Four Elements 🥵🤢🥶😵
FOUR ELEMENTS 🥵🤢🥶😵
Play as Empedocles, master of the four elements, as he defeats foes and climbs to the top of Tower Etna! Collect and craft potions that transform you into the different elements, and bend the laws of nature to your will!
Made over three days during the 7 Day Roguelike Challenge.
RULES
This chart, known as the 'Laws of Nature,' describes how much health will be gained or lost by a character in each elemental reaction. In this example, when YELLOW interacts with BLUE or vice versa, BLUE gets +1 health and YELLOW does not gain or lose health.
In this example, when YELLOW interacts with GREEN or vice versa, YELLOW gets +1 health and GREEN gets -1 health.
CRAFTING
When you combine two potions, they become the next potion in the circle, moving clockwise. In this example, YELLOW + RED = GREEN and RED + GREEN = BLUE etc.
If you combine two potions diagonally, they also continue clockwise, with the diagonal arrow being drawn from left to right, then moving clockwise along the circle. So, in this example: YELLOW + GREEN + BLUE and BLUE + RED = GREEN.
UPGRADES
Collecting orbs allows you to change the laws of nature. Grabbing an orb will change what happens to the orb's color when it interacts with your player's current color. So in this example, grabbing the orb will subtract one from GREEN's interaction with BLUE, making the above number -2.
That's all you need to know to play the game. Hope you have fun!
p.s. If you pass floor 44, post a screenshot in the comments, I don't think anyone has beaten the game, and you could be the first!
Comments
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Fantastic!
I won! It is addictive :p
I settled on having lots of life gain and precise weakness cycles. Then, I tried to always have 3 colors in potions.
But I feel that with the wrong start, the game can’t be beaten (only minuses, or one color doesn’t have minuses). I rerolled quite some times.
(and I cheated a bit: when you pick a + or -, if you quit the level faster than the animation, the modification is not taken into account, it helped to avoid unwanted minuses).
Awesome work! On Pico-8, I am impressed.
Wow, you're the first I'm aware of to beat it, congratulations! I was not aware of that bug, that is a clever way to use it to your advantage as well. You are right that there are some starting positions + series of unfortunate events that may kill the player through no fault of their own. I ran out of time to balance the build generation + random enemy placement to avoid impossible situations, so I simply left it completely random. I have plans for how these issues could be fixed in a future version of the game. Thanks for playing!
It's brilliant! Any chances for standalone binaries?
Thank you! I didn't bother uploading the binaries, but I can do that soon.
Would be great :)
I thought this mechanic was creative and unique. I very much enjoyed playing your entry. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you!
I thought a 2x2 couldn’t be done, and how wrong I was! I love the aesthetic, theme and puzzle. Great job.
Thank you so much! The idea for the game started with the question of how small a square-grid roguelike could get, and I think the mechanic suits the 2x2 grid
This is really addictive. It's extremely small scale tactics, but the small numbers and color combination mechanic make it really satisfying to solve room after room. My best score was getting to room 16, at that point with three enemies it's pretty tough to avoid same-color attacks. Some of the rooms appear to be blocked when you and the enemy don't deal any damage, but it seems like the game recognizes when you're in lockstep and moves the enemy to the other open space to let you through the door. Really well done, this is the kind of game I would love to have on my phone.
Thank you! I was inspired by the touch-control scheme of mobile roguelikes like Cinco Paus and Imbroglio, and I agree it could be neat to make a version of this game for mobile. Glad to hear you liked it : )
Clean & fun to play. I liked being in a standoff with an enemy that cant kill me. Great release from Galactical
Cool and compact roguelike! I like the clean-looking graphics and the strategy of controlling the colors (either by laws of nature or mixing/drinking potions). c:
Thanks! Glad to hear you like it.