Tainted Radiance is a rogue-like RTS game focused on unit micromanagement. I created it with Luna Charial, Alice Rameau and Thomas Saulnier.
I was the lead of the project and I worked on the game and level design.
On every unit class, the player can customize the weapon and add an active ability. Also, it was possible to upgrade the units defensively and offensively.
The goal was to make each unit class play differently each run. I don’t think that goal was reached. The runs ended up being too similar. In hindsight, it would have been probably more impactful to remove the numerical upgrade and focus on fewer but more gameplay altering passive upgrades.
As for the levels, they are generated in the following way :
- The procedure selects a random island from the library of handcrafted islands. Ideally, we would prefer to create the shape of the island procedurally but Tristan already has his hands more than full. Also, our current handcrafted islands are good enough for their purpose.
- The unit classes that will be present on the island are selected.
- Three waves of enemy units are generated by spending a “Power” score that is tied to the level. Each enemy unit has a “Power” score so the difficulty balancing of the level is more comfortable.
- The player’s spawn point is chosen among multiple ones. Our islands are completely assymetrical so the player plays a bit differently depending on where his units spawned.
- The enemy’s spawn points that are more than 10 tiles away from the player’s spawn point are chosen. This prevents long range enemy units to shoot at the player as soon as the level begins.
- Neutral interactive objects are spawned on the island. The player can use those to his advantage but the chaotic design of the combat can turn interactive objects against him.
While the level were technically different each time, they were quite small so the different starting positions weren’t different enough to provide players with different approches to the combat.
The game is playable on itch.io.
Here are 2 videos of random players who uploaded their playthrough on Youtube. It was awesome to watch them!