ZeldaRL: Balance of the Kingdom [0.9.0]

A new version of ZeldaRL is available after quite a bit! its development was given some push due to the new Zelda game being out. You can play it online at https://slash.itch.io/zeldarl, and check out the (old, ugly) source code at https://github.com/slashman/zeldarl/. Contributions are welcome!

The game has been renamed to just ZeldaRL dropping the “Rainbow Maiden” subtitle as it was never something tangible that you could find as part of the narrative development of the game (just a random nod to someone from my distant past that is no longer part of my life).

Let’s start with the visuals: out-of-sight tiles are now displayed as grayed out, and there were many, many changes in the characters representing the world, seeking to improve map readability.

After the gameplay session of 0.8.1, a lot of balancing changes were done to make the game more enjoyable; the player now starts with double heart quantity, and the heart containers you acquire when winning a level now add 6 max hearts instead of 2. Hearts are now capped to 80, and the minimum max hearts value (if you die a lot) is now 10 instead of 6.

Also, the dungeons are now populated with more recovery potions, and a critical change to remove all spawned enemies from the level when you died finally should make exploring the overworld more possible during the endgame.

In the audio aspect, there were two minor but important changes: I added a “step” sound effect (from Emerald Woods), which should provide better feedback when you are moving around, and I also swapped the overworld “Light World” midi with a better quality file so it’s less annoying.

I fixed a bug that was causing the shield to never be used (!) so now it’s back to action and having a 20% chance of blocking attacks which will add some uncertainty and variety to combat; additionally, there is now a 100% chance to block ranged attacks with a shield when facing the attack direction, which you can use to approach ranged enemies. This required altering the HUD to display the last movement direction.

I hope you enjoy this new version! please join the discord if you want to discuss it!