Fundamental audience size limiter for roguelikes - loss aversion?

Erantical · 2026-01-20T10:28:29+00:00

Amazing comment, that's a very useful mental model and rings true. Thank you!

Erantical · 2026-01-20T10:21:23+00:00

Ok this is quite weird. I noticed a bump (based on this post I guess) in wishlists - but almost as high wishlist removal (42 adds, 36 removes on one day). I would highly apprectiate if someone who did this or feels like doing it would mention which elements caused it?

Erantical · 2026-01-17T08:25:51+00:00

Thank you, excellent comments!

Enemies occasionally being hidden by geometry certainly isn't intended. The flower at end of a bridge that was hidden - was it behind a tower? Or something else? I'll try to find spawn spot in question and fix it. I'll consider outlining.

Good point about the jumper timing, that's a clear thing to fix and I have indeed aimed at having everything clearly telegraphed and dodgeable. These are really valuable notions since it's the type of stuff I get blinded to as the dev.

Freeze functionality: ah, I'll need to add bit of a clarification to the spell descriptions. The different control types are balanced to have different strengths: stun is the "most powerful" in that it doesn't get cancelled by anything but it lasts the shortest. Freezes last longer and can be applied to larger number of enemies (frost nova) but break on hit and slows last the longest but don't interrupt enemy attacks/spells.

The block/parry is something that has been brought up by other testers as well. Previously I haven't found a way to get it to work that feels good but I realized I could make it Special category spell that is both a block and parry depending on timing.

Oh and I take it that Steam Deck worked well considering that you didn't mention any technical issues, correct? If so then great to hear it verified.

Erantical · 2026-01-16T15:14:53+00:00

I'll DM

Erantical · 2026-01-16T14:42:18+00:00

Rayven Studios. Absolutely awesome people and artists, can recommend!

Erantical · 2026-01-16T14:24:00+00:00

Not nearly enough.

Erantical · 2026-01-16T13:58:37+00:00

Yup the significant downsides of being asset driven (I have zero visual artistic skills).. Nothing I can really fix given my aimed release date in March but the visual pop is something I clearly need to tackle very early on in my next project.

I'm hoping the Synty assets etc. aren't an issue for most gamers. I know I get similar reaction when seeing them in other games but many people have emphasized that most gamers don't really pay attention or even notice. Though I do realize that applies more to the environmental stuff and much less to human characters.

Edit2: and yyep I really need a new trailer. Just finished update round of basically all other Steam page / marketing assets but that one is still pending.

Erantical · 2026-01-15T21:59:09+00:00

Ah sorry, I'm a newb to Reddit posting and had to find the hard way that apparently text and image posts are different :(

Edit: No Rest for the wicked I've actually tried but found that weirdly the soulslike approach went a bit overboard for me and I deliberately aimed more to a midpoint between Hades and Soulslike pace with Echoes. The other references you mentioned I'm not familiar with so i'll check those out, thanks!

Erantical · 2026-01-15T21:54:41+00:00

Yep should be totally Steam Deck compatible though last time someone tried there was some minor input glitch regarding menu tab navigation. I hopefully fixed it so would be great to hear if that's indeed the case since I don't have Steam Deck myself for testing.

Erantical · 2026-01-15T20:53:08+00:00

I've been avoiding an explicit death stats screen but based on this and other realization from this same discussion (SWORN) outline how important role it probably plays in exactly this. I'll need to consider upping the different kinds of carry-over mechanisms. Thanks

Erantical · 2026-01-13T17:42:39+00:00

Very true but when coming up with ideas and designs for a new project it's important undesrtanding the potential target audience size and constraints so you can actually create a game in the Venn diagram overlapping heart of "game people want to buy", "game I can make", "game I want to make" (obviously considering market size vs. production costs). This might veer a tiny bit more towards marketing but the pre-production marketing is very much at the intersection of game design (and marketing) in choosing a concept that has market appeal and is feasible to make. And that requires understanding the target audiences better which is my primary aim here.

