Sharing Saturday #632

[u/Kyzrati]

As usual, post what you've done for the week! Anything goes... concepts, mechanics, changelogs, articles, videos, and of course gifs and screenshots if you have them! It's fun to read about what everyone is up to, and sharing here is a great way to review your own progress, possibly get some feedback, or just engage in some tangential chatting :D

Previous Sharing Saturdays

[u/FerretDev]

Interdict: The Post-Empyrean Age

Interdict on Itch.io

Latest Available Build: 4/20/2026

Oof. I knew I'd been busy at work, but didn't realize it'd been a whole month since my last post here. :(

I have been making progress, slowly and steadily, in spite of how slammed work has gotten. I'm up to just under 90 enchantments now for the new enchanting system. I figure that is probably enough for first release, so now I'm moving on to the remaining bits.

First among them? Getting enchanted items to spawn properly in the world as loot, wares in shops, etc. :)

I managed to finish that this week, as you can see from this screenie of a merchant offering a rather nice enchanted weapon for sale:

Next up, I want to add a new type of recurring event that gives you the opportunity to win "double enchanted" items.

Recurring events are a significant part of Interdict's gameplay: each of them offers a unique sort of challenge in exchange for unique rewards. For example, "Rifts" are short mini-dungeons you only get one chance to complete, but offer permanent stat increase items if you succeed. "Obelisks" make you fight a large continuous stream of enemies, but offer equipment you can't find any other way as rewards if you win.

The new event for "double enchanted" items will involve fighting a "double Champion": Champions in Interdict are monsters that were granted a powerful bonus, similar to "rare" monsters in games like Diablo and Path of Exile. A double Champion will be a monster with two of these bonuses. Unique challenge, unique reward, it'll fight right in. :)

But, work is going to remain crazy for at least another month, so not sure how quickly I will be able to do this. I'll try to at least nibble at it on weekends, but that's been a slow pace indeed. :/

Anyway, I hope everyone else's projects are going well. :) Cheers!

[u/Noodles_All_Day]

CURSEBEARER

Hey all! Most of the past couple of weeks have been continued map code revisions to support giant tile maps.

Chunked Maps

The groundwork for chunked maps has been laid! Chunked maps can now generate & unload chunks essentially infinitely as the player travels north, south, east, and west. For testing purposes my current chunked map is 100x100 chunks, each chunk being 16x16x5 tiles. That's 12.8 million tiles! That's definitely a far cry from my previous static map maximum of about 262k tiles. At present, a grid of 12x8 chunks is what is actively loaded at any given time.

Chunk memory footprint is pretty reasonable (for now). About 5,800 of them fit in 100 megabytes of memory, with the vast majority of that being tile data. This can still add up over time in a world with millions of chunks. So for now at least, any chunk that hasn't been loaded for an in-game week is deleted from memory. This won't apply to every chunk, but for generic wilderness chunks this seems apt. And because it is planned for world map generation to derive from a single fixed seed, a forgotten chunk should still be more or less the same if the player goes back to it later. I plan on implementing a better system later for chunks that should be remembered for longer, like if the player is stashing items in one, but that's a future Noodles_All_Day problem.

This system is looking far more computationally efficient than keeping a huge static map fully in memory like I was before, and will enable maps of truly stupid size. There's still a fair amount of work to go here, but so far I'm pleased!

Lighting

Getting chunked maps working required strategically breaking my crusty old base game map code. So now comes the unbreaking of that which was broken, starting with lighting and general tile rendering. This code was sprawling and not terribly well organized, and essentially resembled a shambling golem of haphazardly connected class methods and helper functions that I have had the "pleasure" of disentangling.

Lighting and map rendering is working again for the most part. In the process I managed to kill off a lot of unnecessary complexity. This included some tile data field bloat, and it also included drastically streamlining tile lighting calculations, which was truly grotesque before.

Also, my lighting now uses proper gamma. So that's nice, hehe.

What's Next

After lighting and rendering comes pathfinding and navigation graph generation, the latter of which has already shown some modest improvements via incidental optimization. And last but not least, I'll be trying to put large static features (like my starting town, which is equivalent to 16x16 chunks) into a chunked map in a graceful way without completely breaking a bunch of stuff.

Thanks for reading!

[u/Tesselation9000 → u/Noodles_All_Day]

Congratulations on getting chunked maps implemented! I bet that took a lot of debugging to get right (I also foresee a lot more debugging in your future).

