Update #8 - final version

I think I'm done with what will be considered as final version of my submission for jam. This last update was focused on making game more playable (mostly balancing), and applying several tweaks and improvements.

Major changes for balancing:

• Enemies stats were reviewed. Melee impact enemies were changed the most, as they are least dangerous, due to delay between attack preparation and actual attack. To compensate this at least somehow, I've made impact of actual attack more damaging for player.
• Energy cost was reduced to be closer to how much player would spend on killing enemy (without upgrades). This should make energy more scarce, at least early in the game.
• Upgrades are now more expensive in cost, the more upgrades you already have, first upgrade being free. I hope this will add some depth in process of deciding which upgrade should be next.
• Six upgrades are now randomly split between two workshops and start room. This will allow player to obtain first random upgrade for free from the very beginning.
• Enemy distribution system was improved. Now each partial pattern for enemy placement has "cost" depending on how dangerous enemies it contains, and each room has assigned cost to it. Hence, it should be no longer possible to get room with only few patterns with weak enemies, or room full of patterns with strong enemies, as patterns with stronger enemies cost more. Rooms still have different cost, but general cost is also balanced, so it is impossible to get game only with low cost rooms, or only with high cost rooms.
• To make things more interesting, keys will appear in rooms with higher general cost.
• Reinforcement was rebalanced. Instead of setting all stats depending on reinforcement level, each of 3 reinforcement levels now do individual impact on enemies: first level increases health, second - improves harm dealt to player by enemy, third - increases maneuverability of enemy. I've specifically made enemies to get more quick or agile only on third level, to avoid key rooms being overly hard (key rooms start on level 2 reinforcement).

Other improvements include exit room being harder to find, energy cost numbers on upgrades increased, and, most noticably, sounds and music. Most of sounds were generated by tool called Bfxr, but music and few sounds were taken from free assets in Assets Store (listed in main menu of game).

In general, I don't think this is perfect result, but as for game made in barely 2 weekends and my spare evening time in a week, I'm fairly satisfied. This prototype will at least allow me to figure out, if main game idea deserves to live, before I start working on actual game.

Few thoughts from game development:

• Balancing is hard. Sometimes good approach would be to use some calculations. E.g. I've used Excel with few formulas to calculate how much health enemy should have, depending on how much hits it should take to kill it with weapon of certain damage.
• Now I see why most roguelikes do damage of melee monsters by contact, not by visual attacks - it's really hard to balance attack timings of enemy, that is slower than player. Maybe in actual game I will change my melee enemies to deal damage on contact.
• I was surprised how much seemingly small and unnecessary things may imrpove perception of the game. Like, without minimap, it was close to impossible to navigate, and moving between rooms without actual camera animation is percieved in much worse way.
• Same to previous points, sounds really add to perception of what's going on in the game. Sound effect improves your understanding of event happening. I was not thinking about sounds until today, but I'm really glad I've added those.

That's it! Version will be uploaded in few minutes after I publish this post. As long as there will be no major bugs detected, this should be last version. Wish me luck! And good luck to other participants of jam!