be found in a region at all, though there's a decent spread given the large variety.
The names should be handcrafted to avoid duplicates.
Potions can be made anywhere with no limits, no discovery, and should be very easy to do given the phone friendly nature of the game.
Potion magnitudes and duration when created (if not auras) goes up as you level and can't be affected by other systems -- not that kind of game. Similarly their utility should scale as loot and buyables by how far from your starting region you are.
Junk is just straight junk -- can be sold for money. Probably a large variety of names, with some amusing ones (like refined uranium) thrown in for flavor. Amusing ones should be worth more and rarer.
I want to add some lite lore that's obtainable at colleges in a wiki-like unlock what you're interested in (with gold) way. There should be one college per region. Totally homogeneous and lore is shared everywhere.
The basic gist of it is that this is a "garbage dimension" for shatterloop where all lost or atomized items go. This should tie into shatterloop lore in some way as well - would explain the atomization/de-atomization mechanic more and also why the element system matches.
Humans can't live here, instead it's populated by automatons and magical constructs (including you) that kinda coalesce from the chaos and take on forms that are usually pretty short-lived. The enemies and your tech should reflect that.
The dimension also collects garbage from other garbage dimensions, which is why you get stuff like refined uranium or even explicit items from shatterloop (like strange loop blocks) that serve no purpose here.
You're kinda stuck here because you're made of the stuff here, so there's no real story to it. Just lots of grinding and hopefully fun. However there might be a convoluted way to escape to greener pastures if you research the lore enough and do some absurd and difficult series of steps.
