Welcome to the devlog for Boons & Burdens, my upcoming action roguelike. If you like roguelikes, twin stick shooters, and juicy pixel art, give it a wishlist here: Store.steampowered.com
Shouldering Burdens
The Burden of Restraint sees you escorting fairy-like creatures to the portal. They move faster when you're nearby. But if you're not careful, your own abilities can destroy them.
In the last devlog, I discussed the first B of B&B, the Boons. Players can purchase synergistic powers as they progress through portals of pestilence. A balance must be struck between collecting resources and pushing forward, as the game's difficulty is constantly increasing with every moment. But that's only half of the equation. The difficulty also increases with the choices one must make.
The Burden of Patience is the rare Burden where you can do nothing, but wait-- and survive.
The portals one uses to progress through the game offer the chance to unlock more power, but they also require sacrifice. These sacrifices are the Burdens. The other B. Burdens function like quests or objectives that must be completed in addition to simply fighting off nigh endless waves of demons. Perhaps a blood sacrifice must be made, and enemies have to be killed in specific zones, around specific totems. Or maybe in a rare bit of restraint, certain creatures must be escorted to the portal themselves, without being killed by allied attacks (and they certainly can be). It's here that the layers of this system begin to unfurl.
The same Burden of Patience, but this time around extra patience is required. The Portal Creep pact makes it just that much harder to escape every level going forward.
You see, while the Burden of Blood is always the same objective, to kill enemies within the radius of the Blood Totems, it can be paired with different "Pacts." Pacts are additional, semi-randomized modifiers that can change elements of the game's difficulty for just this Burden or for the rest of the game. So those aforementioned zones where you must kill enemies might get smaller if you choose a pact that reduces the active range of totems (also a type of upgrade). A totem is a totem after all, whether you created it or not. A clever wizard might use these details to their advantage where possible.
While above, Threat Level Twilight increased threat by 5% for only that round, Persistent Threat increases difficulty faster for the rest of the game. A dangerous pact early, but not so much near the end. Timing is everything.
A totem being a totem means that any Boons you unlocked to benefit totems might benefit the Totem of Blood for the Burden of Blood challenge. Perhaps you have a boon that increases totem range, or causes all totems to damage enemies with special attacks, or even collects gems in their radius for you. Suddenly the burden can become a sort of...what's the other B word? You get the idea.
Pacts and Boons alike can change the size of the Blood Totem's radius, or add new abilities altogether...
Boons of power, Cursed Boons with unique drawbacks, Burdens, and randomized Pacts. By the end of your journey through this dark dimension, a web of unique interactions will be woven. And even if you choose all of the same boons, and all of the same burdens on your next run, the web will still be just a little bit different.
If that sounds interesting to you, wishlist Boons & Burdens today, and get ready for its Early Access release on February 15th. Until next time! Store.steampowered.com
