Hi! I'm Pablo, a solo dev from Argentina (Floppy Key). This is the devlog for my second game, The Seal Quest: Dreams of Ormaz. I'll keep this thread updated with every build, what changed and what players told me.
The idea
My first game, STRIKE!, taught me what I like making: short incrementals where every run pays for something and you always want one more go. This time I wanted to keep that loop and add what STRIKE! didn't have: a world, a company of heroes and bosses worth hunting.
You hold a clearing in the middle of the screen and the waves come from every side. You only aim; Arren, a village archer, shoots whatever is under the reticle. At first they walk right over you. That's the deal: every run pays for something on the skill tree, and every run starts back at the wall, stronger.
The epics
At the end of every land waits an epic: a huge beast with its own entrance, its own fight and a piece of loot only it carries. The common waves don't stop while you fight it. The demo has four: the Bramble King, Rotroot, the Bone Warden and the Ember Lord.
The lore ties them together: the world sits on Ormaz, a dragon who fell asleep before the world began. The epics are her nightmares. A thousand years ago an order of knights sealed them, and the seals are breaking now. Every epic you bring down wakes her a little more.
Everything is drawn by code
All the pixel art in the game (heroes, enemies, epics, items, the book, even the mouse pointer and the logo) is generated by code instead of drawn in an editor. It sounds strange, but it means every sprite can be tweaked with a number, tested, and exported to a sheet to review in one look.
Loot that never punishes you
I wanted loot to feel earned, not gambled. Each epic drops a unique piece the first time it falls, and Brunna, the smith, crafts armor from the metal the epics drop and enchants anything up to +10. Enchanting never fails, never breaks and never goes down. At +4 it starts to glow.
A storybook inside the game
The story is told between runs in short scenes, and the Book of the Millennium keeps it as an illustrated tale. Pages you haven't discovered stay sealed, with a hint that never spoils what's inside.
What I've been working on this week
- A first-launch language picker (English / Spanish), so nobody misses the prologue in a language they don't read
- A custom pixel pointer, an intro with the new logo and a loading screen of its own for the browser
- Anonymous play stats, to see where players stop and how long each epic takes
- A balance simulator that plays the whole demo with different play styles, to tune the pacing before players do
What's next
The demo is the first four seals. The full game, planned for Steam, adds many more epics, six heroes, choosing which hero you play, a bigger skill tree, dungeons and the way the hunt ends. Before that, I'll tune the demo with what you tell me.
If you play it, I'd love to know:
1. Did you reach the Ember Lord? If not, where did you stop?
2. Which epic was the best fight, and which one the worst?
3. Did the forge, the companions and the book give you reasons to come back between runs?
Free demo, browser and Windows, about 30 minutes: https://floppykey.itch.io/the-seal-quest-dreams-of-ormaz
Thanks for reading. Next update soon.