4.1 Gameplay Summary

This is a high level overview of the game before we go into detail.

The easiest way to think of the gameplay is as having 3 gameplay loops: 

Encounter, Mission, and Campaign.

Most rogue-lites can be thought of in a similar way.

In Hades, for example:

• Encounter Loop - in Hades, this would be how you deal with packs of enemies.
• Mission Loop - Hades doesn't have missions but "stages" or "rooms" are roughly analogous. This is the higher level loop where the player goes from room to room
• Campaign Loop - in Hades, you must complete all stages and beat the final boss to beat the game. If you die, you start over but gradually get stronger due to upgrades you unlock. I'm calling this the "Campaign Loop".

These loops are arranged in a reverse-pyramid like this:

A campaign consists of missions.

Missions consist of encounters.

In the subsequent sections, I'll start with the Encounter Loop which focuses on the minute-to-minute gameplay of dealing with encounters (groups of enemies).

If you want more detail on how encounters work, you can skim this video brief on level design that covers the various spaces we use in Darkspy and types of encounters:

Once you're all set, you can go to the next section!

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