Hello everyone!

I have thought a lot about the implementation of the corruption system in Tombs of Telleran and have decided I am not quite happy with it. So I’m trying something else! In this blog post I want to explain what I am changing and what I hope to achieve.

The Old Corruption System

In the old system, corruption was a resource attached to entities (player, enemies, etc. are all entities). Corruption was inflicted when you used spells or certain spells were used against you. In other words, it was a strategic resource you had to manage over an entire run. This system was heavily inspired by sanity in Arkham Horror/Lovecraftian lore, and I really liked the flavor. However, I was never able to find interesting consequences for corruption. I wanted

• Consequences to change or limit player tools, forcing adaptation to a limited tool set
• The player to be able to recover from the consequences So I played around with various debuffs, but it did not feel great. The debuff you were going to get was not known beforehand, and it always felt like high corruption was circling the drain of failure. Because of this negative and uncertain feedback, it wasn’t fun using spells. I had to rethink this system from the bottom up.

The New Corruption System

So what does the new system look like? I am still playtesting, so we’ll see how much of it sticks around, but here’s the way it currently works. The largest change is that corruption is no longer attached to entities but is instead a global resource. It also heavily ties into exploration: when you open new parts of the tomb (by opening sealed doors) you unleash corruption. Once corruption maxes out, a corrupted incursion will occur, which is a combat encounter. This spawns corrupted entities which are tougher than regular enemies. And if you clear it, corruption will be reduced. Certain enemies will also channel rituals that increase corruption while you are in combat with them, creating a sense of urgency in some encounters.

Trinkets and Cooldowns

Corruption is also increased when opening cursed chests, which lets you trade corruption for extra loot. These also have a high chance of dropping new trinkets, which are items with powerful abilities that are charged by corruption. When corruption is unleashed, some of this is fed into your trinkets, rechargin them. This causes a kind of ‘cooldown’, but it is tied to corruption instead of turns. Which in turn is tied to you exploring the tomb.

This system lets corruption sort of work like a timer/food clock, but “time” only advances when you explore, with the risk of some encounters being “timed”. So the smarter you play and use your spells and abilities, the more you will be able to explore. And the more you explore, the more loot you can acquire, which sets you up for success on your run. That’s the idea, at least! It feels pretty good so far but I have not really established how long a run should be and at what speed the corruption should increase.

Thanks for reading and have a good one! If you like you can subscribe to my newsletter below, or reach out on bluesky.