Fire Emblem: Illusory Dungeon | A Fire Emblem Rogue-Like [FE8]

Projects
, ,
1

That’s right, a Fire Emblem rogue-like game.

In this hack, you’ll guide the main lord Meriette through the illusory dungeon, taking on 8 randomly selected chapters, recruiting from a random pool of units to take on the final boss at the end of the game.

Right now, the game is only in its first real version, but I plan to continue working on it and eventually scale it into a proper game.

Link to hack:

Any and all feedback is appreciated :slight_smile:

40 Likes
2

Checked it out, and for me it seems pretty good as a base.

i like the generous sum of money you get in the tutorial.

The units seems to be pretty good for their purpose. And the standard set of Healer, mage and solder in the tutorial are pretty nice. (maybe i’m biased due to my mage turning into a powerhouse form some lucky levels)

A small gripe i have would be some maps having a long range balista or ship that normally you would not be able to reach and dispatch

In terms of bugs: I don’t know if it’s intentional but some enemy units don’t move. At the start(like the one in the tutorial over the armory) i though it was actually pretty good as a choice.
But i got to 10 ch16 dungeon encounters and only the cavaliers moved. making the chapter pretty easy to cheese.

Overall i really liked what i played so far, looking forward to more updates.

1 Like
3

Nice, more rogue hacks! Love to see it.

I did a little peaking into the game before actually diving in to see how you chose to handle certain things. I like the use of the vanilla random monster rolling system for the Character Reward map, the random chests, and the map choices.

I think I may have found a bug while peaking around.
I don’t think the doors in the middle of 0C CH12 Random 7 can open, it doesn’t look like there are any Tile Changes associated with open doors.

I’ll definitely give it a play through!

1 Like
4

Actually that’s a chapter I scrapped, so there’s no functionality at all lol. I thought that the concept of a bridge map would be cool, but I didn’t like how it turned out and never got around to reworking it… and then forgot about it.

2 Likes
5

I’m glad to see that somebody else realized the early mage was a little OP. He was my testing MVP until I decided to nerf him a little. I’m still due for a large unit overhaul though, because some units (pegasi and wyverns) are a little too strong. The not moving is actually as a result of me playing around with AI to make cool unit formations that force you to bait multiple units.

Until I find a fix though, some maps are just going to be a little cheesable because you need to be able to beat them with your starting squad. But hey, if a player is smart enough to cheese, they deserve it.

And on the topics of ballistas, I just wanted them to be annoying lol. Plus without them, fliers would be wayy too good.

3 Likes
6

i would call the mage more of a glass cannon than OP.

And i do get the reason behind the balistas. But i do think they are unresonable or too strong in some levels.
Like 11 ch17 or 0B ch10. the ships can just oneshot your mage or Healer or ever the solder at anytime. And with the hard turn cap it’s not like you can play defensively.

1 Like
7

Sweet a new fire emblem Rougelike. Definitely going to check if out

1 Like
8

Hey, eager to give it a try, but the link doesn’t appear to work for me. Is it because an old patch is linked instead of the folder it is in?

1 Like
9

Oh, I like roguelikes/lites, so this was quite the enjoyable demo.

Map 0x07 (Ruins with lake on the bottom left) was my first level, so I was desperately trying to stay alive when the ship spawned in and merced my poor mage, 10/10 roguelike experience. Later in the run I got the map again, but I was much stronger so it was no problem.
I also got an armor knight with 13 def as a random unit, what a trooper; impervious to everything except magic. Honestly, might be too strong.

As far as suggestions go:

  • Maybe add the patch that shows enemy threat ranges and the one that gives enemies 0 move when their AI is set to never move, I feel like this communicates the intent of some units better.
  • JDL mentioned this, the ship in the middle of the lake in map 0x11 is waaay too strong and you have no way to avoid it or bait it out, it’s threat range is pretty much your whole available area.
  • Meriette is actually fine and doesn’t feel as slow as I memed, but you could maybe extract the female thief animations from FE6 and give her a “unique” thief class.
  • Increase exp from staves so the starter monk has a realistic chance to promote, he’s my hero for defying death multiple times in my run

