Beneath the Throne of the Goblin Queen

by Team SVAROG (Stefan Isailovic, Miroslav Gavrilov)

A roguelike entry for the 7DRL 2025 challenge.

# Instructions

Jam version:

Key	Action
arrows	movement
shift	jump
click on things	describe
space	wait
I	inventory

Post-jam version: Press F1 for help, it's much nicer than here!

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Go down and seal the HATE that destroys.
Suffer through prayer at the Twin Altars.
Wield the unwieldy magic of the Glyphs.
Is there any way to escape?

# Tell me about the design

The magic in this game is soft: there are no active abilities that you use -- instead, the GLYPHS do as their nature tells them. Is your health low? The [HEAL] glyph heals. Bad roll? The [LUCK] glyph rerolls. Using the magic of glyphs is automatic and it increases TENSION. Here's a listing of all the glyphs and their basic effects:

[HEAL]: chance to regain health per turn
[ENDURE]: chance to regain stamina and prevent damage
[LUCK]: chance of everything good happening more often or more strongly
[DARKEN]: chance to blind enemies (can't bump attack you and move randomly)
[LIGHT]: increased sight range and chance to spark a fire from a burning source
[OPEN]: scan now shows stat details and chance for containers to be unlocked
[FLOW]: jump through walls and chance for environmental effects to spread more

GLYPHs can be collected at ALTARs. Enough tension around them and RIFTS will open from the underworld, portals sending in powerful beings to capture you and take your power. The same energy, however, paints the way forward: it satiates the altars, allowing you to take the power and go on to greater depths.

At every stage after the first (the [ENDURE] glyph was prepared for you), there will be two altars in the level, and a choice of powers to take. Some are more obvious than others, some more powerful together than others.)

# Attribution

Pixel Art Serif Font by reffpixels, with minor changes to fit the game's needs (added glyphs for portals, and some minor pixel-art like tables, etc.). 

This font is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 

The font files are binarized and distributed only as a part of the game. Thank you for the wonderful serif font!

# Post-jam Updates

While the game's core is present, some systems fell short (collecting stuff, casting essences, consuming herbs to alleviate tension) which are present don't have a good footing. Version 1.1 IS HERE to fix that! Check this changelog:

- herbs and jewels can now be consumed/cast! herbs give you powers temporarily, jewels crack to emit mists with wild effects! together, they REDACTED

- more enemies, and more complicated enemy AI: there are now patterns and behaviors in the more complicated enemy types, including swarming, running away, splitting when damaged, and blinking ominously

- altar mechanics are now different: when activating an altar, you become Silenced, which makes all of your glyphs inert, 
including the ones you want to collect! This means you have to 
survive for ~10 turns before being able to end a level!

- game end! there is an actual true ending! It might require a few things but it's there!

- UI updates: F1 brings up a useful help menu! Tab brings up a larger diary! There's a loot menu for chests instead of autopickup. The overall UI was retouched a bit too. The death window is now colorful.

- identification: hold ALT to identify important things (the rest can be checked out in the F1 help menu). Stuff isn't randomly given colors and names, they are FIXED and there for you to figure out!

- bugfix: a lot of optimization and general bugfixes! should be much better than before!

# Future updates?

A potential version 1.2 might be in the cards much later in the year and bring in 12 minor GLYPHS: powers accessible through mechanics that were cut from 1.0 (such as potions), only [TIME] will tell