Cellular Arcana (Alpha)

A roguelike dungeon crawler with cellular automata-based magic.

See the author's notes for this game here.

This is a roguelike dungeon crawler where you play as a wizard with a dumb name and inconvenient spells. Your spells are based on cellular automata, a type of mathematical model where cells in a grid interact with their neighboring cells to give rise to complex emergent behavior (the most famous example being Conway's Game of Life).

This project started as a planned entry for 7DRL Challenge 2021, but its scope got away from me a little bit and I was unable to finish it on time. It has laid mostly dormant since then, but I still think that the concept has enough potential that I would like to see it through. Eventually. Maybe.

The game is in a pretty profoundly unfinished state right now and is currently little more than a tech demo for the combat system. It has no ending and consists of an endless sequence of room battles, with the goal being simply to dive as deep into the dungeon as you can. I am pretty proud of the pixel art, though, so that's something.

Normally I prefer to get my games fully completed before revealing them to the public, but this time I thought it would be good to try the early access approach. Having recently started a new career I have far less time than usual to work on game projects. Since it's unlikely that I'll have the time to work on many full-length projects over the next year, I decided to leave this space open so that I can at least release periodic content updates.

I cannot say for certain whether I will finish this project. Game design is still one of my favorite things to do and I will certainly continue to release projects periodically, but I may very well have lost interest in this particular game and moved onto something else by the time I get a chance to work on it again.

Controls

Num Pad to move.
WASD to attack.
Q and E to cycle spells, or 1-3 to select spells.
Num Pad 5 or Enter to wait.

Credits

Cellular Arcana
Copyright (c) 2021 Adam Rumpf
adam-rumpf.github.io

Made in GameMaker Studio 2 (Version 2.3.3)
2017 YoYo Games Ltd

Music

"Underclocked (underunderclocked mix)" by Eric Skiff
From Free Music Archive
CC BY 3.0

Sound

Sound effects made with Bfxr
bfxr.net