And I have absolutely no idea what your future plans are and this is just random thoughts from me:
For the finished product you could split the game in 3 “acts” a 5 chapters (15 short-ish chapters seem good, maybe?):

  1. The first part will have weak enemies like now, and end in a non-randomized map (also like now).
  2. Midgame is where you start getting promo items, chapters select from a new set of maps, enemies are slightly stronger (lvl 6-10, probably) and bosses are promoted. This is also where you could introduce the ballistas/fleets to punish potential overreliance on flying units. Your reward units are higher levelled now too.
  3. In the third part enemies are stronger again, maybe around lvl 10-14, and a few promoted enemies sprinkled around. Chapters would select from a third pool of more difficult maps. Reward units might have a small chance to be prepromoted now? Or maybe this is too strong.

All of this is nothing but ideas, this game just inspired some brainstorming in me.

I had a lot of fun playing this and I’m definitely looking forward to more!
Sorry for all the text

3 Likes
10

A lot of the suggestions you made here are actually things I’m planning to add later on lol. And I do plan to make Meriette more of an actual character instead of being a generic portrait as a base thief.

11

This sounds really interesting, I do love roguelikes! Though it would be a while before I could get around to it (due to life, preexisting video schedule etc), would you be alright with me potentially making a YT vid/series of a playthrough of the hack?

Of course, if you’d prefer for me to wait until you’ve been able to work on it more, or to not do it at all, that’s perfectly alright too. Just wanted to check :purple_heart:

1 Like
12

Yeah, I’d be super fine with that. The hack is fully playable as-is, but just check back in case I release an update patch before then. I saw some of your videos, so I’m looking forward to it.

13

Sounds good, thanks for the permission! I’ll let you know when I start working on it :smiley:

1 Like
14

Big update! Latest patch is in the folder. After tinkering around and taking some of the criticisms into account, I’ve made a ton of changes. The base game is still about the same, but there has been some large-scale rebalancing and re-working.

FE: ID beta 1.1 Patch Notes:

Fixes

  • Fixed a map glitch on the rivers/snag map that blocked you from the boss

Known Glitches

  • Sometimes units don’t disappear on the character reward. Has no impact.
  • Recurring NPC phase on epilogue map. Too lazy to fix.
  • Thieves should be carrying droppable loot. They don’t.

Balances

  • You can now buy lockpicks in the preps screen
  • Reworked Meriette’s stats/growths/exp gain
  • Massively reworked CON stats for every class, giving rescue niches
  • Partial gold overhaul
    • Rework of all weapon costs, and standardizing across weapon types
    • Slight fixes to game economy to prevent insane amounts of gold
  • Small tweaks to weapons across the board
  • Ballista Nerf. I agree. They sucked.
  • General map/reinforcement/enemy AI tweaks
  • Nerfed promo gains
    • Ngl, I didn’t know what I was thinking with some of those stat gains
  • Reworked staff EXP
    • This is a very large buff. Heal alone gives 20 EXP per use
  • Replaced starting soldier with fighter
    • This is a really big one, but the options for axes were exclusively
      condensed into randomly generating fighters. And regardless, this
      fits the game balance better to have a high damage HP sponge for
      the early game. RIP soldier tho.

New Features

  • Added some new features content to the endgame playground area
  • New Map - The Bridge
    • Previously unreleased, I’ve reworked the map into something I actually
      like. Choose paths to avoid battling stronger enemies, and use the parts
      of the map you’ve cleared out to your advantage as enemies rush you
  • Brand new class - Pirate
    • Like a myrmidon with axes. Appears alongside the other infantry troops in
      the second recruitment slot. Promotes to berserker, and should hopefully
      allow axes to be slightly more commonly used
  • Triangle Attack
    • Gather any 3 pegasi and let them rip
  • New Meriette Sprite/Animations
  • Non-moving enemies have 0 move
  • Press Select to show danger zone.

