Thank you guys.
Sitting down to write a roadmap was a great idea.
Since then I have become much more productive doing whatever possible but not the next thing listed in it.
In fact, both items in the DONE column there were added after I completed them. I'm pretty sure this is not how roadmaps are supposed to work, but it does help regardless.
So, yeah, none of the 7 new items were planned, but that only makes me love them more.
(artwork on the new items aren't final)
Since the EA release I've had more time to do actual game design work and I'm happy to report that the project reacts nicely to injection of new stuff into it. New content makes the game flat out better and doesn't increase complexity all that much.
With this update I started isolating more complex cores into the 2nd Depth (yes, we started calling the 2nd Deep run Depth-2; UI changes to reflect this will come in the next update, see here). Originally, I didn't want to do that because I wanted the entire game to be available to players who'd only play the regular Deep Run (so nothing would be skill-locked).
But with the addition of corrupted nodes, difficulty options, and based on player feedback, there's no reason to pretend that Depth-2 is just a variation on the regular run. It's its own thing, and with a few more touches and some additional unique content and polish, I believe it will serve as an exciting endgame layer that will extend playtime and add to the overall experience.
Speaking of layers. Remember that scene where Shrek talks about layers and onions? I never quite understood what it was about. I still don't. But since then, I have come to like both layers and onions a lot more. Maybe this is part of growing up. I don't know.
Anyway, what I'm leading to here is that from a gameplay meta progression standpoint, the game needs just one more layer to become structurally "complete" (complete here is used in the broadest sense possible).
Let me illustrate this with a scheme.
We released into Early Access with 4 main Bosses. Update EA.0.2 increased this number to 6.
This naturally builds up to the final boss like so:
and for 1.0 release we should most likely aim for something like this:
To be clear, I don't have any of these new bosses implemented, but I'm pretty confident that there's enough room within the design space of the game to allow for 5 more large bosses. And perhaps for a dozen or two regular ones too.
Speaking of games with large design space, Slay the Spire 2 came out to Early Access a month ago and that's a pretty important event for any serious gamer and especially for us poor roguelike developers.
I'm happy to report, in my totally unbiased opinion, that Slay the Spire 2 doesn't make NET.CRAWL irrelevant. But it kinda does show that somehow a lot of the fun and lightheartedness that's present in StS does not appear in NET.CRAWL. I thought about it a lot, then I thought about it some more. Luckily for you, I'm not going to share those thoughts with you here (but I'd be interested to hear yours).
There are 2 StS2 related things that I'd love to share:
I do miss the Giant Head. It was probably my favorite Elite fight in the first game (I was somewhat slow as a kid, maybe that's why). I feel like apart from Watcher that's the only thing I miss from the first game.
And then there's these guys.
I really love Decimillipede as an elite fight, and it wasn't hard to "translate" the concept into NET.CRAWL given that we already have Downtime as a keyword. The power of the meme and Anton's and Alex's talents certainly helped too.
I don't know what mechanism is in play here, but it feels so nice to have these references in the game. It's the same with Netrunner references. I guess, this is how fan fiction works in general. You get additional "response" from activating a whole network of happy memories or whatever.
Anyway, the post is getting long again. I hope you enjoy the update. There are 2 new corrupted aspects that are both quite interesting to play with.
There's also a Max difficulty setting which I don't necessarily recommend for most "normal" people to play on. Transition to the Depth-2 has been tweaked a bit. There are new aspects, new cores and new regular nodes. Not too many, but you will definitely see something new during a run.
And there are some new locations on the map. I don't remember what else. It ultimately doesn't matter. What matters is that the game got at least a little bit better. And it also matters whether you enjoy the new stuff. I'd be happy to hear from you either way.
Thanks for reading.