Setting up

Time for this years' 7 Day rogue-like! In 2024 I was quite successful, my project for 2023 was terribly scoped and a complete failure. This year, I've tried to keep my scope in check while still having room to mess around with new stuff.  Just like the previous two years, I'm creating a web-based game in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

The themes

My 2023 entry was aiming for depth of simulation and a large possibility space. In 2024, I focused on a dynamic, streamlined and swingy combat-focused experience. For this year, I'm planning to have three main pillars:

Small scale

The entire game will take place on a 4x4 grid, and there won't be JRPG-style number creep. You'll deal two points worth of damage, and you'll be happy about it.

Time travel

I work at an Event-Sourcing company (not as a developer, this project doesn't represent the quality of our products), and I thought it would be fun to put that stuff into practice. Since I'm a stubborn guy who wants to figure everything out by himself, I don't use any of our existing code or experience, but I try to write my own event sourcing system in JavaScript based on the theory I picked up at work.

One of the big advantages of event-sourced systems is the possibility to go back and forth in time, so expect this game to do something time travel related.

Physicality

Inspired by Quadrilateral Cowboy, I'd like this game to feel like you're interacting with actual hardware, creating a physicality that traditional rogue-likes usually lack.

A running start

I'm not starting this project from scratch: I've scraped together a library of functions and utilities from earlier projects. I pillaged a CRT monitor simulation from the 2023 entry and expanded it a bit. Last year I didn't get around to implementing a music system and save/load functionality, so I already added those to the project. Input handlers and some very basic logic are already in place, and Dijkstra and Bresenham are ready to go.