Arcade Mode events?

[Own]

Arcade Mode is fairly straightforward with few twists or turns as it currently stands, unless you're taking on one of the quests. Which isn't a bad thing, but I got to thinking about things that could spice up your average run.

Fairy Village Room: Function similar to 'hidden rooms' in every other roguelike in this genre (Binding of Isaac, etc). Upon leaving the floor transition and arriving at an HP orb room, you see a fairy fluttering over the exit to the next area. If you approach her she gets an [!] over her head and flees into the floor. Several ways you could branch out from here.

A) The fairy is trapped in the room with the monsters, flying away and trying to avoid them while they try to attack her. Beat the monsters before they kill her (ala Remedi) and she escapes into another room, her HP persisting from room to room. If you follow her to the end of her trail through the floor, she zaps open a magical archway at a closed wall to create a path to a magically hidden fairy village.

B) The fairy is nowhere to be seen. You have ## seconds to quickly scour the entire floor in search of the magical archway she's left open, forcing the player to beat each room as swiftly and potentially recklessly as possible to hunt it down.

C) No fairy or portal is anywhere to be seen on the level. One of the edges of the room on this floor contains a magical archway that's invisible unless the player is standing right in front of it, at which point it pops up.

D) The fairy hovers over an exit out of the next room and waits, watching you fight. Maybe she requires you get an A-Rank or above. Or she requires you take no damage. Or something else. Either way, impress her and you can continue to follow her from room to room throughout the floor to the end of her trail, where she zaps open a magical archway at a closed wall. Fail to impress her and she flees, unable to be found again.

Either one of these seem valid enough, they could also all work - there's four types of fairy in SoG, they could all have their own special requirement to gain access to the Fairy Village Room.

These special, secret rooms could contain a fairy healer, a fairy shop filled with rare items at discounted prices, a fairy who you can purchase a stat-buff for the current run from, a chest to loot, or even talent orbs. Maybe there could even be a sidequest associated with this, follow # fairies back to their village - or one of each type of fairy - and they'll set up a little fairy tree in your town. That or you can donate a total of 10,000 gold over a number of runs to bribe them to do so.

The Ultimate Rival: Currently Marino isn't in Arcade Mode. Which makes sense since he's a boss out of place - he exists after Flying Fortress but before Winter. Unless he's intended to be added to the Winter levels of Arcade Mode, having him be a complete pain in the butt in Arcade Mode could be fun too.

There could be a % chance (once per run) when going through the floor transition for Marino to walk down from the top and bump into you, taking all your gold or all the unequipped items in your backpack with his signature laugh. If you want them back you'll have to duel him, with his stats adjusted depending on what floor you ran into him on - otherwise cut your losses and continue on. If you challenge him you take a detour to his manor in an arcade room, getting everything back plus much more gold, or extra equipment, or something else special if you beat him? Survive the duel, leave and proceed to the next floor as intended.

Instead of that he could perhaps rarely appear when you clear a room, blocking the path to one of the exits, demanding you beat him in combat if you want to pass.

This is all pointless if he is intended to be added in Winter, though.

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Out of the two of these, I'd love more than anything for the fairies to spice things up. But it could also be a lot of unnecessary work just to have a secret room mechanic.

 

[Teddy]

Neat ideas! We've talked about adding semi-rare stuff like that (our inspiration was mainly Spelunky's secret floors), one of the ideas being reaching the Toy Factory and going through a bunch of challenges inside it, rewarding players for beating it with better loot, an achievement and a unique, transferable item. Not unlike your Marino-idea!

As for Marino, he is a Winterland boss for now! On a tangent, since you actually fought the weird Yeti + Frostling General, how did that fight feel? I personally don't think it's on par with the other bosses in the mode (even the Bees and The Zoo which are basically just regular enemies), but I'm just one guy!