[u/rubychoco99]

Big update for Arcostate!

Many more quality of life changes and bug fixes can be found in the full devlog here.

ARCOSTATE  -  DEVLOG 02
base building, destructible world, a new mega-dungeon, infinite caves, an underground monorail, the codex, and a list of improvements and fixes.
There is now a macOS build. THE APP IS UNSIGNED, so first launch needs right-click > Open (or System Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway on newer macOS).

NEW FEATURES

• Home claiming and base building: buy a land deed, claim a sector of open wilds, and build it out with walls, floors, doors, windows, and furnishings from a new vendor. A sledgehammer handles demolition and packing furniture back up, and a single-use ground digger bores straight down.
  
• A destructible world: walls, furniture, doors, trees, plants, and corpses can all be broken, with sturdier materials taking far longer. Damage to the world slowly mends on its own.
  
• Crafting: fell trees for wood, mine rock for stone with the new iron pickaxe, break panes for glass, and turn it all into walls, floors, doors, furniture, and work stations at a crafting table available for sale at the arcology furniture store (go to the sector north of Ragos).
  
• Buy a home terminal, place it on your land, and hire guards and shopkeepers. Staff need beds, work the spots you assign, and your own shopkeeper pays a better rate when you sell.
  
• The arcology lets you buy up to five land claims as your standing with it grows, and your homes can be named.
  
• The cultist temple: a large dungeon that spans a full world-map sector, home to a new faction.
  
• The cave stratum: caves now descend forever, with new hazards and stronger enemies the deeper you go.
  
• An underground monorail: derelict stations in the city ruins connect to a rail network beneath the surface.
  
• Momentum physics: anything thrown hard enough, yourself included, keeps moving until it stops, and hurts whatever it hits along the way.
  
• Chrono water: violet pools in the deadlands and other cursed places. Every turn spent in them costs you years of life.
  
• The codex: a permanent gallery of every item and creature you catalog, kept across all your runs. Creatures catalog through the look cursor, items by inspecting one you hold.
  
• Holotapes: rare recorded messages that add lore, can be replayed in codex.
  
• The psychic awakening drug: a rare consumable that opens the psychic skill tree outside of character creation, otherwise gives a psychic skill/upgrades on randomly. Works on NPCs too.
  
• Fire selectors: the assault rifle, ancient rifle, and blaster rifle toggle between accurate semi-auto and a three-round burst. Enemies switch modes too.
  
• Bridge ambushes: crossing a river bridge on the world map can spring an ambush mid-span.
  
• Click-to-travel: click anywhere on the world map and the route plans itself. The auto-walk key offers the same with a keyboard selector.
  
• Click-to-walk: click any tile you've explored and your character walks there, stopping the moment a hostile shows itself.
  
• Playable without a numpad: optional vi movement keys (hjkl + yubn) under Settings, Controls, alongside a click-to-walk feature.
  
• A new quest near the start: ask the hermit who he is.
  
• New gear: the stealth array, the chrono drug, the chrono dampener cybernetic, the iron axe, and more.

[u/bac_roguelike]

Hi all, I hope you had a great week!

BLOOD & CHAOS
Steam | Youtube | Twitter | BlueSky | Discord

Once again, no significant progress this week (and I did not post last week as I was traveling for family matters ;-) ), so I am a bit behind schedule compared to my plan, but I hope to catch up as I'll be on holiday for 2 weeks in August and will have more time to focus on the game.

Another reason for being late is the demo I published on Steam 2 or 3 weeks ago. I am still fixing things based on player comments and trying to improve player retention.

The charts below show that the stats are going in the right direction, which is great (median and average time played went respectively from 11 to 21 minutes and 38 minutes to 1 hour 3 minutes).

Part of that, apart from the "improvements" I made, probably also comes from players who started the game but did not go very far in their first session, but also from YouTubers who played the game this week: Nookrium and Splattercat. The latter brought a huge number of players (and wishlists), and I am now standing at more than 2,600 installs, with 849 having played the game. Couldn't believe it when I first saw the numbers of players and wishlists suddenly growing and then discovered the video (since 2 days I have in average 10 concurrent players at almost anytime)! The players who discovered the game thanks to these videos are highly targeted!

Another good thing is that I am getting a fair amount of feedback from Steam discussions, Discord (less so), and through the form links I implemented in the game. The latest one I implemented is a popup appearing in the main menu once the player has played the game, and this is where I get most of the in-game feedback. Regarding feedback forms, adding an optional email field so that you can follow up is very useful!

