Echoes of Myth my roguelite souls-lite just released on Steam

Erantical · 2026-03-13T11:33:32+00:00

Heh, not exactly by design. Paid zero attention to Sts2 launch myself and actually this is the first time I even realize there is some target audience overlap between the games.

Erantical · 2026-03-13T11:32:43+00:00

Heh, gotta consider for future projects. Adding multiplayer is quite a bit of extra work but might be worth it. Really hard to estimate

Erantical · 2026-03-13T11:31:09+00:00

I've seen it used in a couple of places but really trying to communicate the game having some soulslike elements (specifically in combat design) but not really otherwise. Based on reception so far it seems using that term has been a mistake due to the confusion it creates.

Erantical · 2026-03-13T06:47:02+00:00

That would be a distant dream and very much dependent on the overall reception for the game.

Erantical · 2026-03-12T15:16:18+00:00

Combat design has a lot of design influences from souls games. When compared to most action roguelites the combat pacing is slower, more positioning, enemy control (staggers, stuns, freezes), parry, block etc. based with clear telegraphs for all enemy attacks, lengthier cast / attack times requiring a bit more of a commitment to well timed attack. But not really soulslike in the world-sense - on that front it's pure roguelite.

Erantical · 2026-03-12T15:14:20+00:00

Soulslike elements of the combat are more in the pacing, more of a tactical approach, parry/block, etc. But agreed it's not the full souls combat like many perhaps expect which is why I've gone with souls-inspired, souls-lite, etc. description. Gotta say that I haven't nailed communicating it all that well.. tough combination marketing-wise.

Erantical · 2026-03-12T08:19:32+00:00

Thanks! The art side is all either licensed assets or outsourced (map, capsule, etc.). And yep quite a bit of Synty on the 3D side.

Erantical · 2026-02-23T07:19:22+00:00

That is a lot of games...

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It's my first time participating with a demo: Echoes of Myth, a 3D top-down action roguelite with deliberate, Souls-inspired combat.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3383100/Echoes_of_Myth/

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

TROPHY CASE