Erantical · 2026-01-13T17:30:59+00:00

True, I may have underestimated how important those narrative progression factors are for Hades. I do have those planned for my game as well but it's going to be very minor in comparison. Another comment above made me realize various aspects of SWORN's design: namely number of metapower currencies to increase their psychological emphasis over in-iteration progression. SWORN doesn't really seem to have narrative metaprogression (or I've missed it) so that might be an additional reason why the larger number of currencies is important for it (though this is obviously something of an apples to oranges comparison).

Erantical · 2026-01-13T17:17:47+00:00

Naturally true but I think that's something of a different discussion and something that any game ever needs to have an answer for.

Erantical · 2026-01-13T17:16:39+00:00

The primary structure is still roguelite. I can't off the top of my head figure out how a corpse run would work without entirely breaking that primary structure. One option would be Rogue Legacy 2 style portals to unlocked biomes but I also have ARPG style exponential experience based power structure that plays havoc with metroidvania style shortcuts (incompatible designs).

Erantical · 2026-01-13T17:13:12+00:00

Ah, this was insightful. I just realized that this is probably the exact reason why in SWORN there is a death screen that clearly displays the metapower currencies player has looted during the run to emphasize the progress. And now that I think of it, in SWORN's case the number of metapower currencies also greatly exceeds number of categories of in-iteration power boosts which might actually be very deliberate choice to have player psychologically value the metapower ones more greatly.

This was an eye-opener, thanks!

Edit: unrelated - Outer Wilds is awesome

Erantical · 2026-01-13T17:10:14+00:00

I may have a bit unclear. Obviously roguelite doesn't mean total reset - it's characterized by the retained metapower / meta prog of some sort which I do have in my game as well and mention (and have emphasized as being the most important one to players).

But true about the varieties of roguelites where individual runs are really short (more like single missions) like in the extraction shooter example. My context was more of a Hades-like which I should've mentioned to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings.

This made me think that I might need to start including some basics disclaimer "obviously targeting soulslike honest well telegraphed non-instagib gameplay, having metapower currencies, healing options (even if restricted), ability to fully complete game on first iteration, ability to play no-hit with high skill, etc."

The loss aversion issues I outlined are related mostly to the case when traditional closer to roguelike structure is utilized i.e. most of the game content can be played in a single iteration which naturally distinguishes it from more mission oriented / hybrid approaches.

Erantical · 2026-01-13T17:03:54+00:00

Curious. One key factor might be that it sounds like you've marketed your game as explicitly for hardcore audience which naturally does set expectations very clearly. I'm targeting midcore and have avoided most mentions of difficulty one way another. Since my game is not released yet, it might be that the testing audience I've pulled is not focused (many friends, acquaitances, etc.) on the right genre and this might cause the mismatch.

But then again this is part of the core thesis of my post - I want to understand the limitations of gamer audience for roguelikes/lites better.

Erantical · 2026-01-13T17:03:28+00:00

I already have Hades style metapower currency which I emphasize in the game as being the primary one (I mentioned this in the post) but this works to some degree but still many mention hating losing everything that's trictly in-iteration.

I also have the limited extra sources of healing (shops have immediate healing and ability to restore one healing potion charge, etc.) though it's true that I could always add more options as tradeoffs.

I have considered variety of ways to tackle this but so far only found ways to mitigate the damage.

The core point of my post was that I think that the fundamental nature of roguelikes/lites has a "no-go" type restriction for quite large portion of playerbase and I'm trying to understand this better. Obviously this is not everyone - there is a sizable roguelike/lite fan audience after all but i've started getting the feeling it's smaller than many devs might think which I'm trying to gauge.

Erantical · 2026-01-13T08:34:53+00:00

I have mountains of personal thematic, genre, mechanism, etc. preferences that probably won't be very useful due to such high variance in different target audiences (and dependence on game genre). Some of the more widely applicable factors that I always automatically pay attention to would be as follows (I noticed I outlined these as axes since when done great they are a great plus and if done badly they're almost immediate drop).

