neverquest

An irreverent text-based incremental action role-playing game.

• View gameplay manual.
• View screenshots.

Local set up

To run the app locally from source, you will need to use a command-line interface (CLI).

Installation

Prerequisites:

• Git
• NodeJS 18 or later
• NPM 8 or later

1. Open the CLI and change into a suitable directory (e.g. cd neverquest).
2. Run git clone git@github.com:kitnato/neverquest.git
3. Run cd neverquest
4. Run npm install
5. Run npm start
6. Open http://localhost:5173 in a web browser.

Local development

After installation, but before committing any changes, do the following:

1. In the CLI, go to the project folder (e.g. cd neverquest).
2. Run npm run prepare

Now, every time changes are committed, all the relevant code, markup and style linters & formatters will apply any changes automatically.

The linter config can be viewed in .eslintrc.json and .stylelintrc.json.

Attribution

• All art assets (SVG icons & images) are sourced from the talented authors of game-icons.net under CC BY 3.0.
• Font is Aoboshi-Regular, licensed under OFL-1.1.
• Monster, item & location names provided by the LOCRAN system under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
• Written in TypeScript using React.
• UI framework is Bootstrap.
• State management library is Recoil.
• Animation library is Animate.css.
• Build system is Vite.
• Code style & linting is provided by ESLint, and ESLint Stylistic using @kitnato/eslint-config-succinct.
• SCSS linting is provided by Stylelint and Stylelint Stylistic.
• Automation is provided by Husky and lint-staged.

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Appendix

1. Gameplay objectives

• There is always has something to do
• No arbitrary waiting time, cliffs or walls
• Engaging active gameplay by default
• No need for "skip the grind" mechanics
• Idle gameplay can be unlocked with in-game mechanics
• Incremental progress can always be made
• Little RNG, clear and accumulable paths to upgrades
• No excessive or repetitive clicking
• Decisions are frequent and they have immediate gameplay impact
• High character build variety with a long tail of min-maxing
• Always options to change strategy and try new approaches
• Difficult, but always fair

2. Warren Spector's 6+2+1 questions

1. What's the core idea? Can you describe the core of the game in 2-3 sentences?
   • An incremental action role-playing game, focusing on active player engagement, which can be played in any browser on any system. Exploring and fighting through the hostile world yields its secrets, with the only respite being a gradually growing repertoire of goods and services that enhance, expand and upgrade gameplay.
2. Why make this game?
   • I want to play it and I can't find anything like it.
3. What are the development challenges?
   • The amount of my free time I can dedicate.
4. How well-suited to video games is the idea?
   • It is unique to video games since it requires lots of numerical and state-based computation with ephemeral, randomized encounters.
5. What's the player fantasy?
   • Ever increasing power and challenge with the freedom to build how said power and challenges are surmounted.
6. What does the player do? (What are the "verbs" of the game?)
   • Fight
   • Loot
   • Level up
   • Encounter
   • Trade
7. Has anyone done this before? Clear influences are:
   • Diablo, and its sequels - gameplay loop of randomized monster slaying, loot collecting and visiting a town to rest & replenish.
   • Dark Souls - difficult one-on-one combat encounters, frequent & normalized deaths and corpse retrieval.
   • Progress Quest - the progenitor of all text-focused UI-based incremental games with a swords & sorcery fantasy theme.
   • Progress Knight - fantasy incremental game focused on rags-to-riches career progression.
   • Kingdom of Loathing - one of the first purely browser-based UI-focused adventure RPGs with an irreverent sense of humor.
   • Candybox 1 & 2 - an irreverent UI-based fantasy adventure with 2D world elements heavy on player interaction and with permadeath.
   • Crank - user-interaction-driven adventure/mystery game with gradually expanding storyline and gameplay.
   • NGU Idle - irreverent UI-based fantasy incremental idle game.
8. What's the one new thing?
   • Feels like text-based Diablo/Dark Souls hybrid, but it's funny and a web app.
9. Do you have something to say?
   • Browser games with only text and a GUI can be just as engaging and can have similar gameplay depth to traditional video games without relying solely on simple deterministic incremental progress.

3. Screenshots