chadjemmett / jaundice

An autobiographical roguelike. A game about liver failure and how to survive till a transplant.

This is a roguelike about liver failure. You try to live long enough to get a liver transplant. There are a random number of days until you get transplanted. You have to live through the itching, the fatigue and the depression. If you can stay alive the number of days it takes. Then you get a transplant. There are a random number of days that you have to survive. You don't know the number of days. It might be 100 days. It might be 5. You never know.

Technology: Ruby Gosu: A game library written for Ruby.

Ideas:

• There's a random number of days you have to survive.
• If you are too healthy the number of days increases.
• If you are not healthy enough, you die or you get transplanted.
• There are drugs and other resources to find. Some of them decrease your health and increase your chance of transplant. other things make you healthier but increase the number of days.
• Enemies to fight. Boredom, depression, lack of money.
• You can get items to increase your health if you are close to death. But they make it harder to get a transplant.

Items

• Pain pills- They help you get farther but they decrease your health quickly.
• Antibiotics - they cure infections and increase health but push back the time of your transplant. Of course they could damage your kidneys. Then get you closer to transplant.
• Water pills - help you avoid moving slowly and increase your health. Ascities is like sloth. Water pills cure it.

Effects

• Blurred vision like blindness in Shiren
• Brain fog aka ammonia in the brain. Confusion in Shiren
• Ascities same as sloth
• Itching - This will be a new kind of effect. Not sure what it will do.
• Infection. Same as poison in Shiren.

Style

• This will be a lo-fi affair. 8bit-looking graphics. Keep it simple. We'll have abstractoins of monsters.
• Germs for infections.
• blobs for water monsters.
• spiky creatures for bilurubin.
• Salt crsystals for ....somethign. :)
• Our hero will be a little marshmallow blob guy. Starts out white. Then turns yellow as the game goes on.
• Our hero will be genderless. You will only type in your height and weight
• Like Shiren, we'll have fixed levels. Something like the 'fields of hope' 'caves of despair' 'swamps of pain' stuff like that.
• This will have a fantasy type feel. But all the effects will be real effects. Only exagerated for comic and dark effect.
• There will be a main screeen with a HUD below. You'll see messages Your basic stats and some othe info.
• I think I'll rip off 1 bit rogue. It's an iOs game.

MVP

1. 3 levels
2. 2 enemies
3. 2 status effects
4. random combat, with like, 3 - 5 hit points.
5. the basic balance between health and sickness to get a transplant.

Priorities

1. get the mechanics worked out
2. program the thing.
3. ??
4. Profit

• when the meld goes up the health goes down.
• There is a narrow range you have to maintain to get a trasnplant at the right time.
• Your meld score has to be in a certain range. 25 - 35 or so.
• Your health has to be good enough to get a trasnplant. I'm not sure of the range.
• There has to be the frustration of trying to stay healthy and happy. But you don't want to get too healthy because you want a transplant.