About
Glyphs of Eldamir: Roguelike Edition is a 2D retro-style roguelike that features four treacherous dungeons to liberate from evil, dozens of powerful weapons/spells to help pulverize any enemy that comes your way, an advanced skill-tree system paired with character stats/leveling to provide hours upon hours of gameplay, and permadeath.
It draws its inspiration from Soul Knight (Android), Diablo II, The Legend of Zelda, and Hyper Light Drifter; and will be initially released on PC, Mac, and Linux with additional platforms coming later.
Legend has it that Eldamir, a now peaceful land was once plagued by evil spirits.
When the death toll became overwhelming, the four most powerful Elders sacrificed themselves to create the Glyphs and end the chaos.
Centuries later, a series of unforeseen events damage the Glyphs, breaking the enchantment they held over the lands, allowing evil to rise again.
It is now up to Elias to repair the Glyphs and cleanse the evil from the land of Eldamir before it's too late.
All of the GIFs and videos on this page (including the trailer itself) were recorded from actual gameplay from the current progress of the game.
Clearing a room of baddies by shooting a landmine with an arrow:
Fighting through a horde of ferocious skeletons:
Solving a randomly-generated maze to earn a reward:
Failure state of the King Arthur's sword mini-game:
Detailed weapon stats are shown within an inspection window:
- Four randomly-generated dungeons, each with their own set of unique enemies, bosses, puzzles, and theme (crypt, wetlands/swamp, volcanic, and mountainous)
- Dozens of unique weapons to help you pulverize any enemy that may be unlucky enough to come across your path (broadswords, daggers, spears, crossbows, to name a few)
- Four weapon classes: Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Ultra Rare (the more rare a weapon is, the more damage/abilities it will have)
- Four damage buffs: poison, fire, lightning, and ice (or no buff at all for common weapons)
- Scientifically-engineered weapons (landmines, grenades, poison bombs, etc.)
- Dozens of magic spells to learn and upgrade – categorized by Fire, Ice, Lightning, and Earth
- An advanced skill-tree system reminiscent of Diablo II including both active and passive skills; harness the power of the Elders by collecting Glyphs along the way to unlock more powerful spells/skills
- Numerous deadly traps to avoid and/or use to your advantage – kill or be killed by step-triggered arrows, hidden spikes, pitfalls, exploding crates, and more
- Permanent character death (when you die – and die you will... a lot – you'll start from the beginning with a fresh character and empty inventory; a full run will take anywhere from 1-2 hours to complete, assuming you live through the whole thing)
- Six different combat masteries (Warrior, Archer, Sorcerer, Assassin, Engineer, and Druid) provide a temporary buff to certain character stats and enable usage of mastery-specific weaponry/spells (e.g. you must be a Warrior to use Warrior-specific weapons)
- Permanent character stats and leveling help make runs easier as you progress (it'll be quite difficult–if not impossible–to complete a run when first starting out) and help unlock more advanced weaponry/spells
- A half dozen or more mini-games help break up the monotony of dungeon crawling (mazes, King Arthur's sword, casino games in the town's pub, etc.)
- An original soundtrack composed by José Ramón García will bring musical enjoyment to your ears while you are playing! (It is estimated to be 10 minutes in length.)
Major tasks already completed:
- Randomized dungeon generation
- Dungeon decal spawner (for randomly spawning grass/dirt on the dungeon floors)
- Dungeon AI spawner (for randomly spawning enemies within the dungeon)
- AI pathfinding (so enemies run around static obstacles instead of running into them; runs smoothly with hundreds of enemies on the screen at the same time)
- 4 melee/range/special weapons: Sword, Bow, Spear, and Landmine
- 1 magic spell: Meteor Shower
- 1 dungeon trap: Step-Triggered Arrows
- 2 dungeon mini-games: Mazes & King Arthur's Sword
- 1 dungeon boss prototype with walk/intro animations
- 7 NPCs: Shopkeeper, Sorcerer, Engineer, Blacksmith, Farmer, Woodsman, and Swordsman
- Weapon inspection/equipping window (for seeing detailed stats about an unequipped weapon / equipping said weapon)
- Sprite outlines (custom shader used to highlight unequipped weapons/items)
- Town prototype: Courtyard, Training Yard, and Graveyard areas
- Camera tweening (for focusing on important parts in the scene / allowing you to look farther ahead or behind)
- Camera shaking
- Time manipulation (slow motion)
- Player/screen hit flash
- Mouse/keyboard & joystick controls (you can look/run/attack using either at any time)
- Aiming crosshairs
I track all of my hours worked using a software called Toggl. I've been using it for the last 4 years, in fact, to track all the hours I've spent making games. It helps me to stay self-motivated and to hold myself accountable for the time I spend not working on the game; and I believe it to be a good way to estimate how much time it will take to finish a project.
