How I Automated my Indie Game!
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- Опубліковано 17 тра 2024
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[Slimekeep Devlog #49]
In this video I worked on adding replayabilty to Slimekeep in the form of a new challenge mode. I also "automated" the game's development by creating a CI/CD and DevOps pipeline for building and deploying the game.
About me:
Hey, I'm BenBonk, an indie game developer who uses the Unity Engine. I've made and released many small games before on my itch page, though now I'm attempting to make my first commercial game, Slimekeep. Slimekeep is a roguelike, using a very limited color palette, similar to Enter the Gungeon, though with a few interesting mechanics, such as keeping slimes alive longer will earn you more money, and the ability to capture slimes to power up your slime pet. If you enjoyed anything you saw, please consider subscribing, as it really helps me out.
Music by Pieper Beats
subscribe gamers ( ͡ᵔ ͜ʖ ͡ᵔ) - Наука та технологія
Cant wait for the slime king to say: "what, you gonna fight me with your slime keep?"
"Together, we are the slime keep!"
"to know everything, is to die"
"We're not any keep, we're the SLIME KEEP"
Maybe the real slime keep was the friends we made along the way
my favourite part was when the player captured slimes and said "what is this, a slime keep?"
I think a good way to increase replayability is to add secret extra bosses, they will also help add some lore to the game. For example, we have Slime King, but what if we added Slime Queen as a secret extra boss that you could fight if you found some secret passage in Slime King's castle and it turned out that she was actually in charge of the infected slimes and Slime King was her puppet?
This is a cool idea!
There could also be a boss that’s like a Wandering Knight, and when you’re in challenge mode there’s a chance that he’ll appear in a random room, or maybe walk into the room you’re in.
Or a radiance type boss that was the true cause of the infection?
maybe if you beat the slime king in a low time you unlock slime hush
@@THTB_lol Do you mean slime rush? I don’t know what slime hush would be.
@@FishuaJo it was a tboi reference
I think a boss rush mode after you beat slime king would be great. You could add a few attacks to each to make them all a bit harder or something. Could have some exclusive weapon or something you get if you beat them all in a certain time!
You sould make a Masochist Difficulty where the world starts on max corruption, you have 1HP all the time, and you can't respawn
And when you beat it it gives you the most unnoticable cosmetic ever
Lol, that would be brutal
@@BenBonkA tiny little trophy in the house would be funny.
sounds a bit like minecraft hardcore lol
a "gold" hairpin that's still just green
Ideas: This time arround I can't really give ideas releating towards the topic ( cool to see the arcade has been popped in the house,) so ill just do more general things today:
Option to turn off the Slime Pet Dialouge, I have no idea how I didnt mention this last time, but I'm personally not a big fan of the slime pet talking and a option for turning it off would be nice.
A House that resembles a Game Boy
A House that Resmebles a PC
A 1 in 4082 chance for a slime to be blue
A 1 in 8096 chance for it to shine rainbow
A gun that fires glitches
The haha funny bananna bomb that every roguelike seems to have
Different walking animations for costumes (Like Riding a Hoverboard, Flying, or a stealthy walk.)
A flamethrower for the arsonists part in us that impulsively wants to burn something
A 1 life mode having it only take one shot to die
And finally, Make it so you can buy a cat after beating slimeking and beating 1 shot mode after buying it gives you the most powerful gun in the game... the cat itself
Petition to use “slime gems” instead of “special slimeballs”. More catchy, fewer syllables
I thought of something that might be a horror to code in but also a funny gimmick: your pets attack you in the slime king fight. That’s it. Why? His corruption is too much. I understand this would probably be kinda hard to do though, so feel free to skip this idea lol.
Funny idea, but prob wouldn't really work because then its kinda like what's the point of upgrading the pet this whole time if he's not going to help in the actual final boss fight
@@BenBonk yeah, good point.
4:37 Looking great in the game, it's an honor for my art to be used by you!
Y o u a r e w a t e r
These devlogs are so relaxing, can't wait for the game release!
Thank you!
game gonna be sick when it comes out
Let's hope 😎
Who needs to smash the subscribe button when you can smash the wishlist button!
Almost at devlog #50! Hope it will be EPIC!
Can't believe we are already almost at 50. It will epic (I hope)
Maybe you could make a trailer for the game or something :D
4:37 Nintendo is already after you
run.
