Blessing Roulette Boosts Roguelite Engagement

February 11, 2025

Roguelite runs getting stale? Procedural blessings are here to shake things up!

Roguelites promise endless replayability, but are your runs starting to feel…same-y? What if you could ditch the predictable power-ups and give players a dynamically generated set of abilities every single time? Procedural blessings are the answer, creating unique character builds and gameplay experiences that keep players hooked. Strafekit's asset library can streamline the development of visual elements, such as icons and effects, for your procedural blessings.

A lone character silhouetted against a vibrant, abstract background representing the unpredictable nature of procedural generation

The Problem with Traditional Roguelite Progression

Many roguelites stumble over the same progression pitfalls:

Repetitive Runs: Limited build variety makes each playthrough feel like a rerun. Players quickly optimize the “best” build, killing the fun.
Stat Overload: Over-reliance on simple stat increases (e.g., +1 damage) becomes monotonous and uninteresting. These upgrades lack strategic depth.
Content Exhaustion: Fixed item pools lead to predictability. Once players have seen all the items, the sense of discovery vanishes.

Procedural Blessings: A Solution

Procedural blessings are dynamically generated buffs or abilities offered to the player during a run. Instead of finding a pre-defined item, the game creates a blessing based on a set of rules and parameters.

The benefits are clear:

Increased Build Variety: The near-infinite combination of blessing types and parameters guarantees that no two runs are identical.
Emergent Gameplay Strategies: Players are forced to adapt to the blessings they receive, leading to unexpected and creative playstyles.
Sustained Player Interest: The constant novelty of new blessings keeps players engaged and motivated to experiment.

Stylized artwork depicting a hero character dramatically illuminated by swirling golden light, suggesting the acquisition of a powerful blessing

Designing a Procedural Blessing System

Creating a procedural blessing system requires careful planning and attention to detail. Here’s a breakdown of the core components:

Before diving into implementation, consider using Nextframe's Blueprint or Ignite to brainstorm and structure initial blessing ideas, streamlining the game design phase.

Blessing Types

Establish different categories of blessings to provide a framework for generation. Examples include:

Combat: A ‘Fiery Weapon’ blessing that adds fire damage to attacks and a chance to ignite enemies.
Utility: A ‘Nimble Escape’ blessing that grants a short burst of speed and temporary invulnerability.
Exploration: An ‘Eagle Eye’ blessing that reveals hidden passages on the map.
Resource Management: A ‘Thrifty Find’ blessing that increases the chance of finding bonus resources after combat.

Parameter Generation

Determine which numerical values will be procedurally generated for each blessing. Examples include:

Damage values
Duration of effects
Range of abilities
Cooldown times
Resource costs

Implement rules and limits to ensure that generated values are balanced and don’t break the game. For example, you might set a maximum damage value or a minimum duration for a buff.

Effect Combinations

Combine different types of effects to create complex and synergistic blessings. For fire damage and movement speed debuff, consider visual effects such as Enflame Fire Shader - Realistic and Stylized Flame with Shader Graph for fire and audio such as Cinematic Punch SFX Pack for impact. These layered effects add depth and strategic possibilities.

Rarity and Weights

Implement rarity tiers to control the power level and frequency of blessings. Common blessings might offer small stat increases, while legendary blessings could grant powerful unique abilities. To visually distinguish rarities, consider using different icons (explore 2D Assets for options, such as Unique & Unusual Ingots) and visual cues (check out Visual Effects - Shaders). Use weights to control the probability of each rarity tier appearing. For example, Common blessings might have a weight of 5, while Legendary blessings have a weight of 1, making Common blessings five times more likely to appear.