One thing that makes me gravitate towards your first idea is the variety it brings despite ease of implementation! To echo myself from another thread, we'd love to give Arcade Mode the love it's due but we have to be smart about it so we get the most bang for our proverbial buck

 

[Own]

I wrote about my fights with Yeti+General in General Discussions, but I can recap if you like:

The Yeti is perfectly balanced, but the General seems a little off the wall. Sometimes he goes into a place where dodging his snowballs is near impossible, but shielding and moving makes escaping them somewhat feasible. The biggest problem with him is the low downtime between attacks, you can get in one swing on him after he dashes at you. Then he switches over to machine gun mode and you have no chance of bruising him at all. I get the feeling he would be a bit fairer if he had personality traits from both Frostlings. Charges at you like the Frostling Brutes, but then runs away a short distance before engaging machinegun mode like the Frostling Rangers do so you can put some hurt on him while he's running. That or maybe he only switches into machinegun mode at certain HP percentages to make it more bearable. Dash -> Machinegun -> Dash -> Machinegun with no breaks is a little overwhelming. Even if it was him triggering Machinegun every 10-20% HP, the average player could plan around it like they do for Gigaslime's spin - or knowing when to run to avoid the bat swarm.

If you do make the General easier, you may want to make it so that the Yeti turns into an Elite if the General dies first. I've always been a fan of duo bosses where the survivor gets a powerup after you kill one. Final Fantasy 4 had a boss battle like this with the Mad Scientist and his robot, Super Mario RPG with Knife Guy and Grate Guy.

! We've talked about adding semi-rare stuff like that (our inspiration was mainly Spelunky's secret floors), one of the ideas being reaching the Toy Factory and going through a bunch of challenges inside it, rewarding players for beating it with better loot, an achievement and a unique, transferable item.

Oh, I adored Spelunky's secret floors. My only disappointment was that they're never really used outside of getting their unique unlockable characters, so they were essentially more challenges than they were bonus floors. Going into one of them meant you couldn't go to The City of Gold or Hell, even if they had some pretty cool items in them.

I can think of some interesting ideas for secret floors, though.

Flying Fortress - You already have room doorways that are filled in with rubble. You also have summoning crystals. What if summoning crystals in rooms with rubble doorways had a small chance to glitch out and summon a boar, or summoned a boar automatically after summoning 10 other enemies? You get boar to charge the rubble, open up a secret exit to a special floor. Go inside and face something straight out of Touhou, where FF seems to get most of it's inspiration from. You could have the GUNDAM head floating around back and forth at the top of an empty black room, spewing out endless barrages of bullets and lasers. Your character is stuck facing upwards with infinite arrows, floating around in whatever direction you press, unable to attack or use skills. Just shoot the boss to death while avoiding projectile bombardments.

Season Temple - I see you're making hydras a regular room enemy. You could have a small crack on the wall in one of the rooms, requiring you tempt the hydra head to ram into it three times to cause it to shatter open. Going in brings you to a unique floor filled with special formations of Season Knights, palette swapped. Red / Orange / Purple Blue for the first room, the Adolescent Mutated Season Knights. Second room, Blue / Pink / Red / Yellow / Black, the Season Rangers. Final room has a full rainbow of knights, with a Season Orb on each side of the room. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. You're unable to hurt the knights in here, instead the orbs light up with a sound effect. Say, first the Winter Orb.

Smack the Winter Orb, all the enemies take damage. Smack any of the other three, you take damage and it chooses a new pattern (or maybe just starts back over from your last pattern). Succeed, Winter flashes and then Summer flashes. You have to hit those two in order to deal more damage to the knights. You continue on and on with longer and longer patterns, causing the knights to either gradually die off or them all to die at once. The battle is essentially that children's game Simon / Memory, but while avoiding Knights. Seems like a cute gimmick for a special floor, but maybe a little too much work?

Alternatively, that Simon / Memory game with the orbs could just make for an interesting Challenge Room for the Season Temple.