u/-niyr-

I've been building Rogue Vector for the past few weeks and pushed the button to go live today! It’s a turn-based deckbuilder where your ship velocity carries between turns. Every card you play is a commitment - accelerate to dodge something now, and you're living with that speed three turns later, usually somewhere you didn't plan to be!

There's a free browser demo, and I’d love to hear what you think! 

https://chaostheorygames.itch.io/rogue-vector

I'm prototyping Stoneheart Archive - a survival tower defence where the base is a giant walking castle. The castle movement tech turned out to be half the fun, so here's how it works:

The castle moves on a procedural IK leg system. When a destination is set, we generate a spline to it, and the castle follows the spline, rotating to establish a "forward" direction, and forward can be either end of the body, so instead of a building-sized creature doing a hundred-metre three-point turn, it just re-designates which end leads and walks.

Each leg takes damage individually, with chunks flying off as it degrades. When a leg passes its damage threshold, the castle stops moving and kneels. Enemies suddenly have a stationary target, and you're sprinting around under a wounded castle doing field surgery on its legs while the waves close in.

A problem I hit pretty quickly: the player climbs the castle via a ladder - on a body that is always moving and rotating. And when you're underneath the castle repairing legs, its own body occludes your character. The visibility half I solved with outline shaders, although it can look a bit messy. The boarding half - I parent the player to the castle's transform on ladder contact, made the ladder collider pretty generous, and then run the character controller in castle-local space while riding on top.

My question for the experts here: how do you handle character controllers on large platforms that move and rotate?

Here’s the demo if you want to give it a play:
https://chaostheorygames.itch.io/stoneheart-archive

This is the progress I made in a 2-week prototype sprint.
On the left: day 1 greybox. On the right: current build.

The idea was "the last library of civilisation, on legs, and it should feel like a big pet."

Here’s the demo if you want to give it a play:
https://chaostheorygames.itch.io/stoneheart-archive

Would love to know what you think!

A question for this sub, because it's the thing I’m most worried about: run variety is where a lot of roguelites die. We have a level-up “pick boon from 3 options” system, but those unlocks add new BLUEPRINTS that you can then build in your base. Does this remind you of a game that you’ve played? It’s feeling like a weird/interesting fusion of tower defence, a tech tree, and roguelike power progression.

There's a free demo that you can play in your browser, and I’d love to hear what you think! 

https://chaostheorygames.itch.io/stoneheart-archive

I wanted to know what happens when the tower you’re defending keeps moving! So I created Stoneheart Archive, my latest game.

You are the caretaker for a giant walking castle, and it keeps running (well, lumbering) away from you. You need to collect resources to upgrade it and defend against enemies, and each run has different upgrade options, so the castle can become a fortress of bells and flame, a plague-medicine sanctuary, or a lightning-powered war library.

There's a free demo that you can play in your browser, and I’d love to hear what you think! 

https://chaostheorygames.itch.io/stoneheart-archive

Playable Link: https://chaostheorygames.itch.io/jump-space-joyride

Platform: PC/Windows

Description:

Jump Space Joyride is a 1-4 player co-op heist game where you steal an alien spaceship, escape your pursuers, and loot everything that isn't bolted down. One problem: the controls are in an alien language. Good luck! Half your deaths will be accidents - the other half will be from your friends.

Free to Play Status:

• Free to download

Involvement: I'm the developer!

Hi cozy gamers, I’m working on a little game called Idle Skies, and I’d love to share what I’ve been building.

It's a cosy idle game that sits on your desktop while you work, browse, or relax. You start with a broken solarpunk skyship and slowly turn it into a sanctuary with robot helpers, gardens, workshops, engines, and little routines happening across the ship. You can check in for a few minutes, spend what your crew has gathered, unlock upgrades, and then leave them to keep things running.

I'm thinking about adding some features that rely on real-world time:

1. allow your robot crew to make progress even when the game is closed, so you can check back in the next day and see a range of new crops to harvest, new objectives to focus on.
2. an animated background that adjusts to your time of day (so it's night in-game when it's night for you)

If you like idle games, do you like it when the game progresses when you don't have it open?