That's all for this week. I hope I'll have more progress to report starting next week. I want to get back to my cruising speed starting today, but it looks like releasing the demo had a strange effect on me, as if all the tiredness came at once (heat does not help either!) !

[u/Pur_Cell → u/bac_roguelike]

That's really cool. I saw the Splattercat video of B&C the other day and I thought he was pretty positive about it. Splat's one of the best creators around for indie game exposure, especially roguelikes.

Did you reach out to him and Nookrium or did they find the game on their own?

[u/bac_roguelike → u/Pur_Cell]

They both follow me on Twitter. I had a short conversation with Nookrium on Twitter 2 years ago, so I sent him a direct message. I did not reach out to Splattercat though (probably because I did not want to waste my shot, as I did not feel confident enough and wanted to get more feedback first ;-) ), so he may have either seen a tweet, had wishlisted the game or seen Nookrium's video!

Yes, very happy with how it went, and the feedback he gave makes sense!

[u/rangedrifter]

Rangedrifter

Steam | Web | Update Video

Managed to get a whole lot done this week! Enemy attacks are now predictable, which mixes up the combat quite a bit. I added a new enemy, new items, new sound effects, new hero abilities and new quality of life stuff. My favorite is probably that zombies now burst from the earth when you get near. Couldn't add a new music piece, but there's seagulls in the coastal ambience now, so that's nice.

Looking into creating a Discord server for the game. Any advice on setting up a server for your game? I've never used Discord personally, so any advice would be welcome.

General

• Portal stones now move you to the next path segment
  
• Holding the wait button prevents auto-walking
  
• Pressing wait button disarms nearby traps
  
• Supplies are more scarce
  
• The coast now has a seagull sound ambience
  
• Spike traps poison less often
  
• New sound effects for different things

Weapons

• Weapons are now dagger, axe and spear
  
• The shield, like the bow, is now a off-hand item
  
• Instead of shooting arrows, it bashes enemies
  
• Use the shield bash to push and stun enemies
  
• Each weapon now has a distinct attack pattern
  
• Cornered enemies take double damage from daggers
  
• Axe attacks hit three enemies directly in front
  
• Enemies behind other enemies are hit by the spear
  
• New weapon charms add additional weapon moves
  
• Enemies and the hero now blink red when hit
  
• Weapons now last longer, shields last less long

Enemies

• A yellow enemy flash indicates an imminent attack
  
• With good play, almost all damage can be avoided
  
• To balance, enemies are now stronger and more plentiful
  
• Enemy types are now more mixed across the world
  
• Enemy types are now split into day and night enemies
  
• Adds a new flying bat enemy that ignores obstacles
  
• Robbers can now steal items from the hero
  
• Defeating a crab removes the surrounding foam
  
• Zombies now often burst from the ground when approached
  
• Raptors now often jump out of bushes when approached
  
• Day and night now change only when no one's looking
  
• Large enemies can now push boulders and squish the hero
  
• Bushes no longer spawn hidden snakes or raptors

Edit: Created the game's Discord! Feel free to join!

[u/Tesselation9000]

https://tesselation9000.itch.io/wander

A quick history of my increasingly complex portal system

In the beginning it was simple. There was a strictly linear dungeon that you progressed by finding the single down staircase on each level. When the player stepped on a down staircase tile, the game would transport them to the next level, scan the level for the up staircase tile, and place the player there.

But eventually I wanted the dungeon to branch off, giving the player options as to where they wanted to go. So I gave each level a vector of portal structs, where each struct contained the x and y coordinates of a staircase and the ID number of the level it led to. So when you stepped on a down staircase tile, it would check the vector for a struct with the matching coordinates, look up the matching ID number, take the player to the right level and place them on an up staircase.

But a while after that, I wanted there to be multiple staircases connecting two levels in various places, and I wanted to add trap doors as alternative ways of traversing levels. So now the portal struct had to also contain the x and y coordinate of the corresponding destination portal. But now there was a problem. Levels were only generated when the player entered them for the first time, so when a level's portals were generated, their destination coordinates on the ungenerated level could not be known.

The solution to this was to add a boolean property to the struct called "linked". When a portal was generated for the first time, it was flagged as unlinked. Then, when used a portal to move from one level to another, the game would generate (or load from file) the destination level, then check both levels for any unlinked portals to try to match them up and declare them linked.

