Terra Randoma News

Hi everyone,

So far, we have been using this space mostly for explaining the game basics. We covered most of the crucial topics from combat to replayability, so we can start talking about actual development.



This week, we continued work on weapons. We improved the procedural weapon generation. Now some weapons have base modifiers before they get modifiers from affixes. For example, all the maces have a base modifier of minimum 10% stun. If it gets a prefix and a suffix too, it will have 3 modifiers and plus a damage modifier from the material it is made of.

Some weapons can have different damage types simultaneously: Like a sword of poison and ice. The sparkles' colors on the sword changes accordingly. Sword of poison and ice's sparkles are blue and purple. We also added a visual cue for the stun effect: rotating stars around the head.



Three new enemies added: Volcanic Bat, Skeleton Captain and Skeleton Marksman. Skeleton Marksman has a crossbow which inflicts ice damage which has a chance to freeze you. When you freeze there is an ice cube around you and you can't move or attack or open your backpack. You have to pass your turn and watch yourself take damage every turn.

Finally, not very exciting but most needed, we created the Options screen where you can adjust graphic quality.

Hi everyone,

Last week we talked about replayability of Terra Randoma. One of the most important factors that ensure replayability is the overworld, so this week we’d like to elaborate more on that.

Travelling in Terra Randoma is fun! There is a chance of an adventure with every step you take. You need to plan your route carefully. If you want to travel safely, you can. In order for you to determine that, we have the danger levels shown with exclamation marks at the top of the screen. There are ten red exclamation marks which indicate the danger level of the tile you are on. So if you are on a plain tile in the middle of the day, the danger level is one. It increases as night starts to fall. If you are on a mountain area after midnight, danger level becomes nine.



There are four types of tiles on the overworld: plain, forest, mountain and water tiles. The plain tiles are less dangerous than forest tiles, which are less dangerous than mountain tiles. The water tiles are neutral right now, but we will add pirates and aquatic monsters.

When you are near a water tile and you move to water, your character hops on a boat and you start to control the boat. That is of course if you have at least 10 coins in your pocket. Then every hour you are travelling, you pay 10 coins to the boat owner. That means with every step you take on the water tile, your coins automatically drop by 10. So what happens if you run out of coins in the middle of the sea? With every tile you go without paying, your reputation in all towns drops. If you have negative reputation you will be unable to enter that town.

There is also a day and night cycle. It is safer at day time than at night. So if you want trouble, you travel at night and face the consequences. If you want a peaceful journey back home, however, then you’d be wise to travel at day time through the plain tiles.

The chances of a friendly encounter, for example, with a travelling merchant, or discovery of a hidden treasure, are slim on more dangerous tiles. Likewise, the chances of a hostile encounter, like a bandit ambush or beast attack, are slim on safer tiles.

We have many different incidents and we will add many more. This is one side of the game immensely open for continuous development. We aim to ensure that travelling is always interesting and a unique experience every time you play.

There are alternative ways to deal with a hostile encounter other than fighting. Through making a skill check, you can turn an ambush to your advantage by intimidating the bandits, or pickpocketing them and pay the ransom with their own coins. If you however decide to fight, you will emerge into a procedurally generated battlefield screen.

Another issue about planning your route is hunger. Every step you take on the overworld takes an hour on the plain tiles, two hours on the forest tiles, and three hours on the mountain tiles. We are adding rain to the game and it will further affect the travelling times. If your Survival Skill is high, you will be able to travel faster. In any case, you may run out of food while you travel, so you may want to camp to do some foraging and hunting (Interested? Just scroll down to read the article about camping for further details).

In this dev-blog, we will talk about the most important aspect of Terra Randoma that we would like to achieve: Replayability. We want people to play the game again and again because they know it will be a different experience each time.

The first step is the very beginning. It is a new island each time you start. A lot of effort was put in the development of a procedural map generation. We tried our best to make the map appear natural. It can be mountainous, full of forests or balanced. It can be one big land mass or more fractured. They all mean different experiences.

Towns have random prosperity levels and every now and then there is a chance that something good or hazardous happen to them. Like an epidemic or a royal marriage.



There are different character backgrounds and starsigns you can choose at the beginning of the game. A Retired Gladiator plays very differently than a Fire Acrobat. They have different starting stats, equipment and talent stones.

