How to add skill expression to a text based turn based game?

Question

I’m working on a text based and turn based roguelite. I want to have some way of requiring more skill than just mastery of the characters abilities. The dilemma I’m facing is that I’m not sure how to add that to a text based game but I also like text based because I don’t know how to add graphics to games and don’t have the mental wherewithal to learn right now. Plus I’ve always had some level of fondness for text based games. Could anyone give me ideas on how to potentially add different ways of skill expression to my game?

Answer 1

Classic text based games - roguelikes, JRPGs, even some board games - usually have resource management as the skill they use. Each character can have HP, MP, status effects, cooldowns, items, and so on. And then various abilities can be understood as trading one of those resources for another - a fire spell trades the player's MP to reduce the enemy's HP, a charged attack trades an action this turn for increased damage later, a potion uses itself up to do... whatever it does. Then it's on the player to figure out which resource is most useful in each particular fight and which trades are worth making - against an enemy with high attack and little HP, they should try to end the fight quickly, so their slow damage-over-time effects will be underpowered in this battle.

In many of these games there's also position in space. Classic roguelikes rely a lot on positioning on a grid. The player can engage the enemies up close or far away, in a corridor or in the open, alone or in groups - just the level layout can add a lot of variety. And then simply moving around becomes a tactical choice, because they might try to lure the enemy onto more advantageous terrain.

In a turn-based game, there's position in time. One action per turn, that's a resource. Status effects or cooldowns that last a specific number of turns, so the balance of power shifts each turn as the available resources change.

All this lets you have fairly simple rules that lead to more complex outcomes, so there's depth to the game's interactions and the player feels like they can master the game with intelligence and analysis. Give the player trade-offs to make. Let them learn what resources are available to them and what each one is worth. Then present them with situations where the value of a resource changes, or where something they weren't even thinking of as a resource becomes important. (Is "distance from the enemy" something they want to gain or something they want to lose? It varies depending on the fight!)

And I've mostly used the language of combat engines here, because you mentioned "roguelite", but of course the same applies to lots of genres. A stealth game has tension between moving forward and not being seen. In life simulator games there's never enough hours in the in-game day to do all the stuff you want.

Answer 2

The most common and I would argue most important forms of skill expression in roguelikes are 'push your luck' mechanics. These balance long-term benefit against short-term power.

For example, in a single encounter you could present the player with options to do immediate damage, or buff their character.

• Strike! - Deal 10 damage.
• Buff! - All future strikes this fight do +2 damage.

It is up to the player to determine if the fight will last long enough for the buff to be worth it.

You can also present decisions with the same tension between encounters. For example, the player could choose between two weapons.

• Sword! - Deals 10 damage per attack.
• Dagger! - Deals 1 damage per attack. Permanently increase damage by +1 when this deals a killing blow.

Now it is up to the player to determine if they want to push their luck with the Dagger, which will pay off in the long term, or play it safe with the Sword, which is stronger in the short term.

Answer 3

Text-based games can be a great medium to test the emotional intelligence of the player. Emotional intelligence is the ability to infer the personality traits, motives, motivation and current mood of people through observation and interaction, and then use that information to predict how they are going to react to certain events.

Most classic dating sims are primarily a test of emotional intelligence. They are about getting to know an NPC and picking the right dialog options that will make that NPC fall in love with the player-character. But this pattern is used all across RPGs with meaningful choices, not just when it comes to romance. For example, a player with high emotional intelligence might predict how the council in Mass Effect 2 would react to eradicating the last remaining Rachni, which candidate would be the more suitable person to govern the Skellige Islands in Witcher 3 or how they would need to build their relationship with Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077 to befriend him and unlock the secret ending.

These are all things you can pull off using dialogue trees in a purely text-based game. Provided that you are a good writer who can write complex characters and interesting plots with complicated dilemmas.

Answer 4

In Sanctuary RPG skills have to be used in combos. There is Starter, followed by various Continuations and in the end there is Finisher. It is simple system that does not require much skill (you can basically learn to use attack 1, 2, 2, 3, I do not remember exact combination anymore), but there have been some exceptions:

• when enemy was charging at you, you had to reposition instead of combo attack
• using too much repositioning will cancel combo
• if you are exposed enemy dealt more damage so you also had to reposition
• other things like being trapped, ...

In this way it is not only relevant what skill does but to learn interaction between skills. This makes skills dynamic, not something that can be learned easily.

