The Legend of Quintavius’ gameplay mechanics are very experimental. The idea is basically a battle simulator, with several characters on either side running around and smacking each other with their weapons. But coding it from scratch has been a journey all on its own.

Almost every character has the same AI and does the following; first they find a target, then they navigate to that target, and lastly they engage in combat with the target. But this seemingly simple behavior ended up getting really complicated, and opened the door for some unusual bugs.

Characters pick a target that’s closest to them, but then must maneuver around obstacles and their own allies to get to their target. Since this is a top-down game and characters can only move in 4 directions, they switch between prioritizing up/down and left/right movement. And if a character runs into another enemy, they target them instead. Friendly soldiers will also try to stop fighting and find Quintavius if they have low health, and ranged soldiers will try to keep their distance from their target and attack from afar. Some characters even have different abilities that make everything even more complicated.

There’s so much going on that even the tiniest, most unnoticeable difference in an otherwise deterministic jumble of code can completely change the course of a battle. It actually seems to have a lot to do with chaos theory and the butterfly effect. I’m not an expert on that topic; my knowledge mainly comes from Wikipedia and Youtube videos. But its presence in my game really fascinates me, and I think it’s a sign of good game design.

But it goes further than that, because when I say a character “tries,” I mean it. Sometimes a character can get stuck around obstacles or allies trying to reach their target, or try to push another character instead of just going around, almost like they’re confused. Soldiers try to find Quintavius if they’re in danger, but they can still get caught or even trapped by several monsters, unable to escape. And ranged soldiers almost seem to get lost, trying to stay away from monsters until they wander too far and have trouble getting back to the party. These imperfections have inadvertently made these characters even more alive, almost more human.

It’s very similar to the fog of war, the uncertainty of your allies’ and enemies’ capabilities, and intentions. And the uncertainty of your own capabilities, too. Can you both fight and avoid monsters, and keep your entire team alive at the same time? Because they’re counting on you. Think about it; everyone else might also be uncertain of your intentions, too.

Some of the bugs in this game have made it more realistic. Why should I put the effort into removing them when they make the game so much more interesting? Why not decide to make them features instead and keep working on them? I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and it’s why I have such a hard time defining what a bug is. But it’s also why I’m fine with releasing the game with all these bugs. Paired with the story, I think it makes a really unique experience. You truly have no idea what will happen.

Now that my chaotic battle game is out, one of the things I’m most curious about is how difficult it is for everyone. I don’t want it to be a hard game; it shouldn’t take you more than a couple tries to win a battle, and you shouldn’t have to know all its mechanics to do so. But since this is the most complicated game I’ve ever made and its mechanics are pretty experimental, it’s tough to gauge how hard it really is.

How hard is it to avoid taking damage and being defeated? How hard is it to keep soldiers healed (ignoring that bug where some of them end up at the edge of the scene)? How hard is it to fight each boss with all their unique mechanics? I’m curious to hear what you think.

I feel like I have a pretty good balance between everything right now, but I’ll probably change some things if it would improve the difficulty. Something to keep in mind is that I intended for Quintavius to be weak. It forces you to avoid damage altogether and rely on your allies to help you fight monsters. People have suggested a way to heal yourself, but the problem with that is it’d nullify this entire dynamic.

I’ve thought about having multiple difficulty modes, but with this kind of game I feel like it’d be best experienced with one difficulty that’s designed for everyone. Maybe I’ll change my mind (again) in the future. But something else I haven’t thought of before that might work out better is difficulty scaling; changing the difficulty based on how well the player is doing. I already did something like this for the final boss, because he’s so much more powerful than everyone before him. So (without spoiling anything) on your third try and after, the time it takes to fight him is greatly decreased.

Let me know how hard you think this game or any specific areas are. A lot of my games are supposed to be really hard because those are the kind of games I enjoy, but this is one I don’t want anyone to struggle with.

It’s almost done.

The game is playable and the story is complete, from beginning to end. There’s only a few things I have left to do in terms of game content, like the world map and that giant dragon that will definitely take a while to complete (you’ll know when you see her; that will not be the final sprite). Another thing on my to-do list is the credits, right now it just says “Made by Immanent Death.” I’m even thinking about adding a few more secrets to make things more interesting, just for fun.

But the biggest problem I’ve been facing, because of how much bigger this game is than any other game I’ve made, is how many bugs there are. They’re anything from barely noticeable details that don’t affect anything, to game-breaking glitches that have flown under my radar. Figuring out how to fix one could take anywhere from a few seconds to several days or even weeks. And keeping track of them has been extremely difficult; my bug list is enormous, and a mess, and it’s probably outdated, too. Because what baffles me the most is when I don’t touch the game for a while, and then come back to find bugs that never existed before. How did that happen?! I don’t know if something changed in the browser or HTML5 or Stencyl when I wasn’t looking. And I’ve also had bugs completely disappear with no explanation. I have no idea how many bugs in my list still exist anymore.

This is why I keep making games where bugs are personified antagonists.