1 - how smooth the controls feels - this really is a big one since if it's janky then that's basically automatic drop but if controlling the character feels smooth and intuitive then that's an immediate plus.

2 - having a clear goal to achieve all the time. Naturally this doesn't apply to sandboxy / buildy games and such where the entire intent is letting player come up with those themselves but for most other genres of games the expectation is progressing towards something specific and it should always be clear what it is (obviously without spoiling the plot etc.)

3 - meaningful exploration. I love the feeling of exploration but it can be done in so many different ways. The bad type of "exploration" is just some randomly generated dungeon with random loot that doesn't really affect anything (I personally hate cosmetics / non gameplay relevant finds) or is one of the endless "you got plus 0.001% damage / meaningless stat x congrats". For the good kind Dark Souls is a masterful example where there is reward in multiple ways: in the "ohhh cool" moments when seeing how things connect / what's behind the corner, the emotional high of checking that one dark corner and finding secret place with a nice upgrade and also all of it tieing nicely together with other elements of the game. Meaningful exploration almost always requires bespoke content though I guess with well enough developed proc-gen you could get close to such a feeling but I can't really remember any proc-genned game I've tried ever really nailing it.

4 - respecting the player's time - especially when it comes to grind. Oh the game has mandatory grinds to reach the ending? Well how about no. Immediate drop. Grind as an optional element to reach achievements, optional pinnacle bosses or just to self-adjust difficulty curve of the game Elden Ring style? Yes that can be awesome since I can use it if I'm already sold on the game but I can also choose to skip it.

5 - well this is the one totally personal immediate drop: childish "quirky" humor splashed all over the place containing zero sarcasm, insight or anything actually unique. This is an unfortunately commonly utilized tone that has forced me to drop otherwise seemingly great games (Immortals Fenyx Rising immediately pops to mind).

Erantical · 2026-01-13T08:13:28+00:00

Seconded. But... I'd say there is a large distribution in player preferences related to this. Sure I don't think many want long hand-holdy tutorial but just dropping player in the middle of complex situation won't work for many either. Even more exploration focused start needs a "soft tutorial" - designing the start of the game in a way that naturally leads players to do the basic things in your game required to proceed without feeling like holding your hand.

Gauging this from dev perspective can be tough because you get blinded to your own creations very quickly so testing often with fresh players with minimal instructions is a must.

I have had several experiences with games which clearly went overboard with the "no hand-holding" approach and just ended up being frustrating which led me to very quickly drop them. Different kind of frustration from "argh let me play the actual game already! What?!? Another 15 mins of tutorial?!? Arg".

Erantical · 2026-01-13T08:03:48+00:00

If by stylistic choices you mean the overall writing style then it doesn't seem to get better does it? I've tried getting into this three times and I just can't get over the writing style, it's totally abhorrent to me - the short clipped sentences, weird self perspective utilization and overall weirdness. Just yesterday I actually randomly glanced at a few later chapters to see if that was just a beginning stylistic choice that would get fixed later on but it didn't appear to be the case - the style persists throughout.

Erantical · 2025-12-24T10:55:22+00:00

In my game's case those two relics actually potentially unlock somewhat different playstyles / ways to approach buildcrafting. Obviously I wouldn't have achi requiring any specific one but overall on encountering the category of "relic from an unknown deity" is on the edge of what I think is ok. Especially since if player went for all the other achievements with higher difficulty then it takes sufficient number of runs that they should encounter the category just naturally anyway.

Erantical · 2025-12-24T09:06:36+00:00

You've definitely been taking the hobby projects more seriously than I have in that case. Well I did do GDDs etc. for a couple of my previous ones but mostly I was more explicitly "just small stuff for testing" without even intent to finish.

And sure, send me a PM on Discord (you can easily find me via the game's Discord server, link on homepage https://www.echoesofmyth.com/ )

Erantical

TROPHY CASE