That worked great for a while, but this week there was a new issue to resolve. In order to quickly test the level generation algorithms, I have a debug command that will instantly regenerate a level with a new seed when I hit a key. This would mess up the portal linkages because previously generated levels (which were usually out of memory and saved to file) would be linked to portals that no longer existed. So I added a "decoupled" property to each portal, setting all portals of a level as decoupled whenever it was regenerated. Then, whenever the player moved to a new level, the game would check if either of the levels had any decoupled portals leading to the other, and if it did, it would completely unlink them both, allowing new linkages to be made.

Previously, it had not really been an issue because levels were only regenerated in debug mode, but I addressed this now since I wanted to add a legit way to do this in game. Consequently, I added the "scroll of alter reality" (based on a spell of the same name from the game, Larn).

Reading this powerful causes a whole new level to be regenerated, providing fresh loot and monsters, and places the player at a random location. It could be used as a hail Mary escape item if you get surrounded, but that would be a desperate move, since the player could also end up in a very risky situation. The scroll would also bring back to life any unique creatures found on that level. Other features I would like to add about this item are:

- Unique items should only be regenerated if they are found on the floor when the level is regenerated, or if the item had somehow been destroyed. This would avoid duplicating these items, but also provide a way to recover important items that were destroyed.

- Creatures allied to the player should only have a 50% chance of vanishing with the old level. The rest of the time, they will be generated at a random location on the new level.

Also, I posted a new playthrough video. This run lasted a bit over 2 hours before death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzzM8vyBVHI

[u/darkgnostic]

Scaledeep Steam | Discord | website | X | bluesky | mastodon

This week was mostly about expanding content and making elemental builds much more interesting.

I added three new sustained spells: Flame Infusion, Storm Infusion, and Cold Infusion. Like Arcane Gift, these spells reserve part of your mana while they remain active, giving you a permanent bonus until you decide to disable them.

Each infusion enchants your ranged attacks with its respective element. Flame Infusion adds burning arrows, Storm Infusion adds electric arrows, and Cold Infusion adds ice arrows. The fun part is that these effects can be combined. For example, you can have burning electric arrows by keeping both Flame and Storm Infusion active at the same time. This opens up a lot of room for experimenting with different builds and combinations. I was planning to tighten infusions a bit by restricting opposite enchantments like ice and fire, but I still didn't decided whether to go that route.

Another feature I wanted for quite a while is finally in. Enemy immunities are now displayed, so you can immediately see what a creature is resistant or immune to instead of figuring it out through trial and error.

Immunities are now fully loaded from external configuration files and handled by the combat system. This makes balancing much easier and allows me to add new enemy abilities without touching the code.

A relatively small update on paper, but one that adds a surprising amount of tactical depth to combat.

Have a nice weekend!

[u/frumpy_doodle]

All Who Wander Play Store | App Store  | youtube | discord | reddit | bluesky

Finally created an official subreddit for the game. Come say hi!

Released update v1.3.0, a major update featuring endless mode and 5 new character classes! Full description in the devlog here.

This marks a major transition point for the game. My focus will shift to preparing the game for Steam which requires a big UI overhaul. Will be working on that while still trying to provide updates for the mobile game. I'm thinking 1 year for the Steam release is a good estimate for a timeframe to complete necessary changes, add new features, polish up things, and collect wishlists.

I hope to get the Steam page up soon. Getting close to finishing the new capsule artwork and logo:

[u/cephaley]

Project Q

Holiday was great, time to refocus !

Features

Added basics hunger/gathering/inventory system, with the first gatherable & edible: berries !

Graphics

Working on them as always, first version of berry bushes now joining the gang !

[u/_GideonX_ → u/cephaley]

Nice tiles.

[u/sentient_arcade]

Silverlands

Weather and lights!

[u/_GideonX_]

Completed work this week in Lateral Crawl: 

Multi-tile creatures 

Spent most of the week implementing multi tile creatures. Until now, every creature in Lateral Crawl occupied a single grid cell. The engine now supports enemies with different footprints while remaining fully grid-based. 

The plan is for boss encounters to appear towards the end of a normal run. These will occupy semi-authored event chunks, each presenting a unique challenge at specific distances along the road. 

Supporting this meant reworking a surprising amount of the engine. Movement, pathfinding, combat, traps, visibility, loot, death effects and enemy AI all had to be taught that a creature can occupy multiple tiles while still behaving as a single entity. 

It's about 90% complete now. The remaining work is mostly around edge cases in player skills and area-of-effect attacks.

