Initial prototypes and inspiration

One of my favourite video-game genres is the roguelike. Often times games are hard because they expect the player to memorise long sequences of actions, but roguelikes aren’t like that. Roguelikes drop the player into randomised scenarios, forcing them to adapt to survive.

Currently, there is an abundance of both action roguelites and traditional turn-based roguelikes. Even though they arose from the same source of inspiration, a large rift separates the two genres.

Rootin’ Tootin’ Lootin’ & Shootin’ came about from the desire to bridge the gap between genres – to create a roguelike that could fuse fast-paced action with thoughtful, turn-based strategy.

I got to work on a simple game prototype using my favourite game framework, Löve2D. I first nailed down the most important mechanics, moving and shooting, to get the game up and running quickly.

Initially, the game was inspired by a certain secret character from The Binding of Isaac: Repentance. This character completely turns the game on its head by introducing a new, aggressive playstyle to the game. Enemies he kills drop coins, vanishing if not quickly picked up, dethroning the previously dominant strategy of simply standing back and shooting from afar. I implemented disappearing coins into my game and, within the first week, had a pretty fun game.

During this first week I added random level generation, enemy AI and 3D wall rendering, but there was a long way to go. Despite coins being so prevalent, there was nothing to spend them on, all bullets travelled instantly, so there wasn’t much strategy involved in dodging – and worst of all, simply walking around was frustrating, as you could not move towards a wall if you were even slightly too close.