No matter how much progress I’ve made, finishing this game hasn’t gotten any less daunting. I still don’t know if I ever will. But here’s the thing; I’m tired. I’ve been making, giving up on, and returning to this game for over three years. I feel like the finish line is moving away from me the closer I get to it. I just want everyone to finally play my game and enjoy it and/or have mixed feelings about it.

So I’m starting an open beta. The game is available to play right now, right here, in all its epic, janky glory. It’s about an hour long and there are save points, so you don’t have to play through it in one sitting.

This begins the second time I’ve publicly developed a game, the first being for my very first game. On itch.io I can just set the release status to “In development,” but on Newgrounds I’m trying something different. I’ve made the preview page public, and when I feel it’s ready for an actual, official release, then I’ll publish it to the portal.

I cannot guarantee that it won’t crash or soft lock or do other catastrophic things. I have a list in the game’s description of the major bugs I’m aware of, as well as a complete bug list and changelog on my website, so you’ll know what you’re getting yourself into. But I also have a couple tools to help find and bypass bugs.

First, I have a Google Form for bug reports and feedback. I would really appreciate it if you could fill one out whenever you find a bug, or if you just have some feedback to share. It’ll help me organize and prioritize what I need to work on, since my bug list’s reliability is inversely proportional to its age. But also, if you just have a small comment or detail you want to point out, you can just send me a message or leave a comment.

Second, there’s an option in the settings menu to jump to save points, both as a testing tool and just a QoL feature. Whenever you see the save icon, that save point is unlocked and you can jump to it any time; just keep in mind if you go back to a previous save point, your score will be set to 0. But if the game is breaking too badly for you to progress, there’s a cheat code to unlock all save points; just type “quintessence” on the title screen.

I’ll definitely have more to say later as development continues, but you should probably still expect me to be slow about it. I should also mention that my 3+ year old laptop has really bad memory issues and could die any day now. I’ve already had the most disastrous System 32 error of all time, and it’s a miracle it’s still working. It’s especially tough running Photoshop on it, which sucks up all the memory it can get ahold of and ignores the limit I’ve set for it. So it’s quite possible there will be more unplanned delays.

But at the end of the day, what really matters to me is that my story is finally out there, even if the game itself is pretty scuffed. I encourage you to try your hardest to break everything you can and then complain to me about it with descriptive details. And thank you for being patient with me while I try to finish this game.

Sometimes I forget that I’m a gamer. The kind of gamer who sees games as a challenge to overcome, who finds completing games rewarding in and of itself. If a game is too hard, well that just means I’ve got more practice to do, and it’ll be that much more rewarding when I beat it. But it’s a double-edged sword; if a game is too easy, it’s not fun for me.

As a game developer, I try my best to make games for all kinds of gamers, but I also try to make the kinds of games I’d want to play myself. I know my games aren’t for everyone, and I don’t try to make games everyone will like. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try to make my games as fun as I can for as many people as I can.

I read a post the other day that got me thinking about Qubit again. I put a lot of time and thought into balancing its difficulty, and I ended up with something I actually really enjoy playing, more than several of my other games. I fully intended it to be as hard as it is because that’s the kind of game it ended up being, and I was happy with it being a niche game that few people might like, but people like me would really enjoy. I hope you guys know I wasn’t trying to be mean or rude when I said to just keep trying. I try to give helpful tips and hints, but I was hesitant to change the difficulty of a game, especially if it’s more fun for me the way it is.

But after thinking about it more, my viewpoint has changed, and I thought of a way for everyone to have their cake and eat it, too. It’s actually the same thing I added to Darkhouse way back when; difficulty modes. I think a game with an optional hard mode is better than a game that’s just hard. So go give easy mode a try and see if it’s more fun for you.

Darkhouse is the only other game I’ve made so far with difficulty modes, and the only thing it changes is what checkpoints are active. The original version didn’t save any checkpoints after a game over, and the game takes about an hour to beat in one run. It just wasn’t really fair, so I added modes that made checkpoints permanent so players can keep their hard-earned progress.

I didn’t think to add difficulty modes to an endless game that only lasts a few seconds or minutes. Especially for small games like Qubit, I just try to make them for the kind of person I think would like them, and I don’t really update games much after their release (I also had this weird belief that I couldn’t update a jam game with more than bug fixes after the deadline).

So I might be pretty late with this update. I’m sorry it didn’t happen sooner, but at least it’s more accessible to future players.

Easy mode changes a lot, including the player’s physics that a lot of people suggested I change; now the player switches direction faster but has a maximum speed to stop further acceleration, so it feels lighter. It’s still not an easy game, but it’s a lot better than the original difficulty. I know the mechanics can be confusing but I swear they’re not that complicated; I am not smart enough to fully understand quantum physics, I just think it’s cool.

For me, easy mode isn’t hard enough. When I changed just the player physics and nothing else, I already managed to get past 2 minutes after a couple tries. After making all the other changes, I was able to surpass 5 minutes, which is longer than the game’s song. At one point I tunneled so many times I nearly reached the right edge of the screen, partly just due to chance, but I couldn’t have done it without all the health I’d accumulated. As interesting as that was, for me it’s just not as fun as normal mode, but my hope is that more people will have more fun with it than I do.

