Edifice: The Old, Decrepit Version

Don't get too excited, but word on the street is that Edifice might get a release sometime soon. A few individuals have started doing some work to do what I didn't finish and make the game fully playable. Ooooh yeah.

RMN: purveyor of horrible puns since the dawn of RM95. Well, okay, RMN became a not-disgusting and actually usable site only a few years ago, but I'm an #rm2k oldbie, so my memory's a little foggy.

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out the title screen images.)



So! The actual Edifice update. The game now has traps! Well, it always had traps, but now it really has traps, as in they can do stuff to you instead of... well, I've lost you already, so I'll just stop there. The game now has traps.

These traps come in several nasty flavors, ranging from "urk" to "askfnsalfnlksan CRAAAAZZZEEE." All of them except the last are affected by your difficulty level (Easy, Normal, Hard or Insane), although the Shroud trap is only affected by Insane difficulty. On Insane, your viewable range is decreased by a small amount no matter if you have a torch or a Shroud or whatever. Crazy.

-Health/Energy Traps: These simply damage your Health or Energy. Direct, simple, effective.
-Poison Traps: These damage your Health a little, and inflict Toxins (HP Degen). A little less direct.
-Mystic Traps: This is where they start getting meaner - these damage Energy somewhat, but also inflict Seal, meaning you can't use your elemental nukes next battle. How rude!
-Shroud Traps: Suddenly, the world gets a little darker. Okay, a lot darker - for the rest of the floor, your visibility is drastically reduced. Have fun!
-Lure Traps: As the name suggests, these lure enemies toward you. The floor's encounter rate is increased. When you're fighting only what you must, this is not a pleasant surprise.
-Teleport Traps: What do you think these do? The nastiest of the nasty, these traps take you all the way back to the beginning of the floor. Yikes/ouch/SCREW YOU!

Info-mongering readers will notice that there are less traps than there are area types... yeah, well, I changed the system a bit. Before, each area type (out of fifteen) had its own unique trap. I said "uhhh screw that needless work." Certain areas, however, are biased toward specific traps, and some traps won't even appear in some areas. For example, Temple-type floors absolutely adore teleport traps (sfnsaklfnsalfk).

Good thing you start with - and can collect/stock up on - Trapfinders, Torches and Truancy Gifts! These all last for the entire floor and (respectively): make traps visible, increase your visibility, and lower the encounter rate. Yesss.

Ready Set Nuke ~ Battle, my favorite battle theme from Edifice.



But... what is Edifice? Simply, it's what I call a "roguelight." There are other projects that are called Roguelight - as in, their title, not their genre - but I'm declaring it this game's genre/style/category/soul. It is a merger of tried-and-true jRPG mechanics, the roguelike atmosphere, and Crazenessosity.

The gameplay can be summed up as thus: you travel down 4-16 floors, discovering how to obliterate bosses and how to deal with the traps in each area. Then you go in again, and again, and again... until you finally exhaust the game's scaling cap, and you're given the chance to amass all the loot you can stand and keep on slaying final bosses.

Then you do it again with another party. Or maybe you already made a new group, to try out a harder difficulty. Maybe you started a new game with the same party as the first time, but built their stats a little differently as you delved further down. Maybe you got killed on your penultimate floor by Czarina and made a new fire-based party with the sole purpose of flame-punching her butt into the netherverse (or Morrowind, whichever).

The goal of this project is to make an easily accessible yet complex roguelike-esque game that heavily rewards intelligent party design and pre-existing knowledge of the game - or simply provides half an hour of fun for a coffee break.



To facilitate this, there are a number of choices you can make when setting up your playthrough. First, if you're not loading a party, you choose your four party members out of sixteen potentials. Each one has access to two out of eleven Power pools (a set of six actions; you start with one from each and purchase the rest) and a skill (which greatly increases the success rate of certain Feats, such as lockpicking or negociating). Then, you pick the length of the game - four, eight, twelve, or sixteen floors. The longer you spend in the Edifice, the more likely you'll die horribly. Game length essentially tests your ability to manage resources and your pre-existing knowledge of the game - how to deal with specific bosses, certain areas, etc. You can then set the actual monster difficulty, which is a way to see how well you build your characters. You'll need to set up very specific roles in order to survive Hard or Insane modes. If you just want to crush some skulls, Easy difficulty is pretty swell!

You can also switch Hardcore mode (no saving until after the final boss; normally you can only save between every two floors), whether or not to display tutorials, and choose a Theme. Themes don't have any effect on the numbers or gameplay options, but they do let you become an expert of a certain set of area types. The game is a roguelight, meaning that pre-existing knowledge of the game will aid you greatly. Knowing what to expect in each area type is a great way to enhance your chance of survival. Of course, you can just let the game use all possible area types, forgoing a central Theme.



The actual game itself is essentially a very fast-paced dungeon crawl. Instead of being slow and plodding, each area takes five-ten minutes to clear out. You'll finish the average playthrough in about an hour! Exhausting the difficulty and loot scaling tables will take five-ten hours of your time, closer to five. Of course, you'll still have more potential parties and equipment setups to explore.

On each floor, you have three major goals: defeat the boss, find all the loot you're willing to risk getting, and deal with any traps. Traps range from damaging your Health to sending you back to the beginning of the floor to decreasing visibility to greatly increasing the encounter rate for a few battles. You can Disenchant them, but that's only reliably effective use of your limited Feat uses if you have somebody trained in Disenchantment. If that doesn't work or you choose to just suffer the effects of the trap, your party can still attempt to Overpower the effects, negating them completely. It still costs a Feat, however, and nobody is trained in Overpowering. There are items that can raise your success rate, but they are very rare.

This just adds to pre-existing knowledge. There are fifteen area types, each one with its own unique trap. Veteran adventurers will know that area x houses trap y, which they don't feel will hurt their party too much. Greenhorns, well... you can always roll a new party.

Or load your game. Yes, unless you are playing Hardcore, the game uses persistent saves (meaning that they don't self-destruct if you lose). You can only save after every other boss. If you don't like it - or if you're just a true roguelike fan - then you can turn on Hardcore mode. Don't complain, just play.



There's still a lot to discuss - enemies, boss Breaking, how equipment works, more about reusing parties... but that's beyond the scope of this little taste of the game.

A few notes: yes, the game will be done in two weeks. In fact, the "engine" and about 1/8 of the actual planned gameplay (meaning maps and bosses, basically) is complete. I can play any number of floors I want right now. Hell, I could release the game tomorrow. (I will not release the game tomorrow.) So, this isn't a Crazegame that will evaporate - it's here, and it's close to being ready for action.

What about In Praise of Peace? I'm leaving for the summer in three weeks - I work at a summer camp. I started this project because I wouldn't be able to finish IPoP in time. Don't worry, it's coming - it's too good to give up on. =D

I hope you suscribe to Edifice, and enjoy it when it comes out.