As we explained before in detail, the battlefields, dungeons and items are all random. We used procedural generation as much as we can. Even a mundane item like a comb you find in the game can be in different materials like bronze, gold etc. (and have different icons accordingly) We want a game that we can play ourselves and have fun. It must surprise us too.

Dungeon crawling is an important aspect of the game but it also has wilderness crawling, equally important and adventureous. Like the tabletop hex crawlers of the old times (but squares instead of hexagons). With every step you take at the wilderness, a dice is rolled and checked against a random table according to the tile you are on and the time of the day. And then something may happen or not. So wilderness is not only a place you travel from town to dungeon. If you are in a hurry though, you can choose the safer tiles and time of the day to avoid danger. If you want trouble, you can go to a forest at midnight and see what happens.

You will meet several NPCs in Terra Randoma. There is a shop keeper, a tavern keeper, a tavern patron and a lord at each town. You may also meet traveling merchants, or common folk randomly on the over-world. The human enemies, like bandits are lurking around as well. The gender, appearance, clothes, occupations and the defining characteristics of Terra Randoma’s people are all procedurally generated.

The quests you receive from the NPCs are also randomly generated. Combined with who gave you the quest, this helps generate amusing stories in the player’s mind. Irisa “The Sophisticated Actress” asks you to retrieve her porcelain mirror, looking all smart and charismatic in her woven green suit. You wonder what it means to her. Who stole it and why? And then you meet the notorious bandit Calamitus “The Sorrow Bringer”. Once you deal with him, you find the mirror, but also a love letter in his hidden chest. Wouldn’t you wonder for a moment what exactly happened here?



In Terra Randoma, your journey emerges as you play, as a combination of procedural generation and your own imagination. There are numerous meta-goals you may pursue but they are not mandatory. It's kind of a tool to live your own story.

Hi everyone,

In earlier dev-blogs we talked about weapons, equipment, armor, consumables and materials in Terra Randoma. But we didn’t discuss in detail how you carry these around. So let’s cover inventory management this week.

First things first: One of our favorite things when playing an RPG is managing our inventories. But we also know that it can ruin all the fun if it’s not done right. So this was one of the most important aspects of game development for us from day one. It's been worked on over and over until we could call it user-friendly. It is optimized for keyboard and mouse.

When you open your backpack, you can see not only your backpack and yourself but also your character statistics. So you know exactly what happens when you wear or take off an equipment. It takes only seconds to optimize, tidy up and get going.



The system is weight-based. How much your character can carry depends on Strength Attribute and in particular, Athletics Skill. Weight of each item is easily seen when you hover on the item and by looking at the bottom right corner of each item card.

Every character in the game has a sprint ability. When you sprint you spend some stamina and move two times faster for 3 turns. The heavier your backpack is, the more stamina you have to spend to sprint. In certain situations you may have to drop your precious loot to use your sprint ability and manage to escape.

If you get diseased, then you lose strength and hence can carry less. So you may end up over-burdened. It is important to keep your belongings organized. From time to time you may need to make rather noteworthy decisions like "do I really need to keep this 8 kg weight rusty helmet or should I just drop it?"

If you have lots of precious items and you don't want to drop any of them you can choose to travel to the nearest town while over-burdened. But you will move at half speed and get hungry very fast. With some strategic route planning and bit of luck, you may arrive to the town with your hard earned loot just in time before you die of hunger. Then you will have the opportunity to eat and rest at the local tavern and make inquiries about your next quest.

Hi everyone,

In this blog post, we will talk about the materials in Terra Randoma.

This is the category of things you can loot but not immediately consume or wear. You can find them in chests, alchemy tables or altars. And some enemies drop them. Each enemy has a different material specific to its kind. The ghosts may drop a vial of ectoplasm while a spider may drop precious spider silk. Now materials seem to be treasure only. But they are actually the foundation of later to be implemented potion crafting system.



This week, we added the Alchemist’s Tower to Terra Randoma. The tower has a shop that sells potions and books. Potions are cheaper in the tower. Since they sell lots of potions they are always in need of materials to craft them. So you can get the best deal for the materials you gather.



Alchemist's Tower always spawns at the mountain area of the map. It is a bit dangerous to travel there but it is always worth it. You will have the opportunity to sell your hard earned materials and if there is a town which struggles with disease you may buy cheap cure disease potions here to help the town as well.