If we look at the hours from just the middle section where the bulk of the worked has been done (from July 16th to December 16th, specifically), we find there was 587 hours of solid work accomplished during this 22-week period.
Using these two numbers, I can calculate that I was able to achieve approximately a 27-hour average workweek throughout this time (587 total hours / 22 weeks = 26.68 weekly hours worked).
Since I am roughly estimating that there is another 800-1200 hours of work to be done before the game can be fully released, we come to find that there is an estimated 29-44 weeks of work left to go (800-1200 hours left / 27 hours per week = 29.63-44.44 total weeks), which gives us a projected estimated release date to be between the beginning of August (best-case scenario) and the middle of November (worst-case scenario); and as such, this is the reason why the reward tiers suggest November 2018 as the estimated delivery date for the full game release.
The bulk of the funds will be used to have an original soundtrack composed and custom sound effects made. Fortunately I am able to handle all the programming myself (and thus, costs nothing), which keeps the costs down to a minimum...
I am also setting aside 10% for advertising to help promote the game when it is released; and 10% for artwork just in case I need to obtain some outside help for achieving more detailed sprites or complex animations.
Kevin, 29, Programmer/Artist
Kevin is the mastermind behind the game, spending his days programming all of the game's features, pushing out pixels, and designing every single aspect of the game. He self-taught himself how to program websites and text-based C++ games at the tender age of 12 and has since amassed a whopping 17 years of programming experience, 5 of them professionally. He has written code in many different languages, such as C# (Microsoft XNA and Unity), C++ (Irrlicht, Ogre3D, and Esenthel), Haxe/OpenFL (Android), Objective-C (iOS), and JavaScript (including Facebook's React). His prior experience, self-motivation, and dedication proves that he is more than capable of finishing the game's development and seeing it through until release and beyond.
José Ramón "Bibiki" García, Composer, Sound Designer
José Ramón García, also known as "Bibiki", is a Spanish composer and sound designer. His talents range from contemporary to electronic and list of credits include not only video games, but also short films and video art compositions. In 2016, he won an award for Best Sound during the Global Game Jam at MálagaJam in Spain for composing the soundtrack to the game, Doitean. He has also composed the soundtrack for several other games, including: Rise to Ruins, Depths of Limbo, and Run and Plunder. His years of experience, prior successes, and raw natural talent will ensure that you will be listening to one spectacular soundtrack come the release of Glyphs!
Risks and challenges
As my ex-coworker used to say, "What happens if he gets hit by a bus?"
'Tis true, if I were die tomorrow, there's no chance the game would get completed – but for your sake (and my own), let's hope that does not happen :)
Other than that the two main risks I see are:
* the game taking longer than the Nov '18 estimated deadline to release
* all of the planned features not being completed upon release
Aside from that, the risks are very minimal.
I have been programming for the last 17 years (5 years professionally) using many, many languages and have all the necessary knowledge to complete all required programming tasks.
I am also more than capable of completing the remaining artwork and animations that is expected to be required to finish the game. Some sprite work may be contracted by outside help, however, if I'm having trouble achieving a particular look -- but I don't expect there to be much of this, if any at all (though I am budgeting 10% of the funds for this reason, just in case).
Lastly, I should note that the soundtrack and sound effects will be made by one or more third-party composers, so there is a small chance that some sounds could be delayed and take longer than expected to get into the game, but I don't foresee that to cause any delay to the full release.
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ONE FINAL NOTE:
If you are reading this, thanks for taking the time to thoroughly read through the entire page! A ton of work has gone into the page itself and I am very grateful you've stuck around to experience it all :)
And if, in the end, you've decided to support the game by becoming a backer -- here's a bellowing **THANK YOU!!!!** from the bottom of our hearts! No words can express how much we appreciate you :) :)
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