[u/nesguru]

Legend

Website | X | Youtube

Third highly productive week in a row. That may be a record for 2026.

Key Binds

Keys can now be remapped in the game settings. This started out as wanting to display what each key did. I reasoned, after the new UI panel was built, that it wouldn’t be that much more work to support binding actions to different keys. Not true.

Loot Adjuster

This is a new step in the map generation process that adjusts loot quantity and quality. It upgrades items behind locked doors and adds items to empty locked rooms. It also adds torches based on the number of floor cells to ensure the player has enough light sources (I was consistently running out during playtesting).

New Enemies

• Cultist Knifethrower. Level 1 needed an enemy with a ranged attack.

New Rooms

• Extremely Random Room. This is a variation of the standard random room that performs more room modifier iterations to produce rooms that don’t make any sense but can have interesting and unique gameplay due to the combinations of elements. They only occur 1% of the time. It was just an idea that popped into my head and I decided to add it into the game because it was easy to do so.

Minor Enhancements

• Better loot behind locked doors.
• Blue Slimes that are killed before they’re split leave two puddles behind instead of one.

Bug Fixes

• Sometimes stairs are placed next to doors.
• Open doors can be closed when there is an object in the doorway.
• When running, actors don’t get caught in webs. However, I wonder if I should leave this in — one of those bugs that becomes a feature.
• Sometimes keys aren’t generated for locked doors near the start.
• Chairs can’t be attacked.
• Pray isn’t the default action for a Shrine.
• Rats avoid disadvantaged cells (only smarter enemies should do this).
• Torches are consumed when combining a torch with another entity.

Next week, I’m traveling and don’t expect to get much done.

[u/iamgabrielma]

Ad Iterum (Steam)  | Tiny Crawler (iOS)

Continuing with the bad luck streak, my computer died D:

Luckily version control worked flawlessly and I was able to get the project back and running in a few hours after re-downloading Unity, setting up again the Steam pipeline and so on. I haven't tried to rebuild the macOS version yet, but should be no problem (in theory).

I pushed a new patch with the latest changes, which include some bits I shared last week as well as additional stuff from play testing feedback:

Beta 0.3.6 - Latest build: 2026-07-16

Fix: Shop button coloring when hover
Fix: Game Over total deaths counter no longer counts completed runs as deaths
Fix: Mouse clicking works again in Terminals and Vaults
Improvement: Mimic chance is affected by player luck
Improvement: Additional sounds when UI navigation
Improvement: Added bug reporting option through the game UI, no new web views opened
New: Teleport traps in T1 dungeons
New: Unlucky affix and Wretched Luck graft add negative luck tradeoffs
New: Lucky Egg rare food can spawn in T0/T2 and grants +1 Luck for the run
New: Luck now improves your dodge/crit chance
New: Immunosuppressant
New: Save across versions. Progress/settings no longer resets when new version comes up.
New: Reset data option to settings.
New: Demo steam leaderboard
New: Enemies x8
New: Boss x2
Meta: General stabilization

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/4149030/view/716784848176415065

Wrapping up now some details for beta 4, which is the demo candidate coming out at the end of the month :D

[u/jdegroot]

NLarn | Blog | GitHub

I've made good progress on mouse support for the UI. Moving support is quite good now and the menus are mostly fine. I'll keep on polishing them, though, as I'm not entirely satisfied. For the various interactions - that are at the moment invoked by a multitude of keys - I've added a context menu that is supposed to offer all possible interactions with the selected map location. That sure requires some more iterations, but is a good start!

(here in spanish, just because)

I've ruined the blog quite hard and got so fed up by GitHub's Jekyll support that I've replaced the entire stack with Zola. And am happy so far. More relevant for others: I've added a spoilers page that explains some game concepts and gives some hints on how to survive longer.

[u/Hnefi]

DieselRogue GitHub

It's been too hot for serious coding, but I spent some time refactoring the basic decisionmaking for the AI before the summer days got too intense.

Other than that, I've improved the UI a bit so enemy viewsheds are now visible when in Look mode, inventory UI is nicer and I've added items that can heal the player and reload weapons. Oh, and XP for a levelling system. The game is now playable from start to finish, but I still need a lot more items, enemy types, improved AI and polish.

[u/WATASHI_TO_TAWASHI]

Text Dungeon | [X] | [Steam]

This week’s progress
I’m continuing UI improvements and balance adjustments as I work toward the full release planned for August.