Ruh roh
I pray my art doesn't get him copyright striked lol
Uhhhhhhhhhhh
So only a minute in, but in regards to the challenge mode, immediately jumping to half slimeballs, and they do more damage may be to steep of a curve.
I'd recommend making it in levels, the next one being unlocked after winning in the previous difficulty level.
Personally, Id suggest make the difficulty curve slower, so for example level 1 might be 10% fewer slimeballs, level 2 30% level 3 is 50% and something similar with the other difficulty factors. Not only does this increase replayability even more, but it eases them into it rather than dropping them in the deep end. I find that kind of thing holds on to players better.
Also, with the difficulty scaling, having a positive go along with them often makes playing harder difficulties feel way better, like having better loot luck or whatever equivalent applies here, definitely not enough to counter the increased difficulty, but enough to "feel" like you are being somewhat rewarded for challenging yourself.
Mode ideas:
Evolution mode: After reaching the 3rd stage, slimes can evolve into the 1st stage of a higher difficulty slime, this keeps going until they turn into a difficulty 5 slime
Jam mode: Basically the game jam version of the game, but with the new features and graphics
Amnesia/Sacrifice mode: Every day you have to choose a slime pet upgrade, player upgrade, or weapon to lose forever
Slime rush mode: Basically a boss rush
Lonely mode: No slime pet
Glass cannon mode: Die in one hit, but all weapons deal 5 times more damage
Titanium jelly mode: Opposite of glass cannon, you have double the health, but deal little to no damage
Powerful bosses mode: Bosses get new attacks
Flood mode: As long as there's at least one slime alive in a room, more and harder slimes will keep spawning constantly in the room, they will only drop half the slime balls through and spawn at stage 2
You got my attention with this title.
Happy I was able to get you started with build automation and that it's been helpful to you! You've come a long way from having issues with git. 😄 Excellent work!
you should add house upgrades unlocked by quests like an electric guitar or something for beating the DJ Slime
Love your content, can’t wait for the release, keep it up 👍
Thank you!
what if the second prompt for the slime statue didn't say un-worship but instead said something like "renounce your faith"
Make it so that defeating every boss turns half of the player's current slime balls into special slime balls on challenge mode
And defeating the king on normal mode does that same
Cool stuff! Yeah I could definitely see special slime balls being rewarded for the normal game and then getting more for challenge mode
4:40
i would recommend putting the smoke a little bit higher so that it actually looks the smoke is coming out of the pipe (you could also redraw the mushroom house)
4:45
the special slime balls could be earned by playing the "Goopy Bird" minigame, depending the difficulty and day the player is on when they play you have to insert X amount of special slime balls and if the player scores high enough they get more slime balls back then what they put in. To prevent grinding you could put a limit on the amount of try's or the cost of entry gets higher if the player keeps succeeding
Instead of worshiping and UN-worshipping, how about lighting an incense stick and extinguish it to turn off the challenge mode. This gives a more diegetic sense to this action.
A cool idea could be to have an ability system for experienced players - like it gives you a buff and a debuff, to make replayability more interesting. The thing that gives you it can be a statue in the garden, or again, in the basement.
Kind of like in a roguelike game called Soul-Knight, when it adds 4 buffs or debuffs, but that's more random.
Love the work.
4:38 - Just a minor suggestion, but you could modify the chimney particles for each house skin so that e.g. the mushroom has some spores and it's generally more adjusted for each house
Already 49#, keep up the grind gl
Will do
LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PEAK #49 IS HEREEEEE
i can click the thing to "translate to english" and all it does is add an extra o to the "lets gooo" lmao
@@cobaltbluesky2276 XD
It may be better to have a way to unlock challenge mode a different way too, as many players do sometimes come back to playing a game but have their progress reset when redownloaded. Having direct access to the more difficult mode would definitly be useful here
You should add it to where when beating the slime king on normal mode, you get like 1/8th or 1/16th of your slimeballs left turned into special slimeballs.
I don’t know if this was intentional, but whenever the house’s skin is changed, it stays the same on the minimap.
Brilliant! Great to see you use git actions. I've never used them for games but I really want to.
there should be some challenge mode exclusive enemies to make it even more unique
There probably should be yeah, but at the same time I don't really want to pour too much more time into it
@@BenBonk understandable
This game looks really cool! I can really see myself getting into and playing a game like this, and it looks really fun! Though I’ve got a few things to say about the new “Challenge mode” (granted I am not a professional designer though I’ve been doing game dev as a hobby for a bit).
