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"Why do you descend?"

Version 1.32 released March 28th, 2014.



-The Drop is a unique take on the dungeon crawler and follow-up to 2009's The Reconstruction.
-No typical HP & MP monotony. Instead, player and enemy alike have Body, Mind, and Soul ratings which serve as both health and magical power. Knocking any of these to zero means defeat, so spelunkers beware!
-Create your own player character. Choose a race, appearance, starting weapon, elemental alignment, perks, and a background. Or, choose from an array of pre-made characters, including a few familiar faces.
-Randomized dungeons. Hundreds of items, dozens of monsters and spells, and all sorts of weirdness lurks around every corner!
-Use magic and items to manipulate the environment to your advantage. Freeze water to trap foes in place. Set fire to grass to create a smokescreen. Evaporate spilled poison to create a toxic cloud. Electrify puddles of water. Many interactions await!
-Exploit your enemies' fears and emotions. Lull, befriend, or terrorize enemies by using the proper item or spell!
-Experiment with items to discover their properties with interactions like eating, applying, and throwing. A plant that makes you sick when eaten may have healing properties when applied to your wounds instead. Collect them all!
-Use stealth and line-of-sight to your advantage. Sneak up on enemies to attack from behind, or avoid them entirely. But be careful - enemies you can't see can do the same to you!
-Customizable BGM playlist. Add or remove songs from the dungeon's soundtrack, or even import your own music!
-Hardcore mode awaits! A true roguelike experience with permanent death and limited saving available. Do you feel lucky?



THE RECONSTRUCTION (2009). The Drop is a direct sequel to this game, and is set in the same world. Many characters, monsters, and spells are returning, but familiarity with the game is not necessary to enjoy The Drop.

I MISS THE SUNRISE (2012). A prequel to The Reconstruction and only distantly related to The Drop. It's quite different in tone and setting.

Official wiki here! Beware of spoilers!

TV Tropes Page available here! Beware of spoilers!



Updated March 28th, 2014.

Version 1.32 is live, as well as the complete soundtrack download and the "classic" track pack!

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You can look back at my semi-weekly progress reports by visiting http://www.tilde-one.com/, clicking the Show Archive button, and looking for anything with "Drop" in the title (newest entries are on top).

Latest Blog

The Drop - Version 1.32! New character!

Happy almost-April-1st! If you're reading this, The Drop Version 1.32 is now available for download! Why is this one so special? Well, an idea I've had for some time has finally come to fruition, and hopefully you can wring a few more hours out of The Drop while I'm still working on How Far. Maybe. Anyway, here are the change notes:

-Here comes a new challenger! Dehl Sikohlon is now a playable character! You can choose him from the second page of the "Special Characters" screen at any time.
-Magic Stitch now correctly heals Body health.
-Fixed an issue where it's possible to walk outside of the map in a certain area.
-Fixed a crash bug (again) that can occur after defeating the final boss.
-The final secret character now begins with some Soul-damaging magic as well.
-Removed all floor elements from the final boss' lair. Beware: it's an actual fight now!
-The spell "Calamity" now correctly inflicts Mind damage.
-The spell "Snowstorm" now correctly inflicts Soul damage.
-The spells "Thunderclash" and "Jolt" now has the correct icon.
-Hints should no longer get stuck on the screen after being defeated in Hardcore mode.

Dehl is a challenging character; if Xopi is defeated, he will fall too! Good luck!

Posts

By the way, another cosmetic bug: Blessed Wail says it's an area spell, but has the single-target aura.

How many spells are there in the demo, anyway? I've been abusing healing spells to gain as many as possible.
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
Oops, that's an oversight. You shouldn't be getting elemental essence from healing spells. I'll have to fix that, but you have fun with it for now!

There are about 8 spells per element (6 offense, 2 healing). There will be plenty more in the real game.
I wish I could be more helpful with this one, but I may have found a bug.

Descending to floor three without saving left me with nothing but a black screen. The music continued playing normally and, according to the the task manager, the program had not crashed. I was not under any abnormal status effects or conditions, and I think my health was nearly full in most bars.

I will continue testing to see if I can replicate this.
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
Interesting. So the interface did appear, though? It sounds to me like it couldn't find a safe place to drop your character but for whatever reason it put you at the "safe" spot (coordinates 99,99) instead of trying through the loop again. Good to know!

Hopefully I'll have a version with all these little glitches fixed available by the end of this week. For posterity, of course.
Happy
Devil's in the details
5367
Hey this was very cool to play. Extra props for being able to play it at work. I just died to the status effects pretty fast. Going to try it further at some point! Definitely keeping my eye on this, though.
edchuy
You the practice of self-promotion
1624
I have to ask: is there a limit to the number of levels (not levels of the character but of the dungeon!) you can play in the demo?
There was a plant that disappeared after a bug got defeated, but still existed as an item – it just didn’t show up graphically on the tile.