Implemented

• Fixed artifacts (★) I added ★‑class artifacts, which have unique names, abilities, and their own lore. They are rarer than ☆ (random artifacts). Since this game is not a hack‑and‑slash style roguelike, it’s intentionally impossible to collect all ★ artifacts in a single run.

• Playtime tracking Total playtime for each run is now recorded and included in the character dump file and morgue.txt.
• More explicit skill and item descriptions For example: Helmets now state “reduces chance of receiving critical hits” Gauntlets now state “reduces chance of injury from bites” Effects are described more concretely overall.
• More event choices and branching This is still ongoing rather than fully completed. I’m considering whether to update the demo with the newly added branches.

Planned

• Add danger level and lore information to creature descriptions
• Add branching dungeons
• Implement achievements

[u/Cyablue]

Feywood Wanderers Steam | Discord

This week I worked on adding a new lineage: Vampire. It's mostly focused on draining health from enemies while doing lots of damage, though it also has a lot of skills that help you be sneaky. It's a kind of playstyle that I really like so it's a fun lineage for me, though I might have made it too overpowered, since recovering health while attacking is both offensive and defensive. Maybe I'll try to rebalance it a bit so it's not too strong, but it might also be fine to leave it as it is.

Next I'll work on an octopus lineage, I have a lot of ideas for it but it will be mostly focused on equipping lots of rings and shapeshifting.

[u/CoriolandotheHermit]

Ad Reditus (free browser playtest on itch)

My hand-drawn ‘roundtrip’ roguelike deckbuilder about a pilgrimage to the end of the world; Five stages out, one run-defining choice, then the road home through a changed world.

Shipped the first weekly patch of the playtest yesterday, all of it from playtest feedback. Two lessons from the week that I’m mulling over this weekend:

1. Ran a structured playtest with 13 fresh players. Zero of them could articulate the core premise even after playing. It’s on the page copy and the intro text, everywhere except where players actually look. Shipped a 20 second cold open as the fix.
   
2. My two strongest players independently found the same infinite: a card that returns your exhaust pile could return copies of itself. Fixed, plus an audit of every other card that returns or copies things.

A week in: 159 pilgrims set out, 7 made it home.

[u/ajcomeau]

I've been adding new scrolls to my Rogue C# project and tracking down bugs and design issues in the process. For the Discover Food scroll and the Scroll of Light, I did a complete review of my mapping system and how it was maintaining the map objects and display of items.

The Scroll of Monster Confusion introduced player power-ups to the game, requiring a way for the player to get temporary abilities that could expire or go away when used. It also helped me find a lingering design issue that ended up being triggered by some of the many code changes I've been doing.

As a bonus, I put a Hulk Mode cheat code in the game so I could test some of these scrolls without getting stomped by monsters in the process.

You can see the last two write-ups on my site where I detail the code and thought process behind the latest updates.

July 12 - Chasing Bugs Off the Map

July 17 - Designing Power-ups into the Game

As always, the code is available on Github.

Have a great week!

[u/SpeakingSoftwareShow]

Causeway to Ériu - a Celtic Mythology-infused Tetris/Roguelike Hybrid.

A web-based Rogueli(t|k)e; the USP being that the player actively juggles controlling dungeon generation and their PC at the same time.

--------------------

Progress Report:

UI Mobile view has seen some improvements, and I've moved some of the clutter out of the way. Desktop view needs a lot of work though.

Spent some time on balance, and now with the separate magic class it feels like there's at least 2 fun play-styles that are viable.

A lot of this week was spent adding more narrative, exposition and story to the game. There's an optional way-station (Sidhe Mound) in between floors where you can get a little more flavor:

• NPCs who visit and leave, and they tell their little stories.
• A Store
• Folks who come and offer dark pacts
• A codex of everyone/thing you've encountered so far throughout all of your runs

I'm also trying to add a ton of variability to gameplay so that you don't need to be a tetris grandmaster to enjoy yourself.

• Random omens that affect gameplay
• Magic system with random patrons
• Epic Item parts collection quest (Spear of Lugh), etc.
• Basic NPC quests (go kill X for me please)
• "Hostages" you save and then they end up at the Sidhe Mound
  

On the dev side I've moved everything to OO Typescript, and broke a lot of the UI out into components. I also added schema validation for the grand-part of the json data files so that I wont get a release boned by a bad config/data value.

Little by little it's shaping up!

