Stellarune is an action strategy role-playing game debut for our indie studio Mergician Productions.
Platform: Unreal Engine
Status: Ongoing
Team Size: 6
Stellarune
Fire spells add up to 3 burn stacks, then damage enemies a burst and burn effect.
Aether spells are neutral abilities used for defensive purposes and basic attacks.
Stellarune began with an inquiry, how can we improve upon the rogue-like action strategy formula captured by games like MegaMan Battle Network and One Step From Eden?
Trailer
Stellarune focuses on balancing luck and reaction timing, with players rolling soul dice to cast magic spells while reacting to enemy attacks. Players move in a 4x4 grid and face off against the mana-corrupted creatures to ascend each floor.
Players use WASD to move and UIOP to fire spells.
Check out the steam page for any further updates on release!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2581110/Stellarune/
Getting Started
Taking on the role of a technical designer, I shifted my attention to the implementation and design of player abilities and enemies to start on the proof of concept for an improved action strategy rogue-like game.
To create a game that successfully implements action and strategic gameplay, I aimed to program spells that invite players to create custom “builds” while also having varied enemy AI to make each encounter unique and replayable.
Enemies
I created the following enemies using behavior trees and ordering tasks for each unique enemy attack. This required a lot of quality assurance testing to ensure that each enemy’s attacks were effective, visually interesting, and telegraphed. The following attacks are for 3 enemies, 2 enhanced enemies, and a boss, with more on the way!
Ribbeam: A shy ribcage-shelled creature that fires a seemingly endless wave of beams. Ribbeam can also bury himself underground to temporarily hide from the player’s spells.
Sbrout: A mischievous globule of algae and plant matter that expels magical arcs. Sbrout is also capable of burying itself and moving underground for a sneak attack behind the player’s position.
PVP
While the spell design and enemy creation were crucial for beginning to capture our core proof of concept, Player vs Player combat was another important implementation for added features and interesting gameplay.
Here I focused on adding Xbox controller functionality as well as testing and modifying player spells, status effects, and hit registration for Player VS Player combat.
Sourcerer: A soulless mage that steals the source magic from other slain mage’s souls. He fires multiple elemental projectile spells in quick succession.
Direfly: An aggressive and fast insect that shoots stingers and flies across the board. Direflies can sting their enemies and destroy projectiles just by flying through them.
Mryga: The deer sentinel who guards the Soul Sanctum. Mryga can alter the earth and sky, causing ruptures in the ground, manifesting rays of light, crystal projectiles, and small black holes to extinguish its foes.
Bludspore: A hulking mushroom ogre who corners enemies with toxic mushroom gas and huge punches. Bludspore brings its enemies closer via toxic gas while using his punches to inflict knockback.
Lightning spells add a charge to the player, scaling their lightning damage percentage.
Making Magic
Starting by creating duplicate child blueprints to represent spell and projectile functionality, I helped program the initial 3 elements of spells. (Designed by May Li).
Fire spells add burn stack UI, which when full, deals a burst of damage and instantiates a lingering burn effect. Lightning spells scale the player’s attack, causing increased damage for other lightning spells. Aether spells are basic spells and can offer essential protection from enemy attacks.
Next Steps
While this progress has been good for capturing our core concept, we are still working on the next set of player spells, enemies, new regions, and improved game-loop.
Overall, I aim to continue to lead contributions in programming, quality assurance, and debugging efforts. We are looking forward to launch sometime by the end of 2024!