Going Forward
Not gonna lie, this took longer than I wanted it to. But this was probably the biggest
update to the hack besides the full release. Hopefully, I can have the full hack ready for FEE3, but only time will tell. Anyways, look forward to:

  • Randomess Update
    • Enemies get more class variety, item variety, (position variety?), and the game becomes overall less predictable.
  • Art update
    • Game looks kinda bad, but I’m a coder not an artist. I’ll get around to it
  • Full Release
    • Believe me when I say this will really change up the hack. I’m a decent way through
      the features and mechanics, but a lot -and I mean a lot- of balancing will be required.
      However, that’s a later Floux problem.

Ending
Hopefully this version is a lot better with a lot more fixes, and is more enjoyable.
As always, feedback is greatly appreciated.

7 Likes
15

I would like to see some screenshots please

16

Overall i’d say i’m enjoying the new update.
New starting fighter feels a bit on the weak side, but maybe i was just biased on the tanky boi that was starting soldier.
starting mage feels less like a super unit now, but maybe my level ups sucked.

Meriette i feel is at an appropriate level of power for a lord and thief unit. Though, i would say it’s not easy to keep her doing the thief activities when the rest of the units in your party are on the weak side.
I would also like it if there were some stealable items(maybe there are, and i just haven’t got the maps they are on though)

An other thing, which i don’t really know how hard or easy it would be to fix. I would say some maps are still too hard for the player to be able to get them as their first map (after the tutorial) with only 5 units, like 04 or 0B.

Really looking forward to future updates!
(p.s. a peg knight in 04 crited 3 of my untis with a 3% crit back to back. O’the humanity.)

1 Like
17

This hack is amazing, i’ve been following it for about a week now, but i think an option to have names for your other units apart from just “Phantom” would be nice

2 Likes
18

I love this hack and I hope see it in the FEE3 <3
I would like that there would be something more quality of life like a hp bar without select the unit, show how much you heal a unit when you use a staff or that you can see the growth of an unit.

4 Likes
19

Hi! I just created an account so I could give feedback :3 I really enjoyed this hack and I’m excited to see where it goes.

  • I like how picking units isn’t just a choice between their stats and abilities, but also the items they carry. You may not need another staff user, but a staff user holding a physic and restore is entirely different.
  • I think difficulty should increase a bit more throughout the game. The first few chapters have a really nice difficulty but as your units level up, it starts to get a lot easier.
  • Reinforcements do a really good job of making you move quickly, but the amount of units can be a little extreme sometimes. Also, I think you should avoid spawning them on the objective; the point should be to push the player forwards, not back.
  • I also think the turn count should be adjusted to the difficulty/map. The map where you go in a C shape around a mountain to the castle always gets pretty close to 20 turns, but the rest of the maps are a bit shorter
  • On the second-to-last chapter, my new unit (a dancer) was force deployed. This wasn’t an issue for me because I wanted to use the unit, but I can imagine this being annoying if you chose one only for their inventory. I noticed the chapter was named “Chapter 1” rather than “Ex. Chapter” like the others; maybe that’s related?
  • The final chapter’s initial two hallways have too many stationary units; I was able to clear a entire hallway with a single mage and a healer.
  • The Bearer’s Pontifex class references Rausten from Sacred Stones.
  • Promotions should really, really not decrease your stats. It doesn’t make it an interesting tradeoff because players can’t exactly plan for it and a promotion is still better overall. It ends up being an annoyance.
5 Likes
20

Hey, great game, played through it twice so far. My general thoughts and a few observations:

  • I like the enemy stat distributions, especially the low HP enemies since it gives low speed/high power characters more of a niche (in other ROMhacks I almost always pick the units with high speed, but here it feels like there’s more of a tradeoff)
  • I really like the map with the three brigands in the center
  • the bridge map feels weird - there’s not much of an incentive to go after the pegasus knights with your limited deployment slots, and it feels shorter than other maps
  • maybe prevent seeing the same map twice in a row?
  • I usually promote two or three units right at the start of the final map, but this feels too late
    • for me, a big part of FE strategy is deciding who to use promotion items on and when, so being able to promote a unit or two earlier would let the player adapt to an unfortunate crit or getting a really good weapon that nobody can use yet
  • my runs took 4 hours and 3 hours respectively, which I think is a good length
  • I got a soldier recruit with a bright lance, but never encountered any monsters
4 Likes