Heya, developer Felix here. June can best be described as a SPRINT of progress, and was arguably one of the strongest months for Soulbreaker development. In this update I’ll of course share what’s been accomplished last month, but also some of the behind-the-scenes details, like how I’m designing Soulbreaker’s progression system, and just how much I hate working on UI stuff. I hope you enjoy!

TL;DR: In June I finished most of the game’s UI and implemented a new progression system from the ground up.

Work-In-Progress Shrine Area of Soulbreaker

Designing a Progression System for a Roguelike

Permanent progression and Roguelikes technically don’t fit together. A roguelike used to imply that you lose all progression upon death, which was established by OG titles such as “Rogue” (1980) and “Beneath Apple Manor” (1978). If you die, it’s game over, and you start fresh.

Screenshot of the original Rogue game.

But since back then, game developers have been busy innovating on the formula and created a new sub-genre, often called Rogue-Lite. Being able to permanently upgrade your character is immensely satisfying. We enjoy training ourselves, and therefore our characters, and having that awesome sense of progression. There are many games who have done this well, but some of my personal favorites are Rogue Legacy, Binding of Isaac, HADES, Cult of the Lamb, Dead Cells, and of course the Souls series, all of which inspire me while working on Soulbreaker.

Character Perks

Path of Exile's Insane Skill Tree

Looking at our roots with Dungeons & Dragons, I decided to focus Perks on affecting the player’s body & base abilities, which in turn made me look at D&D’s classes and feats. I realized that this was also a perfect opportunity to tie these abilities to the people you meet along your journey. For example, the Sips “skill tree” offers you abilities based on a Chaos Sorcerer, while the Ohio Jack tree offers you abilities focused on Survival. Not every skill tree is immediately accessible, so in some cases you'll need to meet that person first, or even complete a quest for them.

I want to make sure that Character Perks are meaningful to gameplay. I find skill trees that solely focus on increasing a percentage here, or an extra number there, can be pretty boring to some players. I personally don't care too much about investing in a perk that increases my fire resistance by 1%. Instead, I enjoy perks such as "Diehard" giving me an extra chance if I die for example.

Character Perks are something that will evolve as the game gets further in development. I foresee that more will be added, and some may be tweaked for power balance.

Item Crafting

Another fun way to progress through the game is by finding blueprints for powerful items and crafting them at a place I currently call the "Soul Forge". Crafting items in this way enables you to find them during a dungeon run, making the game even more dynamic with every item you unlock.

I Hate(d) UI

Seriously. Designing a UI seems simple enough. Make some cool shapes, ensure they clearly communicate the required information without bloating the screen, but then it starts: Implementing that beautiful but non-functional UI you just designed. You get it looking oh so perfect but then test it on a non-16:9 resolution and it looks awful. Finally you figure out the anchoring and scaling properly but oh, now the UI is hardly readable on certain backgrounds. Don't even get me started on controller support. In my 14 years of working on games, I've never paid much attention to UI and always left it to the end to deal with.

Gotta love UI bloat

Not this time. Somehow my hate for UI work turned to spite, and I dedicated myself to making the best damn UI for Soulbreaker. I studied other games' UI. Found out what worked well and what didn't. Figured out what info is actually necessary to display, and what just clutters the screen. I actually ended up kind of enjoying the work!

Soulbreaker now has a beautiful and functional UI that doesn't bloat the screen with too many details. I based almost all of its shapes on D20 dice. Instead of colors I stuck to black & white, as that fit our lore better and beautifully contrasts the colorful backgrounds of the world and its characters. I still need to finish a couple things on it to get it looking just right, so no screenshot to share yet.

What's Next?

Here is what I'll be working on in July & August:

• -Implementing more Perks
• -Finishing up all of the writing for Act 1
• -Lots of FX work
• -Environment Design

Til next time y'all!
- Felix