The Games Foxes Play
The Games Foxes Play
A nontraditional traditional roguelike about critters and soul harvesting.
A multi-part guide on how I coded this game, with gifs and step-by-step instructions!
Made with the Bevy engine.
Controls
Arrow Keys or WASD: Move or melee attack one step in the cardinal directions. Each melee attack grants 1 Soul on the Soul Wheel.
1-8: Cast a spell corresponding to the chosen slot on the Soul Wheel.
C: Enter Cursor mode to learn more about the 6 enemy types.
E: Enter Caste mode to equip, unequip or learn about spells.
Z or X: Reset the game.
Crafting
Every so often, a Soul Cage room will appear. Spells can be crafted by combining the patterns on the left of the UI. These patterns, named "Axioms", are read like so:
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
Functions will do nothing without a Form to grant them target tiles, meaning a Form should always come before the first Function.
Strategies
- Use the Vile Soul (purple spell) to annihilate pesky "Emblems of Sin" (beige enemies which eat walls) who have grown too robust.
- Shield (Ordered, red spell) or stab (Vile, purple spell) "Anisychic Oracles" (red enemies which increase their damage every 5 steps) before they can unload their devastating blow.
- Place down a trap (Artistic, orange spell), step away, then shield yourself (Ordered, red spell), and step on it to protect yourself from the blast!
- Use the dash (Feral, dark green spell) to buy yourself precious turns to draw out more spells.
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Comments
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First win- main spell was The Chains Bleed Rivers with False Charms and Pretend Affection, Yearnings Crossed Out, and Senet, the Felidol Tycoon. I also had self-cast Paraceon, Forever Crystallized in my Ordered slot, so I basically just kept the Ordered and Saintly Souls, "discarded" the rest by casting them to free up slots, and kept reapplying Charm to the Epsilon, Crowned by Truth until they stopped moving.
That's a very interesting combo I don't think I've seen anyone else use! I tend to see heavy damage spam used more often with death lasers going all over the place. Winning without using "Distress Signals Turned Celebration" (the 'deal one damage' axiom) is creative. Thank you so much for playing and finding some bugs!
That's interesting- I couldn't really make using "death lasers" work, but that's also a function of my preference for Contingency spells over manually cast spells. Since, as far as I can tell, what soul you get from attacking is random, it's easy to just not get your attack spell. Of course, Contingencies take up a lot of space, which means that it's hard to get both an AOE form and high numbers using Distress Signals Turned Celebration. My main use of it in that run was actually just as some bonus damage on my Ordered spell with Share the Fruits of Faith (since I was protected).
I won a second time just now with my main spell being The Chains Bleed Rivers, Haughty as the Saints Were, and Polish Rage to Sheen- killing everything in one melee attack meant that I really only needed a little healing to get through things.
My third win was with two main spells: the first was A Stone to Crush Disobedience, Four Ways, Yet All Paths Converge, False Charms and Pretend Affection, and two instances of Distress Signals Turned Celebration, while the second was The Chains Bleed Rivers, Haughty as the Saints Were, and Undo the Sacrament of Blood. Healing twice per turn meant that I was nearly unkillable.
Axioms that I haven't found a use for yet: Rebuild the Flesh of Old (it's far too expensive space-wise for something that's pretty useless without a synergy), and Soaked Tails Trail Across the Soil (again, expensive, and I'm not sure why I'd want it). Signals Sever the Skies looks fun, but the shape is too awkward for the kinds of chain-reactions that it's presumably meant to be used for (no space for sufficient beams).
> Rebuild the Flesh of Old
Its main purpose is currently to be combined with the Charming effect (Senet) to create some quick armies. I have definitely found it useful, but not on its own.
> Soaked Tails Trail Across the Soil
Definitely of questionable usefulness... I mostly put it in because I spent a lot of time coding Epsilon's tail following code and wanted the player to use it too. I might add more content related to magnetic tails, such as having them repeat spells you cast.
> Signals Sever the Skies
I nerfed several of the overly complex shapes in my local build to allow it to combo with more things. I also think I'll be adding 4x4 crafting grids, or at least ones with an irregular shape and added space.
I am really happy to hear about your wins and the varied builds you tried out! I think you have officially played the game the most out of anyone else that I know of. I am currently working on making the dungeon more interesting than a straight line of rooms, as well as a few other Axioms. I even got a "possession" Axiom that lets you control enemies for a short time.
Seems very interesting, although it took a while to understand anything. Hechaton, Ribbon-Adorned Gardener appears to be functioning incorrectly- it is summoning a Terracotta Sentry in the tiles it affects, even if there is no creature there.
I'm not sure I'm quite clear on the length of the Invincibility effect for Paraceon, Forever Crystallized, as it says that it lasts three turns but only seems to last for two. For context, I cast a spell that granted me Paraceon, Forever Crystallized (1st turn) attacked once (2nd turn) and then took damage when I acted again (3rd turn).
I managed to teleport a Rampart of Nacre in front of the exit with Places on a Map, Pawns on a Board, ran out of uses of that spell, and essentially imprisoned myself.
It might actually have been Feral Caste- the push effect affects Ramparts of Nacre.
I have noticed that it's possible to do that - you're pretty much forced to reset the game with Z/X after that. I think I'll add a check to auto-clear the way if a blockage is detected.
Great catch, thanks! That was because Paraceon is used inside the default Ordered (red) spell, where it also gets one turn of haste and therefore appears to be properly 3 turns. The real duration is 2. I'll fix that!
I was not able to reproduce this. I made a simple "Terror and Thirst Focused" + Hechaton combo (shoot laser beam, transform what it touches), and no Sentry is spawning in the empty tiles the laser is traveling through. Let me know if you remember what recipe you used.
Tutorialization is what I am working on right now! Hopefully I can explain the game without dumping a ton of text on the player.
I don't remember what combo I used, so it's entirely possible that I did something silly like combining it with Rebuild the Flesh of Old and then forgetting what spells I used. (That said, I think there actually isn't space for that combo on the grid, so I'm confused.) On that topic, I would very much appreciate it if you could see what spell pattern you used when hovering over a spell you've created- it's hard to keep track sometimes.
You can see what patterns correspond to each axiom when hovering in the left sidebar, but not the other way around. That should be easy to add, noted!