Why do you only gain a bonus on attacking from behind with melee attacks? You suggest making them run in fear to gain this bonus, but that’s impossible since they’re moving away from you, and any ranged magic attacks seems to always to the same damage no matter where they’re facing you.

You can farm for new spells by casting on nothing and healing back up when the floor’s cleared. This works both for the healing spells and for casting on an empty square, so as it is now you could get all available spells by the first floor if you’re patient enough.

At first I thought I’d have a list of item effects once I used it on myself, but right now there’s no way to know what it does aside from remembering. Now, I do like the way it’s set up now, don’t get me wrong. Having to figure it out based on the description’s a really cool idea, and makes it seem very realistic with some nice bit of world-building. (Also, some of those item useage descriptions were hilarious, like when you realize you’ve been reduced to eating leaves. XD) However, could there maybe also be some kind of encyclopedia where it lists every effect for when you forget? I’m pretty good at remembering things, and have a lot of the items down, but I still miss some of it, especially for the more vague descriptions. I’m kind of afraid that in the full game when there’s even more items it’ll be impossible to keep track of it all.

Also, just an idea, but perhaps also a list of enemy stats once you’ve killed them enough, or…hold on if their element changes each time that means their stats are slightly different each time…hrm. Well either way, it might be cool having a list like that somehow. Might be more trouble than it’s worth.

I find it rather ironic that Tehgonan starts off with the ability to heal body and soul, but not mind when in the Reconstruction it was the complete opposite. XD (Thankfully he got the new mind spell pretty soon.)

I also wonder how you’re going to rationalize Qualstio not being able to cast flashfreeze now – just the random nature of the drop? I do like the way you can’t cast elements opposite to your own, of course, just…found that funny since Qualstio did it in the Reconstruction. Of course this assumes he’ll be in the final game at all. :P

When on tiles with environmental items, the item does not show up on inventory as being on the panel you’re on. This is annoying when having a full inventory and wanting to heal mind or soul with grass, etc, or to just identify what grass you’re standing on without having to pick it up, since some grasses look very similar and have different effects.

I like the idea of only four spells at once, but perhaps you could have the right arrow to skip through a page of spells, or have some other organization? When you start having a big list it can be annoying having to skip down far every time you want to switch out spells, which happens constantly with this limited set-up. This could become even more of an issue in the full game when you have even more spells.

Is Tehogan’s skill really activating 80% of the time? Some of the enemies I’d defeated many times but only had one skill unlocked. (I think it was the seeker who was afraid of light, even though I’ve killed maybe 10 by now I only know that one fact.)

Firefiend killed me in one shot with a fire stun lock. Yeeeaaaah.

After you convert a weapon to favor, the inventory is still listed as full for items on the ground, so you need to re-open the inventory. Very minor.

Tchiitra Seeker seems pretty weak in general, maybe that’s intended. Also, on the 5th floor or so, after beating one, a liquid graphic appeared on screen, but the inventory showed an organ (Don’t think I’ve gotten the organ from them yet) When I used it on myself, I got a script error

‘Game_Interpreter’ line 1411 NoMethodError occurred undefined method ‘set’ for nil:NilClass

And the game crashed.


Those are my thoughts so far! (Wow that looks longer than I intended, sorry) This is very impressive for a demo. It took me several lives to figure it all out, but once I did it all felt just awesome. Great job.

Edit: Note that I'm playing off of the initial version. Aaaaand I just realized you already addressed the crashing issues and are aware of the disappearing item issue. Whoops. Sorry. ^^; I'll just cross those out.

And while I'm thinking about it, the character art looks AWESOME. Well...Tehgonan's eyes look off, but aside from that man. Moke and Lani look badass.

Edit: One last thing for now, I promise. When selecting an option like on the main menu or at stairs, there's so little highlight, it's very difficult to tell which option's selected.
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
No hard limit, but enemies stop getting tougher at floor 6.

Edit: whoa, surprise wall of text! I'll look over it when I'm not confined to my phone!
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
author=Ro9ge
War & Peace


You can corner feared enemies and wail away on them, but it's more about the idea of having sneak attacks. I'll probably up the damage multiplier and turn down enemy awareness to make it a more viable playstyle. There will also be at least one custom-character trait to increase backstab damage. I'm trying to avoid an outright "thief" class, but I don't want to deny people who like that sort of playstyle either.

Yes, the spell farming is an oversight. That's what the demo is for! Plus, you gain spell experience 4 times as fast in this demo, so there is still a plan for fair progression for the long-term.

You're not the first person who's been concerned with item effects! That's why I'm adding a difficulty option to show item effect in the inventory screen. It will be always-enabled in future iterations of the demo to cut down on option menus, but it will be an option to increase the difficulty counter (which in turn will increase score) in the full game. I'm adding a screenshot of it in action after I finish my reply! There will also be an item encyclopedia and a bestiary, and I'll probably have it shared between your characters.

I'll probably include a "scan" spell for the Mental element. Or maybe a slightly different one for another element, too.

