The Horror
35March 20, 2012 by Chris Whitman
Ever since I’ve moved to Vancouver, all I’ve done is work on horror games. Run (a body-horror-themed Flash game still in the works), Glitch (not actually horror, a little joke, you see), and now this—
This is Porta Lucis, a little Roguelike completed in about six days for 7DRL, the 7-Day Roguelike event. It is strongly inspired by the film Jacob’s Ladder and the works of Japanese author Kobo Abe. Like a lot of the things I do, I tried to break some conventions in what were, to me, interesting ways—for example permadeath works a little differently here than it at first appears.
As is typical of my style, it also contains rather a lot of text. You can mouse-over anything in the game for a title and click for a description (and I recommend that you do so). There is combat, something I don’t usually do, but it is deterministic and there is no health, so either you figure out what you are doing and make good tactical decisions or it will be a very short game for you. Plan on doing a lot of running.
There are multiple ways to end the game, none of which are readily apparent. I don’t want to say too much about it, because it is definitely a concept piece, but I will say that even though it’s a bit convoluted, it’s not about ‘getting it.’ Think of it as just something that is happening to you. These are things you experience and I’m not trying to get any particular reaction out of you or to trick you in any way.
Hopefully you find it a short, rewarding game with a few ‘aha!’ moments. The readme included in the .zip file describes the basic controls, and everything else should be clear (well, clear-ish) from the game itself.
Porta Lucis — Windows executable
Porta Lucis OS X — Mac executable for OS X (10.6-10.7)
Update #1! There’s an OS X version now!
Unfortunately it only works on recent versions of OS X due to complications with bundling Python applications under a bunch of constraints. Best, I could do in such a short time frame, so I hope it works!
Please let me know if either of these don’t work for you (assuming you’re running the correct OS version).
Update #2! Fixed a couple issues. There was a typo in the intro text, of all places, which is now fixed. Also, the game previously could not be switched into fullscreen mode or the quit menu brought up from the text screens. This is now fixed.
Update #3! Sorry, I broke the Windows build on the last update. It is now back and working properly again. Let me know if you have any problems running it.
Update #4! Fixed two issues that were brought up a few days ago—1. when you have taken pills, you can no longer view descriptions of objects that are no longer visible. 2. After pills wear off, Scavengers should handle standing in any objects that are now visible again in some sort of mostly reasonable way.
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Hi!! I need the Mac version! I hope u’ll work on it!
I’ll play the windows version for now…
This is nothing like Rogue Squadron
Call it artistic license!
I’ve been obsessed with the game for several hours now. It’s satisfyingly complex for something with so few systems! Excellent work!
Hey, thanks! It was a good crunch to get it done on time, but I found it really satisfying. I’m definitely mulling over the idea of doing a longer form Roguelike at some point, probably graphical.
Even after several more hours of gameplay I am still figuring out additional nuances. While I can regularly reach the first ‘good number’ I have yet to reach the second one. Every time I die I feel like it was my fault — usually because I was careless, and only rarely is it because I have depleted every possible resource available to me. It feels very well balanced. Again, just a fantastic job on this.
The only “bug” that I think I’ve encountered is that your level generation will occasionally place a doorway at a T junction of two walls. This lets you see into other rooms, but since you can’t move diagonally you can’t get through. It’s a very minor point but my guess is that it wasn’t an intentional design choice (and since everything else seems so intentional, I thought I’d bring it up).
Thanks! I was lucky to hit on an idea that had legs. I’ve thought about expanding it a bit, but honestly I think it works really well as a small game, and I wouldn’t want it to wear out its welcome.
The doorway thing is totally a bug. I’ll try to look into it if I have time, but it might just wind up remaining one of those quirks (I’m a little overloaded with projects right now).
Glad you’re enjoying the game!
I’m running the windows version (Windows 7) and after the intro text fades with the word door left, the window closes.
Prior to the text disappearing any key I press on the keyboard re-illuminates the text, but it then continues to fade.
I’m also unable to go full screen during the intro as well.
Looking forward to trying this out, thanks for any help.
Yikes, I think you’ve got the outro text. I’ll dig. Thanks!
Argh, the Windows build was totally broken when I posted the update. Thanks for pointing it out. It should be working now.
Just downloaded again, but I’m still running into the same issue.
I just downloaded and unzipped it fresh and it runs just fine! I’ll try to get someone else to test it and see if they get the same issue still. Thanks.
Cleared my cache, re-downloaded and now it’s working. Sorry for the confusion there, I should have known better.
Thanks for the quick help! Off to play!
You’re welcome! Thanks for catching that.
Is it possible you’re using a browser that is caching your downloads? I’m not sure what to suggest, as I no longer experience the problem on my Windows 7 PC.
Such a cool gem of a game, I heard about from the Video Games Hot Dog podcast. I’ve played this many more hours than I expected I would and have enjoyed every minute of it. Still trying to get to level 10.
i would love to see some sort of postmortem of this, i feel like there’s a lot going on under the surface here that i don’t quite understand and there hasn’t been much discussion of it online at all.
Sure, happy to oblige! I’ll try to get something together this weekend.
Very interesting roguelike. Thanks for making this.
Love the game!
Just noticed a small bug, though: if you trap a scavenger in the light and then take a pill (I was doing this to see if they could see the lights in that mode), they can wander onto a crate and get stuck there. When the pill wears off, they’re invisible, but knifing the crate gets you killed.
One other bug: on the Mac version, at least, when I’ve taken a pill, I can still mouseover invisible objects and see if, say, there’s a light in the room where I’m standing.
Hey, thanks for the reports! I should be able to get a maintenance release out this evening.
OK, new update is out which ought to fix these issues!
It’s planned a GNU/Linux version?
There isn’t, since I don’t have a Linux box to set up to build it on or time to put one together; however, I’ll probably release the source at some point soon. It’s written in Python and the dependencies (libtcod, SDL and zlib) are all cross-platform, so it should be relatively easy to run using the interpreter on any platform!
[...] porta lucis is a game in two layers, equally compelling: one is a sparse dungeon crawl that emphasizes cautious maneuvering to avoid being cornered by opponents and the other is a frame story that develops independently of the dungeon crawl, kind of like my own calamity annie. there are also moments of brief overlap and tension between the two. posted 8/21/2012 at 10:28 pm under gamepermalink rss feed trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment [...]
I like it, but the levels feel a bit too large. Maybe have the individual rooms be smaller?
Hm, I don’t know. It feels a little sparse in the first couple of levels, but deeper down there’s way more stuff.
But yeah, not in active development! This was a 7DRL project from six months ago. Thanks for the feedback anyway.
OS X — it crashes after reading the story following my third death…
It’s not crashing—that’s the end of the game! There is another ending, however.
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