Playing with randomization

Hey 👋
I hope you are all doing great!

On my side I was really sick this week—on my birthday nonetheless—so I couldn’t stream, and made close to no progress on a game. BUT, I started thinking about an old game idea I’ve been fiddling with for some time now.

It’s an autobattler where each character in your team has weaknesses, and it limits what you can do outside of combat.

For example, traveling from one encounter to the next is done via a map. Sometimes you wouldn’t be able to choose a specific destination, because a team member’s weakness prevents you from doing so. Should you remove this character from the team? Skip this zone entirely? Or maybe, the weakness prevents you from taking the path, but you could still reach the destination via another route, maybe using more resources to do so.
Sometimes, a weakness will also force you to visit a specific destination. Imagine a magician with an insatiable curiosity, which would force you to explore every magic site you come across.

To make decisions like this interesting, the structure of the map must account for it. I was first looking to implement a one-way map, like in Slay the Spire, but that removes the possibility of finding another route.
But I also want the player to make choices, and not visit every possible place before reaching the end of the mission, so I’m thinking about adding a resource you need to reach the next encounter—food, maybe?
This could also enable other weaknesses, like:

• “This character eats twice as much as the others”, or
• “This character refuses to stop to collect food during a mission”.

One question remains: how can I guide the player toward the boss, while still allowing for detours?
Maybe the boss doesn’t have a fixed spawn point—instead, they could appear in one of several possible locations, and once the player gets close to one after X moves, that’s where the boss spawns.

The randomization also needs to account for how much food the player starts with, how much they can collect along the way, and how many encounters that food allows them to visit before reaching the boss.

There is much to test! In the end, this game might not even need any combat, just a kind of encounter resolution, to be interesting!

Let me hear your thoughts on bsky!

Also, I’ll be going radio silence for 2 weeks to enjoy some vacaaatiooonns~~~~!
See you in 3 weeks then!