Challenge mode isn’t really challenging the player at all at its current state. If all you’re doing is changing values, then you’re not challenging the player to play in a new way. You’re just making them play more of the same way. For example, if challenge mode doubles the health of the enemy, then you’re asking a player who has already completed the game (meaning they’ve spent hours upon hours shooting enemies) to shoot the enemy, but this time, it takes longer! Yaaaaay! Or take the fact that the enemies drop half the resources. Once more, the player is performing the same actions. All you’re changing now is the fact that if players want a certain amount of resources, they’ll have to kill enemies, but this time, they have to do it more! (Woo hoo! More repetition!). Basically, players might die more or take longer to kill enemies, but they’re playing in the exact same way, there’s no replay value to be had. The only way you can give replay value through challenging the player is by making entirely new enemies/mechanics that challenge the current way of playing. If the most effective way to play the game is by (let’s say) shooting an enemy until they die, then we need an enemy that blocks all shots and therefore the player will have to use a different way to kill him (this is a very vague example that’s not specific to your game by the way). This way, there IS a challenge, and there IS replay value. Why? Because the player is playing in a whole new way. So they’re challenged to master another mechanic instead of sticking to the ones they already mastered, and that adds replay value because, not only is it harder, but there’s also more to do!
It’s also worthy to note that enemy AI IS a way to challenge the player, not through changing values, but by changing their behavior to no longer suit the strategies that players use. For example, if an enemy can block gunshots (again, this is NOT specific to your game), but the enemy barely uses that, then a way a player might kill an enemy is by spamming the shoot button. But by making an enemy block more often, then suddenly spamming the shoot button is no longer feasible.
Now, as a fellow (albeit amateur) game dev, I know how hard it is to make whole new enemy types and whole new mechanics and whole new content (in general). But you CANNOT have challenge mode in its current state. It’ll just bore the players or potentially frustrate them. So you can either figure out ways to challenge the player and the player’s play style, or just not have challenge mode. Of course there are other ways to incorporate replay ability.
Great game though, it genuinely looks amazing. Good luck on the rest of your development!
Hey, I really appreciate the comment, and agree with what you are saying. Admittedly, I guess I wanted to add replayability without putting much effort into the new challenge mode, although this most likely won't work too well for reasons you mentioned. I'll prob try to rework this a bit in the future to actually change things around a bit more with the player's gameplay and not make it just repetitive.
I love how this game is looking so far! One thing I'd recommend for replayability is to add more utility and playable rewards, such as the arcade game. Cosmetics are awesome (I think you could add even more; i could see slime pet cosnetics being put here) but so is something like a shop with low tier rewards right there or extra gameplay content like a mini game or boss.
Great work on streamlining your playtesting, CICD was neat to learn about.
Thank you! I definitely agree with what you are saying and will def work on adding even more replicability content.
It would be cool if you could get a smaller amount of special slime balls on normal mode, such as maybe getting a quarter of the slime balls you have instead of all of them. Or you could have it set to a fixed rate that is decently small.
Yeah I actually changed it so now you can earn them from regular gameplay but you will just get less as compared to challenge mode to balance things out
I like having cosmetics but I don't like having a shop where I buy them. I think it would be more enjoyable to get them when you finish a run so they feel more like a trophy
Yeah true, but I also kinda like how the player can actually choose what they want as a cosmetic, so I'll see
@@BenBonk you could bint the cosmetics to different bosses
I think the challenge mode is a great idea. However I think it would benefit the game if the changes weren't just stats/ numbers changing. Maybe enemies unlock new attack patterns or maybe new secret paths to alternate bosses reveal themselves. Or NPC interactions/ locations change in some way. Maybe it would already help if the changing stats would also come with a reskin so that the world also feels different when replaying.
The chimney spoke particles need to be moved/disabled when you change the house being used.
The challenge mode should have different ranks, like in balatro. For example, rank 1 = 50% less slimeballs, rank 2= 50% more damage and so on.
I feel like an online multiplayer mode would be super cool!
Same, although it'd just be too hard to make imo
Definitely you should be getting small amount of special slimeballs for regular runs. It'd give the game more progression and more reasonto keep playing.
For the dark blue house floor skin, add a highlight to the outline of the hole. It's hard to see
you should have a mode that gives you random modifiers as a challenge (like maybe theres one where ALL projectiles bounce)
You should get a few special slime balls every time you get a steam achievement for the first time.
