Mechanic Brainstorming

[MicroChasm]

This is a place to just throw out ideas on mechanics that we think would improve the game. Anything goes, doesn't have to be good, or complete.

I think that it is extremely difficult to fit an upgrade system into our game. Because the game has tight constraints, it could be hard to even come up with an upgrade for a specific ability, or it could be that upgrading some abilities makes them extremely strong, since there is not a lot of nuance in the stepping up.

It could be the golems get a free attack on you when you move from a tile adjacent to them to a tile that is not adjacent. Maybe they reach out and hit you or something. This would make them much more difficult to deal with, and a more immediate threat instead of being easy to manipulate as they are. It could also cause serious issues if you let yourself get surrounded.

There could be a type of golem that redirects attacks, so that if another golem can't hit you, but they can give the special golem, the attack gets redirected through the special golem and into your tile.

It could be that if golems are next to one another, they power each other up and do additional damage. It could also be that their attacks are modified in some way.

You could activate a shield, which takes an energy pip when you get hit.

We could introduce status effects, like slow, confused, cold, on-fire, etc.

We could take a page straight out of the super auto pets playbook and have an artifact leveling system. It could be that there are a fair number of artifacts, and they are somewhat common but not especially strong. You can find duplicates, and if you find three then you level up the artifact to level two, and three more gets you to level three, with the effect increasing. Then the run would be effected by how the artifacts change the experience and give you options, and you have to make the decision of whether to give up an artifact for a stronger one or hold on to it in hopes of leveling it up.