We'll see if Qualstio makes an appearance. I haven't finalized the playable character selection yet. For now, just chalk up inconsistencies as prolonged exposure to the Drop "enforcing" the elemental laws more rigidly than elsewhere in the world.

I meant for the floor elements to appear as an infinite floor item! I really did! I didn't get around to adding it in time for the demo, though, but rest assured it's on my to-do list.

I actually had code to make PgUp/PgDn skip pages on the spell list, but for whatever reason I commented it out and never got back to it. Something was likely broken with it, and since those menus were basically the first things I added in, I probably pushed it aside and then forgot about it. Thanks for the reminder!

The skill has an 80% chance, but it picks a random slot, so if you already know that property, you effectively end up with nothing. Otherwise, it would be way too easy to learn every property in a trivial amount of time. I should probably word the skill description better.

The firefiend's "Fire" portion of his special attack will be no more in the next update. He can still set things on the ground on fire, though.

Good to know about the inventory screen; I'll get on that. I recalculate the free spots for the other actions but not for Favor, I guess. As for the Dusk Stalker, he can spawn as early as floor 2, so I wanted it to be somewhat fair. There will be plenty of time for real threats in the future.

I'll see what I can do with the highlight thing. I haven't really touched the window scheme graphics yet.

I'm glad you are enjoying yourself! It was my goal to make a kinder, gentler roguelike with less of a focus on dumb luck and more about submerging your character in with the items/surroundings/spells you can use at that moment in time. Hopefully as I expand the number of floor themes and classes of monsters, there will be more opportunities for YASD hilarity, too.
BUG

Finally found one. Consuming a sharp antenna starts to give you the "oh man, was this a terrible idea" text and then the game crashes out. I cannot say for certain whether this was brought on by the item dropping me below zero hp or not.

Error text as follows:

Script 'Game_Interpreter' line 1411: NoMethodError occurred.
undefined method 'set' for nil:NilClass
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
Was it eaten off the floor, or out of your inventory? If it was off the floor, it should be fixed in version 0.2. If you've got the new version and you still get the bug, let me know for sure!

(Edit) Also, you can't go below 1 HP by eating something harmful, so go nuts!
Oh, I love the idea of the scan spell, and am glad that you're going an encyclopedia and bestiary. I spend so much time trying to remember the item effects now that I can't remember the enemies stat spread. xD

And yeah, saying 80% chance to learn an enemy property makes it seem like he's, well...learning something instead of just figuring out a fact he'd already realized. I guess I thought the -.2 growth rates across the board was a large enough penalty to know everything about enemies. Even as it is, it's still very sweet. His large spell pool access mean he can utilize this knowledge much better than others.

...nevermind about Seekers being weak. That's just because Tehgonan's mental defense was high. They reeeaallly hurt Lani. >_>
I'll test it again to verify, but it may have been off of the floor.
I couldn't throw a sword that was on the ground, but could do it once I'd put it in my (previously full) inventory. Is this intentional? It seems odd that you wouldn't be able to throw those things, especially if one difficulty you mentioned would have no inventory space at all, only stuff on the floor.
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
Yes; for now, you have to pick up something to be able to throw it. Partly a technical snag, partly a logical thing (you have to have it in your hands before you can throw it!), partly a balance choice since thrown items can be very powerful and always inflict status effects so it's worth taking an extra turn/action to do that.
Thrown items can be very powerful? I'm not seeing it. So far, every one I've seen is outclassed by spells. Even the acid glad, which deals 45 damage when eaten, only deals ~20 damage when thrown. I thought the sentry gizzard would be a useful Physical offensive attack for Tehgonan, but it deals single-digit damage.

Perhaps you mean for the full version, though; I can see how that is likely to change.

Hm. I also agree that a -.2 growth rate penalty is quite steep, so the trait should really be worth it. I suppose we'll see how it turns out.
Ah, so it's not just me. Yeah, I hadn't experimented with throwing as much, but it did seem a bit underwhelming compared to how much you could heal. Although it does deal ranged damaged without draining your health.

And yeah, I'm slightly worried that over the course of a full game that -0.2 penalty might really hurt. I suppose it does get offset by the legacy character's additional 0.1, though. And also, knowing those traits could be the difference of life and death. So for now, color me intrigued.
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
Noted! Fortunately, thrown damage is its own stat, so I can tweak it on a per-item basis.
Unless it causes a useful debuff, I dump throwing items. The damage just isn't high enough to justify keeping around when I could be holding onto a heal instead. That said, the debuffs are usually pretty useful. Unless you really want to create a game that is about hoarding and deploying inventory items for damage, I'd suggest leaving the damage values as is but making sure most thrown items apply conditions. Those are useful in and of themselves, and don't suddenly stop being competitive when the enemies get more hp.
Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
That was the original idea; item status effects always apply 100% of the time (though the duration can vary) and there is always the whole Property metagame going on as well. I'll try making "rare" items like weapons have better throwing damage as a compromise, and I'll see how that goes.