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TraumaRL

Darkness. Then light. One minute you were piloting a R.E.E.D. - finest goddamn remote-controlled drone in the galaxy and the next you were lying on your back, brain-fried and being rushed into the trauma centre...

Something about total neural feedback and semi-partial brain-disintegration. All it means to you is sick leave for 6 months, but spending all that unconscious in a healing coma.

Apparently the docs have installed something in your head (probably where the brain cells used to be). Military grade, so might come in handy.

Surely there ought to be some nurses around, or someone. Hang on, OK this is a trauma centre, but there isn't meant to be that much blood around. Something is 'up'.

TraumaRL was my entry in the 2014 7DRL competition. I worked with ShroomArts who provided 1-bit art assets and playtesting and feedback during the week. It builds upon (and continues the plot of) FlatlineRL.

The main innovation is a novel graph-based quest engine used to randomize the location of items and objectives in the main plot and to lock off particular areas with keys whilst guaranteeing that the game is always solvable. In order to guide the player, procedural message logs are created and dropped along the player's route to guide them to the next objective.

Inspiration-wise, I wanted to take the tight RL shooting mechanics from games like DoomRL and combine with the adventure-style mission of games like System Shock. I wanted to make the mission procedural so it played out differently, but not so random that patterns couldn't be learnt on multiple plays.

Features

A main quest whereby the objectives and items will move each play but is guaranteed to be solvable.
9 interlinked station levels which are arranged in a tree-like structure (i.e. one level may link to multiple branches). The tree structure changes each play.
Locked doors which require key cards that may be found on other levels.
Procedurally-generated message logs providing clues about the quest objective which can be guaranteed to be found before that objective is complete.