Research Overview

To position 100's At Night within the survival roguelike genre, I analyzed three core competitors that shaped the design direction of this project. This analysis focused on session length, control mechanics, skill progression systems, and difficulty pacing to identify opportunities for innovation.

Vampire Survivors' evolution system creates discovery moments but significantly increases complexity.

From control mechanics perspective, auto-attack does enable focus on positioning. However, 15-30 minute sessions would reduce players' excitement.

When it applied to 100's, I decided to keep auto-attack, compressed session to 100 seconds.

Brotato's between-wave shop creates strategic depth but harms the consistency of gameplay flow.

The shop interface interrupts the game's pace. The simultaneous appearance of six weapons might make it difficult for players to choose.

Considering the development time and the designed total game time, I removed between-wave pauses. Limited skills to 3-4 for clarity.

20 Minutes Till Dawn's manual aiming raises skill floor significantly

The manual aiming mode is very appealing to experienced players, but it can be difficult for casual players to adapt to. Worth to mention, the rune system lacks transparency.

Due to limitations on the total game time, I designed the game to only retain the auto-attack function to improve convenience. Weapon combinations are limited to a few distinct variations (e.g., Fire + Frost = Lightning Ice Storm).

Player Research

To understand and satisfy the target audience for survival roguelikes, I analyzed player feedback from Steam reviews, gaming media, and community discussions.

Vampire Survivors:

124,377 English reviews on Steam, overwhelmingly positive.

"It felt awesome to finally bring everything together, though you could also just cheese the fight by standing in one place for 30 minutes with this novelty exploit build." (By Ted Litchfield, on PC Gamer)

Brotato:

27,958 reviews on Steam, overwhelmingly positive.

The Soldier, seen above, can only attack when he’s standing still. This creates problems of course, especially when there’s onslaughts of aliens coming at you from all directions. (By Russell Walters, on Medium)

20 Minutes Till Dawn:

12,411 reviews on Steam, very positive.

The progression elements cannot fully compensate for the very repetitive gameplay loop. As with other titles in the genre, kitting is the name of the game. (By Andrei Dumitrescu, on Softpedia)

Target Audience Profile:

• Extracted from Vampire Survivors, Brotato, and 20 Minutes Till Dawn player bases:

• Age around 25-35, PC/Steam Deck players

• Currently playing survival roguelikes

• Value auto-attack gameplay over manual-aiming attack

• Seek more replayability through changes in game loops

Iteration Process:
Version 01: Basic mechanics

From the first playtest results, I received the following feedback:

1. Player feedback during gameplay was weak.

2. The existing skills and weapons are too simple and a bit boring.

3. The visual effects of enemy movement are very strange.

Version 02: Polish from the feedback

Based on player feedback, I made the following improvements:

1. Added clear UI indicators to allow players to track character status.

2. Added two weapons according to the Game Design Document (GDD).

3. Added start and end screens.

Meanwhile, I received new feedback during this test:

1. Could there be more types of enemies?

2. Players die too easily; can the game's stats be adjusted?

3. The enemies' visual feedback of being attacked is not noticeable enough.

4. The UI is too rough.

Version 03: Final version

After integrating all the feedback, I made the following improvements:

1. Added background music and sound effects.

2. Added ranged enemies.

3. Added particle effects for enemies.

4. Changed the font and UI style; adjusted the UI position.

5. Added an upgrade function and upgrade interface.

6. Balanced the game's values ​​to enhance gameplay.