Blade's Burden

Inspiration

'Blade's Burden' is a Germanic Folklore fantasy RPG. The premise is that you play as a sentient magical sword that takes control of any character that picks it up. The inspiration comes from the trope of an "evil sword" where touching it causes you to lose control. I thought a game based around this (with the player being the sword) would be a fun twist on the RPG genre.

What it does

You play as a magical sword that can't do too much on your own but... When you get picked up by a character, you take control from there. You can go on adventures, get loot, and blacksmith-yourself (future update) into the best sword you can be. The game is based around character progression and unlocking new characters to engage harder challenges.

How we built it

Devvit Blocks (only)

Challenges we ran into

Lots of limitations were encountered, like no sound or animations. I overcame the animation part by using animated gifs for my characters which makes the game look like it has traditional frame animations.

I was also new to using Redis and Devvit, so getting the Player's stats to generate, save, and update when they needed to was certainly a challenge and learning experience. Especially transferring this data across multiple different views.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Building a game like this as a solo developer while limiting myself to Blocks is something that I'm proud of, and being able to give players the flexibility of multiple characters is also something that I've always enjoyed in RPGs and I'm happy that I was able to include this feature into the game.

What we learned

So much. But notably how to carry Props over between components and everything that goes into setting up and managing Redis in a subreddit environment.

What's next for Blade's Burden

• More event options (Combat, traps, traveling merchants, and more!)
• Character level and rank up options.
• More zones and stages with difficult opponents (+Boss fights!)
• Skills (both offensive and utility).
• More items and ways to obtain loot.
• More social aspects to push yourself further against other players
• A social 'Tavern' where you can see other player's stats while displaying their selected character.
• If there's something else you'd like to see, please leave a suggestion on our Discord! https://discord.gg/76cMj9kzb4

Built With

• devvit
• redis
• typescript