A collection of diverse, colorful icons representing different blessing categories like combat, utility, and exploration

Examples

Here are some examples of procedural blessings:

Elemental Fury: Generates a blessing that enhances a specific damage type (fire, ice, lightning) and adds a secondary effect based on that element (e.g., burning, freezing, stunning).
Adaptive Armor: Provides a temporary shield that scales with the type of damage received (physical, magical, elemental). The shield could absorb 50% of physical damage, 75% of magical damage, and 25% of elemental damage for 5 seconds.
Swift Steps: Grants increased movement speed, ranging from 10% to 30%, and a chance to dodge incoming attacks, ranging from 5% to 15%.

Balancing Considerations

Balancing a procedural blessing system can be tricky. Here are some key considerations:

Blessing Synergies

The potential for overpowered or underwhelming builds is a real concern. Thorough playtesting and iteration are crucial to identify and address balance issues. Consider implementing diminishing returns on certain effects to prevent stacking from becoming too powerful. For multiplayer games, consider implementing Clean Multiplayer Pro or Clean Multiplayer Lite to ensure fair gameplay.

Deterministic Elements

Introducing some deterministic elements provides a baseline of consistency. For example, to ensure early game survivability, all players could begin with a blessing that improves the odds of the character receiving a combat or utility blessing as their first choice. Additionally, the first blessing choice could always include at least one combat-related blessing, encouraging proactive player engagement.

Player Agency

Give players meaningful choices in blessing selection. Offering a reroll mechanic via use of in-game currency, projected using Nextframe's Forecast, allowing players to specialize in certain blessing types, or providing opportunities to modify existing blessings can increase player agency and satisfaction.

An artistically rendered roulette wheel with symbols representing different blessing types, highlighting the element of chance

Implementation Tips

Here are some practical tips for implementing a procedural blessing system:

Scriptable Objects

Use Scriptable Objects (in Unity) to define blessing templates and parameters. This allows easy creation and management of different blessing types. Each Scriptable Object could include parameters such as ‘damage_multiplier,’ ‘duration,’ and ‘effect_type,’ which can then be procedurally modified.

Random Number Generation

Use a good random number generator and seed it appropriately to ensure a fair and unpredictable distribution of blessings. Seed the random number generator using the system clock (System.DateTime.Now.Ticks) at the start of each run for varied blessing distributions. Alternatively, use a player-specific seed, such as a unique player ID, to ensure consistent blessing patterns for individual players across multiple sessions.

Visual Feedback

Provide clear visual cues to communicate the effects of blessings to the player. This helps players understand the benefits they are receiving and make informed decisions. Consider using visual effects, icons, and descriptive text. For visual effects, consider browsing the visual-effects-shaders category, and assets such as Buto or Gaussian Blur. Enhance these effects using shaders like LSPP for outlining blessings or Bloom to make them appear more powerful. For icons, Healer Spell Icons are a great start.

Expanding the System

Here are some ways to expand the system:

Curses

Introduce negative blessings (curses) to increase challenge and create risk/reward decisions. Curses could inflict damage over time, reduce movement speed, or lower resource drop rates, but also increase experience gain or critical hit chance.

Blessing Modifiers

Allow players to modify existing blessings, increasing their duration, adding secondary effects, or changing their parameters.

Blessing Synergies with other Game Mechanics

Explore how blessings can interact with other core systems in your game, such as enemy types, environments, and equipment. For example, a blessing that enhances fire damage could be particularly effective against ice-based enemies.

A heroic figure battling a horde of monstrous enemies, showcasing the visual effects of multiple stacked blessings in action

Conclusion

Procedural blessings offer a powerful way to revitalize roguelite progression, moving away from predictable power-ups to create unique character builds and gameplay experiences. By experimenting with different types of blessings and combinations, developers can create engaging progression systems that keep players coming back for more, pushing the boundaries of replayability. What if the future of roguelites lies not in more content, but in dynamically remixing the content you already have? To make the development process even smoother and more predictable, developers can leverage tools such as Nextframe's Copilot to streamline the blessing design phase and Strafekit to speed up content production, ensuring indie game development success.

What innovative blessing ideas can you imagine? Share them in the comments!