Came up with a new game idea: a simple survival roguelite (like Vampire Survivors) where you earn + place things that help you defeat enemies easier (like Plants vs Zombies), constantly improving your setup and your character to beat stronger enemies until failure.
Nothing too ambitious. Formulaic. Expect to see something you’d see from Youtube Playables or those really basic mobile games. Probably fun enough to play for a few minutes.
But I think that’s just what I need right now for this project. I want to explore using autonomous algorithms in gameplay: in other words, having some automated system that changes tiny aspects of gameplay (maybe XP leveling rates, damage numbers, health) to maximize retention.
That system should start out pretty simple as well, so I don’t think I should be customizing every player’s unique experience or trying to categorize every player’s traits/behaviors. It should mostly focus on the real issue of tuning XP progression and difficulty parameters for everyone. I’d also have to isolate players into mostly singleplayer modes, so a casual mobile game would work better than a fully multiplayer game.
Plus, maybe I can use some hard math in the process of designing it?
I made a bunch of random assets in Blender in preparation to quickly prototype the game:
