Devblog #21. Processing Station.

Hello everyone.

Today I want to talk about an intermediate layer of the game that exists between dungeon floor runs. This is the Processing Station. Usually in RPG games, the player has some kind of basic hub where they feel at home. It can be a town, for example, where the player trains the character, trades, or takes quests.

In the current version of IRSEN, I added the station to create something similar to such a hub for the player. Of course, this is not a town and not a safe base in the classic sense. The station should not create the feeling of complete rest. The player is still inside a dangerous dungeon, and corruption continues to affect the run. But I wanted to add a place where the way the game plays changes for a short time. After exploring a sector and fighting battles, the player enters a calmer space where they can evaluate the character’s condition, look at the build, use collected resources, and decide where to go next.

The previous gameplay loop worked like this:

1. The player kills enemies and loots genes.

2. The player strengthens the character through gene chains and clears the dungeon floor.

3. The player moves to the next floor with stronger enemies.

This works well, but it does not leave the player with many decisions about progression. All you can do is go deeper or return upward.

Because of that, the decision to progress was too straightforward. If the player is strong enough, they go lower. If not, they continue clearing what remains. I wanted to add more intermediate decisions between these states: risk opening the next floor earlier, stay longer to collect additional genes, choose a more populated sector, or take a shorter route to avoid gaining too much corruption.

In the new version, I divided each floor into sectors. A sector is a small dungeon generated according to the rules of the current floor. Each sector has its own content. One sector may contain more enemies, another may have more objects to investigate, and another may have more chests with the ability to synthesize a gene.

Using the Processing Station, the player makes a choice: move to a new floor, or continue exploring the current dungeon floor by choosing a new sector.

At the end of each sector, the player returns to the station again.

Progression Capsule.

At the center of the station there is a capsule that must be charged in order to open the path to a deeper floor. It charges automatically when the player defeats enemy groups. The player can also charge it by spending preserved biospecimens.

The new gameplay loop now has this structure:

1. The player kills enemies and loots genes in a sector of the current floor.

2. The player returns to the station and decides whether to go deeper or enter another sector of the current floor.

3. If the player chooses a new sector, they explore it and then return to the station again.

4. If the player chooses a new floor, they enter a sector with stronger enemies.

To descend deeper, the player charges the capsule. On one hand, the player decides whether they are ready to move deeper or whether they still need to collect more genes from enemies.

On the other hand, if the player stays too long on the same floor, they can eventually lose because of accumulated mutations.

That is why the capsule works not just as a lock for the next floor. It sets the pace of the run. The player can speed up progression by spending biospecimens, or charge it in the usual way through combat. But every decision has a cost. If the player goes down too quickly, the character may not have enough genes or a prepared build. If the player farms the current floor for too long, corruption and mutations may start breaking the strategy before the final battle.

Sector Planner.

One of the objects in the Processing Station is the Sector Planner. Before entering a new sector, the player can choose the type of sector they want to explore. In the Sector Planner, the player can inspect all available exploration points, choose the desired one, and confirm the selection. Each sector has its own set of bonuses and penalties.

Sectors can change:

• the number of enemies;

• the number of rooms;

• the number of chests;

• the number of world objects;

• background corruption;

• elite enemy chance.

With this object, the player can choose more battles for genes, a more dangerous sector to speed up progression, or a shorter route if corruption is already close to the final mutations.

The whole Processing Station system makes the run less linear. The player also decides how to spend biospecimens. In the future, I plan to add several more station objects that will use biospecimens for their work.