If you're interested in following our dev journey, you can join our Discord (no Steam page yet)!

From the title: the medieval Church sold forgiveness for sins you hadn't committed yet, and they called these "Indulgences". The basic idea was: "Give us money now and God will be more forgiving later."

Need to lie? Covered.
Need to cheat? Covered.
Need to do something morally questionable in the near future? Pay up first.

The practice became so controversial that it was one of the major sparks behind the Reformation.

When I learned about this, I immediately put it in a medieval food-tasting game.

You're employed to stop nobles from being poisoned. Unfortunately, most players decided the nobles deserved it. So now you can buy indulgences before accidentally-on-purpose letting Lord Snodtooth eat poisoned pie.

https://chaostheorygames.itch.io/your-meal-my-lord 

Someone else suggested that we include Cadaver Synod in the game (a new pope dug up the previous pope, put his corpse on trial, declared it guilty, and tossed it into a river). If anyone has wacky medieval history facts that they want to see in a game, I’m taking suggestions!

Game Title: Your Meal, My Lord

Playable Link: https://chaostheorygames.itch.io/your-meal-my-lord 

Platform: PC / WebGL

Description:

Your Meal, My Lord is a Medieval Food-Tasting Simulator. You play the royal food taster in a silly medieval court. Every dish heading out to the nobles passes your bench. Sniff it, test for poison, decide whether it goes through. Do the job well, and you get paid in Beans. Do it badly, and you get executed.

Free to Play Status:

[x] Free to play

[ ] Demo/Key available

[ ] Paid (Allowed only on Tuesdays with [TT] in the title)

Involvement: I'm the developer!

This is from Thornhold - a forest-defense autobattler we just put up on itch.io for free. The river extends one cell at a time and causes bonuses to flow downstream and stack.

We've been trying to make the 'cascade' of bonuses clear - would love some feedback on whether it reads okay, or if we need to dial things up/down.

The prototype can be played for free here: https://chaostheorygames.itch.io/thornhold

I just released a free micro strategy game prototype on itch, Thornhold (playable in browser).

https://chaostheorygames.itch.io/thornhold

It started as: “Let’s make a calm nature strategy game”

Somewhere along the way it turned into: “Stack as many buffs as possible and break everything”

You basically grow a tree army and fight off orcs.

The main strategy is:

• Buffs flow down a river (so stuff at the end gets ridiculous)
• Seasons change what’s strong, so builds shift over time

We've only spent ~3 weeks on it, so it’s still rough, but it's getting that “one more run” feel. It’s free and playable in your browser, and each run takes about ~15-20 min.

If you try it, tell me how you broke it because there are definitely ways…

I've been messing around with a roguelike deckbuilder prototype and landed on a system that’s been pretty fun so far.

I've got a free browser version here:
https://chaostheorygames.itch.io/thornhold

Buffs don’t just apply to units - they flow downstream. So if you set things up right, anything at the end of the river gets stacked like crazy.

On top of that:

• Seasons change which terrain gives bonuses
• Some runs only really work if you lean into a specific season

It’s inspired by games like 9 Kings and The King Is Watching, but we’ve shifted to focus on some deeper nature systems.

This prototype is the result of a 2-week game jam. Mostly trying to figure out the balance right now.

Big question for me: did you find a “solved” strategy, or does it change run to run?

I've been working on a prototype called Thornhold. It's a roguelike autobattler where the core mechanic is routing a river through a forest grid. You get stacking bonuses every wave which flow downstream through your troops and structures.

Each run is 20 waves, with seasonal terrain bonuses that rotate every 2 waves (Mountains in Spring, Fields in Summer, Swamps in Autumn, Lakes in Winter). Cards include structures, troops, mutations, and terrain manipulation. There's also a shop, blessings between seasons, and an endless mode if you survive the run.

You can play it for free in your browser. It's still rough - this is a prototype that I’ve been working on for the last ~2 weeks, and I'm curious to hear what you think of it.

https://chaostheorygames.itch.io/thornhold

Let me know your highest wave, and what you think of how it plays!