Thanks for getting me to think about this more, and don’t ever let me forget it. Oh, and I also added an even harder mode just in case even normal mode is too easy for you.

And for the record, I’m still going to make the full version of Darkhouse an absolute nightmare.

I did the Ludum Dare, and it was very fun and neat. But the game I made turned out to be quite confusing; even I have been trying to figure out the best way to get a high score. So in this post I’ll do my best to explain what the mechanics are and how everything works (in theory at least), and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

If you aren’t sure what’s going on, the idea is that you’re at the end of the universe, when all stars, galaxies, and worlds have long since disappeared, and all that’s left is the dead cores of those stars; black dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. Not only are they drifting apart at an exponentially faster rate due to the expansion of the universe, but they’re losing mass and will eventually disappear forever.

To survive and keep your ship running, you need to acquire energy from stars you find. Your score is the energy you have by the time all objects in the universe either die or are too far away to reach, which is when time reaches 500, and if you run out of energy before then, your score is 0 and it’s game over.

The first thing you’ll need to know is that every stat in the game is one to one.

• 1 unit of mass is equal to 1 unit of energy. When you siphon a star, you gain energy equal to its mass.
• Distance and time are the same, because the distance between stars is measured in the time it takes to reach them. So the first 2 stats the game displays measure the same thing; the time/distance since the game started, and since the last star you visited.
• A star’s mass is also equal to its remaining lifetime. Over time you’ll find less and less stars, not just because of the expanding universe, but also because any stars with less mass than the time that passed disappears.

For every 1 unit of time you spend traveling, you lose 3 energy, so you’re challenged with deciding to siphon a star’s mass or farm its radiation for a portion of the star’s lifespan. You won’t lose energy while farming, and the amount of energy you’ll gain increases with the star’s mass and the time you spend farming, but you’ll also diminish your chances of finding more stars the longer you farm. So the strategy isn’t in choosing whether to siphon or farm, but in how long to farm before you siphon.

Some other things to keep in mind:

• Black dwarfs don’t radiate, so their mass is siphoned automatically. The game displays how many black dwarfs you found and how much energy you got from them. Also, the distance since the last visited star doesn't include them; instead it's since the last neutron star or black hole.
• It’s possible to farm a star past time 500, but you won’t find another star after that, and the game will end.
• A lot of things are randomized, so your success is pretty heavily based on chance. You might find yourself making decisions in hopes of getting lucky.

Here’s some exact math and values:

• 100 is 1 solar mass (the mass of the sun), neutron stars can have a mass between 150 and 250, and stars with more mass are black holes.
• To determine the mass of a star, the game chooses a random number between 1 and 500, and then subtracts another random number between 1 and 500, and takes the absolute value of the result (in case it’s negative). This makes more massive stars less common.
• Before generating a star’s mass, time increases by a random number between ⅛ of the current time and ¼ of the current time. This repeats until a star with mass larger than the current time is generated.
• When you farm radiation, the energy you gain per unit of time is equal to 1% of the star’s mass at that time for every 100 mass it has (if it has less than 100 mass, it still gives 1%). If you farm a star with 300 mass for half of its lifespan, you’ll get 3% of its mass in energy at first, but by the time you’re done farming, its mass will be 150 and you’ll only be getting 1% of that.

Now here’s the thing. This is all how the game is supposed to work. It probably doesn’t. I am not a scientist, I just think this stuff is really cool. In reality, these numbers are way larger and the equations are far more complicated, and I chose balanced game mechanics over factual accuracy.

But also, I probably made some mistakes even with my own math and code. This is my first purely strategic game, I had 3 days to make it, and I’m also just not that good at math. I was figuring out how to play this game as I was making it. But I do think I came up with something interesting, at least.

If you have any questions, feel like I missed something, or found a problem somewhere in my logic or in the game, please feel free to ask about it. I’d be happy to explain something, or point you towards a more reliable source, and if my math is wrong I’ll do my best to fix it.

This may come as a surprise, but… I want to make video games. I tend to run away after releasing a game for months on end, and it usually takes me ages to finish the next game before I crawl back out from under my rock again to share it. Well I have a solution; I’m going to make more games for game jams.

I’ve heard about Ludum Dare before, and it seems pretty neat. You get two weekends every year to slap together a game and try to finish it in a short timespan. This way I can explore and test out more of the ideas that live rent free in my brain, and spend the rest of the year working on a larger project.

I’m also going to do something that every good game dev does; make development posts, in this case every day of the jam. I tend to drop finished games out of nowhere, and I’ve made some posts about games I was working on before, but I want to do it more, and… better. I can’t believe I didn’t know how hashtags work until last year. So I’ll post about how the game is going every day on Twitter, and I’ll put a link to the thread here when I make it.

Here it is: https://twitter.com/Immanent_Death/status/1510076780077584389

After the jam I will probably continue lurking, but hopefully for not as long. I think I have a new record now.

Made a broken survival horror game.

It's a game where you gather resources to replenish your stats and survive as long as you can. Also, there a thing lurking in the darkness.

You can play this weird game here.