A First-Person Cyberpunk Rogue-Like Hacking Action Platformer

I'll keep trying to think of more superfluous adjectives I can add to that game description. How about, "A First-Person Shooting Platformer Hacking Action Game With Rogue-Like Elements"?

Huh. I'll work on it.

So, the new game! As you may have guessed, it will have a first-person perspective, involve hacking and jumping/jetpacking/grappling-hooking around, and (hopefully) feature procedural elements and permadeath.


Rogue, for those of you who don't know, was one of the earliest computer games. It involved delving into doom-laden dungeons and fighting terrifying monsters and collecting treasure and quaffing mysterious potions. Its defining feature was that it generated a new dungeon layout every time you played, leading to infinite replayability. It has spawned a slew of look-alikes and copycats since the 1980s, and in the past few years "rogue-like" has become a genre all its own, encompassing games that procedurally generate everything from levels to weapons to game mechanics. Or all of the above.

I'm hoping to set my game in a procedurally generated future city. That will be the most challenging part of this project without a doubt. I don't have a precise plan in place, but in general I'd like to have an algorithm that generates buildings, streets, and props, and another that puts them all together into a city that changes shape every time you play.

That city, of course, is hostile enemy territory, patrolled by guard robots with big guns and other things that want you dead. Your goal is to infiltrate the city by stealth or by combat and hack into the enemy's mainframe. This will involve finding and compromising terminals all over the city. If you hack all the terminals, you win. If you get shot or stabbed or miss a jump or jetpack a little too far, you die.

In terms of actual mechanics, I'm still working out the details. The player can run around and find various helpful pieces of equipment (grapple guns, jetpacks, climbing kits, lots of guns). There will be bad guys of various sorts, and different strategies will be necessary to defeat them. There might be a stealth system. There will almost certainly be procedural generation. A hacking game isn't very interesting without a robust hacking system, so expect some sort of mini-game or challenge there.

This is a very big project, but it is simpler stuff than the RTS I had hoped to create originally. It will be a good introduction to game development and if it turns out well it will be an excellent first entry into my portfolio.

No development schedule in place yet - I have to look into what I'll need to learn and how long it will take me before I can plan one out.



Here is a blog about rogue-likes, here is a fascinating article about a guy designing an AI that designs games (the ultimate procedural game!), and here is a Mario game that procedurally generates its levels every time you play.