RunToTheStairs

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About

Controls 
  • Move your character with the numpad.
  • Pressing [5] skips a turn. 
  • Trigger a nitro with [space] or [enter] if you have one.
  • (If the game does not react on keyboard inputs click on it and try again.)
  • Alternative controls if you don't have a numpad:
    • Vi keys for movement
    • Pressing [.] skips a turn. 
    • (For QWERTZ-keyboard-layout users [z] can also be used for moving up-left.)
How to play
  • This game is about racing to the exit (the stairs) of a dungeon floor.
  • Your goal is to reach the stairs before your opponents do.
    • You loose if your rank is 7th or worse.
    • Better ranking gives better score.
  • There is no combat.
  • Your character is displayed as an "@"-sign.
  • Your opponents are displayed as capital letters.
  • The stairs are displayed as a ">"-sign.
  • You can pick up the following items:
    • : Coins give score
    • : Permanent Speed-Upgrade by 10%
    • : Nitro - Doubles your speed for 10 turns, when ignited.
  • At the beginning you and your opponents all move with the same speed.
  • The speed of your opponents increases with every dungeon-level.
  • Your opponents can only move in 4 directions whereas you can move in 8 directions (including diagonal movement).
    • Diagonal movement enables you to cut corners and use shorter paths when traversing rooms!
  • There are 3 possibilities to overtake opponents:
    • Take advantages of your diagonal movement in rooms.
    • Find a shorter path.
    • Increase your speed by speed-upgrades or nitros.
  • You are supported by a magic navigation system:
    • One possible path to the stairs is always indicated by a colored trace.
    • Be aware: This path is calculated considering 4-way-movement!
    • Therefore it is by no means ideal when you are capable of 8-way-movement!
    • Always consider alternative routes in order to take advantage of your ability to walk diagonal.
Examples how overtaking works Overtaking by diagonal movement

See how I manage to overtake Runner H by moving diagonal:

This was very close but it worked since I could cut the corner! :-)

Overtaking by taking another route

Here I am overtaking runner H by taking another route so Runner H does not block my way:

Overtaking by igniting a nitro

Here I doubled my speed by igniting  a nitro in order to overtake runner E. The @-sign representing the player is displayed in red as long as the player has double speed. 

How to have fun in your first games
  • Play fast and don't worry too much about perfect movement - it's a racing game! ;-)
  • Just follow your navigation system.
  • Only pick up Items if they lie directly on your way.
  • If you are stuck in traffic, just follow the other runners until there are larger rooms which allow overtaking by diagonal movement.
  • Don't worry about score too much.
  • Just focus on overtaking in your first games and watch yourself climb the rankings shown at the right side of the screen.
  • Just race like this:
How to get a high score
  • In this game you get points in the following situations:
    • When you pick up coins.
    • When you finish races (when you reach the stairs).
  • The points you get for finishing races depend on your ranking:
RankingPoints11026344352617-90
  • Getting no points in a race also means Game Over for the player.
  • Picking up many Speed-Upgrades and Nitros may help you to survive later levels when your opponents move faster.
  • But be aware that surviving 10 levels ranked 6th gives you as many points as one time finishing 1st!
  • So there is always a trade-off between taking the shortest path and making a detour in order to pick up an item.
  • I'm very curios to find out what scores would be possible in my game. So I would be pleased if you could post your high-scores in the comments below! :-) 
Balancing
  • This is a score-based game with an infinite number of levels.
  • If you do not know how speed can work in a turn-based game:
    • I implemented the speed-mechanic using the "Speed scheduler" of the rot.js library.
  • In each new level the speed of all opponents is increased according to the following table:
Dungeon LevelOpponent SpeedIncrease1100%2105%5%3115%10%4130%15%5150%20%.........
  • As you can see, this is an nonlinear function since the increase of the speed also increases!
  • The increase of the players speed is on the other hand limited by the amount of Speed-Upgrades he finds.
    • Since the number of Speed-Upgrades does not increase from level to level, this means that the player will at some point no longer be able to catch up to the opponents and will eventually loose.
    • The better the player performs, the farther he gets and the higher his score will be.
  • In order to prevent all opponents from using the same path they sometimes get "confused" and take alternative paths which are inferior to the shortest path.
    • This lowers the difficulty and enables the player to get ahead of them even with lower speed.
  • The items are somehow automatically balanced due to the game mechanic:
    • E.g. if I decided to double the bonus of a certain item this would only affect the maximal length of a detour an optimal playing player would take into account in order to get this item. 
Roguelike elements
  • Procedural generated dungeons
  • Permadeath since Game-over means Game-over
  • The whole game is around an implicit hunger-clock since you inevitably loose if you lurk around too long in one level.
  • Turn-based
  • Grid-based
  • Resource management: The player decides when to use his nitros. They can be taken to the next level.
Credits and links
  • This game was created during the 7DRL Challenge 2019.
  • I was inspired to take part in this challenge by Roguelike Radio.
  • I used  the JavaScript roguelike-library rot.js by Ondřej Žára.
  • The sound effects have been taken from the following sources:
    • Oryx Design Lab
    • https://www.kenney.nl/assets
  • The idea of having an 8-way moving character outmaneuvering 4-way moving characters is stolen from "Ananas aus Caracas". This is a game one develops when doing the rot.js-tutorial. My game is based on my own version of "Ananas aus Caracas" which I kept extending after finishing the tutorial.
  • The animated screenshots where created using the software ScreenToGif.
Platforms
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Release date
Developer
Gerhard Wonner
Age rating
Not rated

System requirements for Web

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Last Modified: Mar 11, 2019

Where to buy

itch.io