The inspirations of broughdancing

The idea for this game came from a combination of things (isn't that always the way?) 

1. Cinco Paus: I was playing this at the time, and loving the way that internalizing the rules is the major progression of that game. 
2. Letterclub: a lovely site where 4 developers write each other letters/essays about game design. Particularly, I followed a discussion that led to the valley. I liked how the valley uses NPC dialogue to paint a picture of the world. Every time you hear someone talk you recontextualize your mental picture of the surroundings. 
3. Eggplant Game Jam: The theme of "finding the right words" gave me the idea that the "powerups" in this game would be information. From that point, if knowledge is the only progression in the game then what would your powers be? To make information be a key, the lock needs to be a large possibility set. One large possibility set in a roguelike is the steps you take. I added the other moves of "wall" and "kill" to make the spells more interesting. Specifically, having "kill" in a spell makes it much more difficult to cast, which is a useful lever to have access to. 
4. this talk from roguelike celebration: is about ritual spells. This must have been bouncing around my head for a couple years now, so that probably had an influence. 

I've also wanted for a while to make a game with a big horizon break (as droqen puts it), where it felt like you were breaking the game but then the game folds that back into the experience. No spoilers, but... this game does that! There's a longer piece I want to write at some point about how people play the version of the game that exists in their head, and it's interesting when games are not quite the game that exists in your head. 

This was all a bit ramble-y but I hope if you're interested you follow some of these links and see some of the same connections in them as I have!

I'm about to go work at a summer camp where I won't have my computer so I won't be able to respond to comments for a while like I normally do, but I certainly will when I get back. 

Thanks for reading and enjoy the game!

-Ezra