Roguelike conversion

When first developing this game, it was just intended to be a simple beat 'em up. However, with new additions, I was required to turn it into a roguelike game too. 

To do this I tried to break down mechanics that most roguelike games have. This led to three mechanics: 
- Perma-death

- Power up items/upgrades

- Random level elements

Implementing each of these features varied in challenge. Perma-death was the easiest as I simply had to change how respawning in the game worked. 

The more challenging mechanics were the power ups and random level elements. I decided on having two power ups that would improve the players capability to either take more damage or deal more damage. When playtesting, one of my main goals was to see how much of an advantage each of these power ups would give. I found the values that I was comfortable with adding to the game. 

Next was adding random level elements. Traditionally in roguelikes entire level layouts are randomly generated to ensure that players remained challenged in between each run. However, I did not have the technical capabilities to handle working on a system such as that. I decided instead to make different level variants with my new power up items and different enemy types, amount and placement to add some illusion of variety to the game.