Gladius is a single-player top-down action roguelike where the player plays a gladiator.
The setting is fictional ancient Rome and the goal of the game is to end victorious in a chain of arenas to finally reach Rome where the final boss resides. In the arenas opponents will come in waves and there will be different traps such as spike traps that has to be avoided or be used to your advantage.
- Godot 3.0
- Pyxel Edit (pixel graphics)
- Photoshop
- FL Studio (sound)
The game's progression will act as a typical roguelike where the player starts with nothing and has to progress different levels (arenas) to get better and get random loot. The player will progressively get stronger by loot however the arenas will as well. The game experience will vary depending on the loot the player aquires (ranged weapons or swing weapon (swords) for an example). If the player dies they lose everything and has to restart.
The game will be very self explanatory as the goal is simply to defeat the enemies that are thrown at you. The controls & mechanics will be shown in a tutorial before the first arena. The first arena will also only spawn enemies in waves by different weapon types, so the player will learn all the types before the more advanced arenas. The games biggest focus will be the combat and therefore its important the combat has good feedback. This will be accomplished by clear visuals and different techniques such as screenshakes, knockbacks and good sound to make weapon swings feel impactful and to easily notice if they were connected to the enemy. As the different runs will be fast the player will quickly learn how to evade and dodge different mechanics by repetition. The game is designed to increase in difficulty exponentially.