cruiseRL is a roguelike game developed in ~4days during the 7DRL 2021 game jam.

You are trapped in cruise ship overrun by zombies. You must find a way to the lifeboats and escape.

The ship, monsters, keys, weapons, and loot are procedurally generated.

Monsters cannot see you but can track your scent. You can visualize this in game using the key [s] . Trying to fight the zombies with bare hands will lead to certain death. If monsters track you, wait behind doors for your scent to dissipate.

Press [h] to access the help screen and learn how to play.

I could not spend the full 7 days of the jam working on this game, so I had to reduce the scope. But the game is complete and can be won ! Have fun :)

More information

Status	Released
Platforms	HTML5
Rating	Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 total ratings)
Author	Once
Genre	Role Playing
Tags	Seven Day Roguelike Challenge, Roguelike

Comments

Eldar Bogdanov3 years ago

I see nobody has claimed a speed run yet :P

Once3 years ago(+1)

Cool ! Thanks for the video and congrats on the speed run :) This motivates me to add more features and develop the game beyond this prototype once the 7DRL competition is over.

larikagames3 years ago

Really enjoyed this entry - I made a playthrough here - https://youtu.be/Mh5JtSS0Fq0

The layout and atmosphere of this is pretty interesting. It feels like the cruise version of the Marie Celeste - you wake up with everyone gone. Well done!

I don’t think I used the scent mechanic properly at all, so that’s my bad, but I thought just the concept of it was super interesting.

Well done and thanks for entering! Hope you had a lot of fun!

Once3 years ago

Thanks a lot for your feedback and showcasing the game on video ! It was fun to program, and I am really looking forward fleshing this out into a larger game later this year.

larikagames3 years ago

fantastic! that’s great news!

Lone Spelunker3 years ago

Awesome. The sense of dread and claustrophobia from your scent being a lure for enemies is really effective.

I did notice that the stairs between levels 0 and 1 do not seem to be properly connected, but that's the only glitch I found.

Suggestions:

It would be nice to add some clues as to what happened to the other passengers that you can find along the way, or other effects that can build on the theme, like finding bodies or blood or encountering other survivors.
What if they can sense your smell, but you can hear them? Close a door and listen at it, and you can tell where the zombies are shuffling by. Maybe have other sound effects that you hear throughout the ship, like rustlings, bangings, screams.
I like that the passenger rooms are varied, but it does get a little tedious to search them all for painkillers. Maybe reduce the number of them, or put some non-passenger rooms in there to break it up a bit, with interactable elements in them.
It would be nice to have clever opportunities to mask your scent somehow, or create distractions for the zombies.
Maybe have more zombies, but they move more slowly so you can actually outrun them?

Anyway, great work. Really strong theme from this one!

Once3 years ago

Thanks a lot for the kind comments and suggestions !

I think this game has potential to be expanded in many ways. Because I only had 4 days to work on it for this jam, the scope is very reduced at the moment. I originally wanted to have a much more detailed ship with realistic locations (control room, engine room, loading deck, infirmary, kitchen...). And of course, more items, weapons, enemies...

Regarding the stairs: They can only go up or down, not both ways. So when you go down from level 1 to 0, you end up in a place with no stairs (because you cannot go down anymore). So you have to walk to the location of the up-stairs. The opposite will happen on the highest level. This made sense to me when I coded it, but I see now that it can confuse players.

Lone Spelunker3 years ago

Sounds good - looking forward to seeing this game develop. It's already got a lot of great atmosphere to it.