It would be cool if you get half of your remaining slime balls into special slime balls in the normal mode
Maybe a third or quarter would be best, seeing as you get halved slimeballs in challenge mode anyway
Yeah, I actually changed it to work like this recently, so hopefully that'll help.
The Slimekeep was the friends we made along the way
Too real
perhaps have the slimeballs crystalize or something at the end of the run to create slime gems or slime crystals etc, has a better ring to it than "special slimeballs"
I don't get what the point of capturing slimes is. The pet slime doesn't seem worth it either.
Woah i havent seen this in 10 years
Hey nice video also what font do u use for the game?
i cant believe i made it here within 10 minutes of it being uploaded!
Neat updates! I am definitely the kind of player that likes to collect and customise my own place.
For your Ci/CD pipeline, do you have any test automation?
Thanks Rob! I currently don't, but I learned about how you can use test automation to make life a lot easier, so I might give it a try at some point.
You just wont give up 🤣 Admire the hustle i guess
the smoke on the hous sprites are buggy 4:35
just in case you didn't notice 🥔
Idea: you should add some form of indicator on your UI when challenge mode is enabled.
it would be cool if you could spend your super slime to change the color of the whole game, you could do Red, Blue, Orange, Purple. once you have them all unlocked it unlocks RGB MODE where the shader changes the color slowly as you play.
You should also get special slime balls by beating the slime king in regular mode. However I think you should be rewarded with more special slime balls if you beat it in challenge mode.
Ok dude adding more and more features will make your progress a lot longer and people will get bored because the game isn’t out yet for years because you add more and more features.
I recommend you do something like terraria did with higher difficulties, i.e. add items that are only obtainable in those difficulties. In Terraria these were mainly boss items, like the eye of cthulu shield, but you can make them anything in your game
I think it would be a good idea to give you slime ballseverytime you beat the game. It would've you more in challenge mode, making it so that you have to replay the game multiple times to be able to unlock everything.
i think u should add some light sources inside the house
maybe have it so you get half of your slime balls become special slime balls (rounding up on odds) on normal mode
What if the real slime keep was the friends we made along the way
Why'd you remove the devlog number from the title? Now I don't know if I'm caught up with these amazing videos or not :c
Devlog number is always in the decription if you wanna know :)
Hey, really loved the video but im just popping in to say that at 4:33 the smoke effect doesnt change when you change houses, hope this helps
Yeah good point, I'll fix this, thanks.
Automate, very epik
Can you share all your workflow files? It would be a great resource.
Heres a new sub for you❤
luv u bro
Idk if you'll see this, but instead of "special slimeballs" as the special currency, how about it's instead called "slime gems".
You shold add green slime factories (dungeons)
Btw how much will the game cost?
i guess this trulery was the slimekeep ever
Are there any plans to make a linux version of this game?
does the game has a acessibility setting for changing this pixel perfect font? i think this would be great idk
Yeah it does, he said it in a previous devlog
Yes and adding that setting was like the most painful experience of my life. If you don''t believe me, watch my devlog on it lol
@@BenBonk going to watch it!
NEW VID
special slimeballs sounds a bit goofy. naming it something like supreme or premium slimeballs might be better
Will lore rooms be in challenge mode?
Yes, I guess
Ploh
u gotta give Goopy Bird an online leaderboard !! 👀
Nice
why is the mouse's name the same as mine
That is cool. I need to learn how to github.
The video length. 💀
please add a top hat item it would be amazing
Why wouldn't you make the special slime balls by "cheats" that could be activated that make the game play more interesting like infinit amo in every weapon for example
Question - [Is the game gonna cost money] - _Only one thankfully_
I feel like the way you get special slime balls is kinda dump, first you have to beat the game, then you have to be careful spending your slim balls, then beat the game again, just for the chance to buy one singular cosmetic. This could be one way you get special slime or maybe one of many currencies, but I feel like the player needs to at least know that there are cosmetics before having to beat the game twice. So yes you need other ways to get the special balls.
"Floorskin"
Your game looks sick, but i don't know if many people buy this type of games on PC, i think your game will fit better on console or mobile, personnaly, if i see a game this quality on my phone, i would buy it right away
W ONG
Is gaem gona be free. im broke
i am wanting
I'll be honest, I think the art could be reworked.
At a lot of green
Make it available for Mac
The video......time
666 views gang
Hi fisth
717 views in 36 minutes? smh benbonk fell off
True