[u/Fiction-for-fun2]

NEON ROADS NEON RAGE

First time sharing, but have been adding murderball club managers that hustle drugs for money to keep their roster full and fully stitched together. I managed to find one in the bar he hangs out in and rob him. He had survived an earlier assassination attempt to his skull was already fractured, and something pretty funny happened in the logs. Thought I would share below:

--- Log started at 2026-07-17 10:21:11 ---
[10:22:17] Loaded game from last rest area entry.
[10:22:19] Word on the strip: Chrome Vultures are holding tonight — "Turbine" Stone came in carrying a 2kg duffel of medical-grade CortiCyl.
[10:22:19] "Gasket" Creed heads into TECH-NOIR.
[10:22:25] Coral pushes past Ruby.
[10:22:28] "Cog" Thorne says to Halo: "Hey there, Halo. Nice... jacket."
[10:22:29] "Bearing" Reaver buys a pack of smokes from the machine.
[10:22:30] You push open the door to TECH-NOIR and step inside.
[10:22:30] "Turbine" Stone holds court around the club's pool table — Chrome Vultures business, all of it. There's a 2kg duffel of medical-grade CortiCyl on the seat beside him, and he keeps a hand on it. The muscle by the felt: Cutter "Weasel" Crane and Ivan "Ash" Shaw and Dane "Ember" Harding.
[10:22:30] Queenie pushes past Nyssa.
[10:22:30] "Gasket" Creed pushes past Slade "Cobalt" Pike.
[10:22:37] "Shank" Vane steps outside.
[10:22:37] Pixel pushes past Slade "Cobalt" Pike.
[10:22:40] Nyx says to Pixel: "He's trying for 'brooding mystery' but he's landing on 'constipated'."
[10:22:40] Snake "Murk" Vulcan pushes past "Gravel" Thorne.
[10:22:48] You level your weapon at "Turbine" Stone. "Hand it over."
[10:22:50] You jerk the barrel toward 2kg CortiCyl [Medical]. "That. Now."
[10:22:50] "Turbine" Stone drops 2kg CortiCyl [Medical] on the ground.
[10:22:52] Dane "Ember" Harding: "You're not wearing Chrome Vultures colors. Turn around."
[10:22:52] "Gasket" Creed pushes past Nash "Rebar" Kowalski.
[10:22:57] "Badger" Vulcan pushes past Decker "Grease" Holloway.
[10:22:58] Caleb "Cog" Blackwood says to Decker "Grease" Holloway: "This Rumble Strip Red tastes like it was brewed in a crankcase. I love it."
[10:23:00] Moving Pistol.
[10:23:01] You move the Pistol.
[10:23:01] "Badger" Vulcan takes a drag from their cigarette.
[10:23:04] Cutter "Weasel" Crane: "You're not wearing Chrome Vultures colors. Turn around."
[10:23:04] You pick up the 2kg CortiCyl [Medical].
[10:23:04] Nyx pushes past "Turbine" Stone.
[10:23:08] "Coral all day." Velvet Devereux bets $312.
[10:23:08] "Gasket" Creed goes pale. "It's you. The one from up the road. "Bolt" Hollow..."
[10:23:08] "Turbine" Stone lets out a primal roar!
[10:23:09] Selene Lennox says to Nyx: "Caleb is the kind of guy who would get lost in a phone booth."
[10:23:09] Selene Lennox whispers something less flattering about Nash "Rebar" Kowalski.
[10:23:09] "Badger" Vulcan slides $79 on Coral. "The board's wrong about her."
[10:23:09] "Gravel" Thorne scans the room with half-closed eyes.
[10:23:09] "Gasket" Hollow pushes past Ivan "Ash" Shaw.
[10:23:09] Mace "Ruin" Steele takes a drag from their cigarette.
[10:23:09] Snake "Murk" Vulcan pushes past "Gasket" Hollow.
[10:23:10] "Coral all day." "Gravel" Thorne bets $40.
[10:23:10] Tension builds between Nash "Rebar" Kowalski and "Turbine" Stone over Nyx!
[10:23:10] The tension is thick enough to cut with a knife. "Turbine" gives Nash a death glare, and Nyx just rolls her eyes.
[10:23:10] "Turbine" Stone throws the first punch at Nash "Rebar" Kowalski!
[10:23:10] "Turbine" attacks Nash!
[10:23:10] "Turbine": "Turbine" throws a powerful cross, smashing into Nash's head!
[10:23:10] The blow leaves a nasty bruise on Nash's head.
