Alpha 3


Hello, folks! I have just published the third alpha version of Golem. Here's a description of some of the changes.

Additions to the game content
A big new addition is the fear system. Critical damage can make the golem and its adversaries scared or even panicked, limiting their ability to attack and have non-defensive stances. Along with this update comes the ablity to run, so you can flee your enemies in panic! In addition to damage, fear can be caused by the scary faces of undead creatures. Of course, in the unique style of Golem, you can take these scary heads as your own and frighten your enemies! Hearts affect the bravery of each creature, making them more or less susceptible to bein scared.

Thrown weapons are another addition. You can throw not only daggers and spears, but also stones you get from the smooth round pebbles traps (one of the two new "improvised weapon" types, the other being torches you get from campfires). One of the benefits of throwing is that you can do extra sneak damage to enemies who haven't noticed you yet.

Melee fighting has also been developed further. A big change is that the vertical position of the attacking bodypart and the target bodypart affect the hit probability of an attack. Longer and more flexible limbs reach farther up and down, but the range can be improved with weapons of different lengths. Other aspects now affecting hit probability of both melee and ranged attacks include the speed of the target and whether they are imbalanced by damage to their legs (imbalanced creatures also take more damage from attacks).

The bodies of the creatures in the game are a bit more detailed now, with the addition of kidneys. Kidneys filter out poisons over time, replacing the old system where poisons dissipated by themselves. Without kidneys, you may get poisoned spontaneously, especially if you consist of a combination of living and undead flesh.

Some creatures, namely mole people and canines, have now a sense of smell. They can follow your smell trace to you even if they haven't seen you. And of course you can take their heads as your own, and with it, their sense of smell to get some forewarnings of enemy presence.

There are ten new types of enemies, going as deep as to level 15. HAlf of these are goblinoids that get linearly bigger and badder, but there are also some more unique enemies, including the first one that belongs to two different factions (meaning mainly that it is affected by two types of bane weapons).

Gods have been improved as well. There is now some variation in their blessings and curses. Additionally, they have nice new nicknames describing their personality.

Additionally, there are some new items, interacting with the new mechanics.

User interface upgrades
The detailed fighting simulation may get tiresome, as you have to choose so many details for each attack, even when fighting the puniest of enemies and knowing that victory is only a question of time. Thus, it has been requested by at least two players that there should be the possibility of repeating attacks. Now, that possibility is real! If the target creature, target bodypart and attacking limb and weapon stay the same, just press R (or whatever you set the key to be in the settings) and the attack gets repeated. However, if your tactics include alternating between two attacks, you can press Shift+R to repeat the secont to last attack.

Another upgrade also makes some actions faster. When choosing things from a list, such as an item to drop or a bodypart to include in your body, the first ten options can be chosen with the number keys.

Adjusting the game difficulty
I also heard some complaints that the game was too difficult. Even though the game should be difficult, I agree with the complaints. It is hard to make a game that is not very difficult, when by definition you progress by taking down creatures stronger than yourself. However, I found a loophole! The Golem is a magical creature, that can sometimes utilize bodyparts that would be too damaged for their original owners. Thus, there is now a coefficient in the code determining what percentage of total HP can a non-golem creature or bodypart take before being incapacitated. Now the variable is set as two thirds. As this is easily adjustable, I would be happy to receive some feedback telling whether the game is still too difficult or already too easy.

I hope you have fun playing the new alpha and discovering how all these changes work in practice!

Files

golem_alpha_3_windows.zip 248 MB
Aug 19, 2024
golem_alpha_3_linux.zip 46 MB
Aug 19, 2024
golem_alpha_3_mac_intel.zip 31 MB
Aug 19, 2024
golem_alpha_3_mac_silicon.zip 27 MB
Aug 19, 2024

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Comments

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Intriguing, flavorful, but there's some technical and balance issues right now.

The biggest thing moment to moment is combat being incredibly volatile and lethal. You certainly don't have to worry about the game being too easy in its current state. If basically any enemy chooses to attack you in the head(or brain, or heart, etc) and rolls well, you die. This can happen even with unusually good gear and when the player gets the jump on an enemy. Also, the percentage chances of all non-internal bodyparts to get hit being equal or roughly equal means that the player pretty much always wants to hit enemies in an essential bodypart like the head or torso. Perhaps it should be easier to disable enemy limbs relative to something essential? It'd be nice for the player as well-maybe it could be presumed that you use your arms to block attacks so they always(or very likely) get hit first when attempting to hit head/torso. Defensive stance making this more likely would make sense, but I do think it should always happen to at least some degree in order to lesson random oneshot deaths. It also probably shouldn't be possible to target internal organs unless the external body part is badly damaged or something like that.

The start of the game is very RNG heavy. 


Above is an image of a player spawn which is: a). inside a poison cloud, which poisons the player after any move regardless of if they move out of it, b). within eyesight of several enemies who all could be potentially lethal in a 1v1, and c). with no path to take that will not player in a hazard or next to at least 1 enemy, potentially both after 1 turn. I don't think there's any possible way I could have survived this start. Maybe starting location should not allow hazards/enemies within a certain radius.


Lastly, I should mention that the game seems to perform very slowly(especially when saving a game) and sometimes crashes. Above is an error message I got from a crash.

I don't think hitting ESC should save and quit a character when ESC also backs out of some selection prompts, it's easy to accidentally hit ESC one too many times and wind up inadvertently going through the slow character save.

Thank you for playing, and for the detailed feedback! I will definitely give some thought to your points.