Portugues
Build and Delve
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About the game
In most roguelikes the dungeon is waiting for you. In Build and Delve you make it. Every round has two halves. First comes the build phase: you hold five cards, and each card is either something you can play (a weapon, a piece of armour, some gold, a bigger room) or a monster waiting to happen. Discard a card to "monsterize" it and a creature of the same level appears in the room; the more monsters you add, the more treasure you are allowed to place. Then comes the adventure phase: you walk into the room you just built and fight your way to the door.
The trick is that the room you build is the room you have to survive. Armour and a good weapon need monsters to "pay" for them, and strong monsters hit hard, so every card is a small bet. Cards you do not play earn you Focus, and Focus is what you spend during the adventure: a burst of strength or dexterity, some temporary hit points, or a new, stronger card for your deck. Your score is the gold you collect plus the experience you earn, and the run ends when you die.
The art is a set of 1-bit sprites, white on dark grey, and the screen is a card table: your stats at the top right, the room in the middle, the hand along the bottom and a message line you can expand. It was written in a week for the 2021 Seven Day Roguelike Challenge.
Playing it here
Click Play, then "Enter the Dungeon". The "Instructions" button on the title screen explains the two phases in the game's own words. Cards, buttons and the shop are all used with the mouse; during the adventure you move with the keyboard. Nothing is saved: every run starts from a new deck and new random attributes.
The game runs in the Godot engine, compiled to WebAssembly. We did not change the game.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Mouse | play a card, 'Monsterize' it, press 'Ready to Adventure', spend Focus, buy cards |
| Arrow keys, numpad, or h j k l | move (bump into a monster to attack, step on an item to pick it up) |
| y u b n | move diagonally |
| . or numpad 5 | pass the turn and let the monsters act |
A few things worth knowing
Read the room before you build. The tunnel starts with room for one monster and one item. A Room card makes it bigger, and a bigger room is room for more treasure, but also for more monsters.
Do not play every card. Each card you leave in your hand gives Focus, and Focus can be worth more than a weak sword: it buys strength, dexterity and temporary hit points exactly when the fight needs them.
Spend Focus in the fight, not before it. The abilities help you survive the room you actually built, so use them once you see how hard the monsters hit.
Your attributes are random. Strength, dexterity and constitution change every run. Lean on whatever you got: a strong character wants weapons, a nimble one wants armour.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to know deckbuilders? No. The instructions on the title screen are short, and the first round is a tunnel with one monster.
Is my progress saved? No. The game has no saves.
Does it work on a phone? It was made for a mouse and a keyboard, and the adventure phase needs a keyboard. We have not tested it on a phone.
Is it free? Yes: it is free software under the GNU GPL, version 3 or later, and the source code of this build is available from this page.
Credits and licence
Build and Delve was made by Paul Gestwicki for the 2021 Seven Day Roguelike Challenge. The sprites are the 1-Bit Pack by Kenney (CC0), and the fonts are Inconsolata and Nanum Gothic Coding (SIL Open Font License). The game is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later; the build served here is the author's project unchanged, and its source code is hosted alongside the game. The licence texts are linked from this page.