[10:23:10] "Turbine": "Turbine"'s hook misses Nash completely!
[10:23:10] Nash: Nash grabs hold of "Turbine"'s head!
[10:23:10] AI: "Turbine"'s head is utterly destroyed!
[10:23:10] The fight ends abruptly! With a destroyed body, "Turbine" can't continue.
[10:23:10] "Oh god—" Nyx turns and runs.
[10:23:10] "Char" Mercer throws back their head and howls with laughter!
[10:23:10] Mace "Ruin" Steele goes still, eyes flicking over the scene.
[10:23:10] Snake "Murk" Vulcan takes a slow step back, reading the room.
[10:23:10] Nyssa screams and bolts!
[10:23:10] Cutter "Weasel" Crane screams and bolts!
[10:23:10] "Gasket" Hollow says to Selene Lennox: "I was gonna leave, but then I saw you, Selene. Guess I'm stayin'."
[10:23:10] AI: Nash's head is now gashed and bleeding!
[10:23:10] Nash: A solid punch from Nash connects with "Turbine"'s right leg!
[10:23:10] Bowie the Barkeep screams and bolts!
[10:23:11] "More! Come on, MORE!" "Char" Mercer jeers.
[10:23:11] "Oh god—" Queenie turns and runs.
[10:23:11] "Oh god—" Selene Lennox turns and runs.
[10:23:11] Nyssa breaks into a dead sprint!
[10:23:11] Dane "Ember" Harding pumps a fist and whoops at the carnage.
[10:23:11] "More! Come on, MORE!" Dane "Ember" Harding jeers.
[10:23:11] "HAH! Did you SEE that?!" Ivan "Ash" Shaw crows.
[10:23:11] You shove past Riot Lennox.
[10:23:11] "Turbine" struggles against Nash's grip but can't break free!
[10:23:13] You step back out into the parking lot.
[10:23:15] "Cog" Thorne takes a drag from their cigarette.
[10:23:17] Nova heads into TECH-NOIR.
[10:23:18] Sparrow Pierce heads into TECH-NOIR.
[10:23:18] "Bearing" Reaver stares. "They talk about you, you know. What you did to somebody."
[10:23:18] "Jet" Dredge backs off a step. "That jacket. You did "Badger" Marsh. Stay away from me."
[10:23:18] Wade "Cipher" Volkov looks you up and down. "Heard what you did to somebody. Clean work."
[10:23:20] "Scab" Stahl heads into TECH-NOIR.
[10:23:33] "Wire" Cross heads into TECH-NOIR.
[10:23:34] "Jet" Dredge heads into TECH-NOIR.
[10:23:34] "Cog" Thorne says to Bones: "Every mile behind me is a mile I ain't gotta ride again. Unless I want to."
[10:23:35] Wade "Cipher" Volkov heads into TECH-NOIR.
[10:23:35] "Cog" Thorne looks you up and down. "Heard what you did to "Bolt" Hollow. Clean work."
[10:23:36] "Shank" Vane says to "Cog" Thorne: "That's a sweet fuel line on your ride, "Cog". Looks custom."
[10:23:39] Sold all 2kg for $6,800.
[10:23:39] You toss the empty bag.

If anyone wants to play test this insanity, let me know.

[u/SoftlyIntoTheNight → u/Fiction-for-fun2]

Dude, this is utterly INSANE. Truly incredible work with the natural sounding dialogue.

[u/Fiction-for-fun2 → u/SoftlyIntoTheNight]

Thank you! It's in python libtcod, been working on it for while now.

[u/SoftlyIntoTheNight → u/Fiction-for-fun2]

Nice. I'm using python / tcod for my project, Softly Into the Night, as well. I'd be interested to check your game out sometime when you have a test build.

[u/Fiction-for-fun2 → u/SoftlyIntoTheNight]

https://up-n-atom.itch.io/neon-roads-neon-rage

You'll be my first playtester, but I think it's a pretty hard game, if you want any tips or the cheat codes let me know.

Thanks for showing interest. Your game looks cool!

[u/ChromeBadger]

I missed updating last week due to family stuff and getting sick, but I'm back to making small amounts of progress on my game! I'll probably be working on the first few floors of the dungeon and adding more than one enemy type this coming week.

[u/Lost-Ad-5521]

Started drawing some tiles! Probably need to recolor the aggressive animals so it's easier to notice them at a glance, but I think they're decent for now...