Answer 5

Going by the classic rock paper scissors or a bit more elaborated Pokemon, you can have attacks that are efficient against certain types of enemies (1.5x or 2x damage) and less effective against others (0.5x or even 0x for full immunity). The skill would then involve how to level up your character that you have a fighting chance against higher level enemies. You can be a jack of all trades or stack really high on say fire attacks, but you'll be sad when you encounter the water boss ;)

In conjunction to @Brady Gilg's and @Piro's answer: Combos were already mentioned but I'd like to combine them with stacks. Often you find that you can impose conditions like burning, poisoined, etc. on enemies. Other attacks might scale with how many stacks there are. You now have options to do lower instant damage but impose long term damage via stacks or preparing later on combos, e.g.

• Turn 1: Apply poison (0 dmg, future attacks add 2 stacks poison this combat (decays 1/turn))
• Turn 2: Poison dagger (2dmg, 2poison stacks)
• Turn 3: Poison dagger (2dmg + 2 from poison stacks, 3 poison stacks)
• Turn 4: Poison dagger (2dmg + 3 from poison stacks, 4 poison stacks)
• Turn 5: Cast spell: (0 dmg + 2x number of poison stacks)

Answer 6

Assuming with text-based games you mean using the command prompt.

Possibly you could add a time limit to your actions, having to respond and/or write a command fast enough before the time's up and, for example, an enemy starts attacking.

Answer 7

From one perspective there are two kinds of games.

• Submenus
• Parkour

Using this (amazingly crude) subdivision, I'm thinking you are looking for a way to add Parkour to your text-based game.

You can make Text based games be realtime; things can happen based on wall-clock time instead of the player taking a turn. And player actions in turn can take wall-clock time instead of the speed of input.

In such a game, you could have rhythm requirements to do some actions or make them more effective. Even having to respond quickly to new information might be enough.

Skill also exists in Submenu based games. Classic chess has piles of skill, yet has no Parkour component.

Even something as simple as Rock Paper Scissors can be a skill based game.

1. You can make the rewards asymmetric
2. You can have each kind of enemy have different patterns
3. The patterns of each enemy could vary based on your previous interaction with that kind of enemy, leading to a meta-pattern
4. You can add more moves than just the base 3, and they can have interesting interactions

Yet another example of skill based Submenu games are collectable card games. There is skill in designing your deck and in playing a deck against an opponent, as well as in learning your opponents decks. This is above and beyond learning what each ability does.

By making the deck building and playing be as dynamic as possible (depending on chance and your opponents choices) you can maximize the local skill required. Even the elements of the deck (cards or similar) could have randomized properties (possibly fixed at game start) to make each iteration of the game's "meta" differ.

Another option is the dwarf fortress method. Have a game with an insane number of interconnected systems. Iterate on designing it so you can keep them stable and functioning. The expertise then becomes in understanding the interplay and interdependencies of all of the systems.

Answer 8

There are a number of different skill vectors you could consider:

Precison

In its essence it means not knowing the "best action" in a situation but "being able to execute that action". However to to make executing an action non-trivial you need some kind of "infinite" possibilities that a text+turn based game does simply not offer. Either timing or non-grid-based aiming (or even better both) are required to make "precision" relevant.

Tactics and Strategy

In Rouglikes AND text/turn based games usually what @ChristopherWells said. Management of ressources. Tactics being the management of the single encounter/moment and Strategy being the management of the whole playthrough. Both can intertwine or be separate from each other, depending on whether the "playthrough ressources" are available to expend in the "moment to moment" gameplay.

Describing that on the example on HP. Lets say in the game you are healed to your max-HP after each encounter. That would make "HP" a tactic resource and "Max HP" a strategy resource. However when you introduce ways to spent or gain "max hp" during an encounter, that would be intertwining "Strategy" and "Tactic".

Knowledge

Game knowledge in this context means just knowing stuff bout the game. Which enemy is weak to which type of damage? Which attacks can the enemy use and in which pattern? What does the "Potion of might" do? A lot of games tend to not using Game knowledge as a skill vector too much as it can make players feel the need to frequently consult outside sources.
But still Game knowledge can work reasonably as a skill vector in a game, at least as long as the player doesn't have a wiki page to alt-tab to at will.

Complexity

The king off all non-precision based skill. It is somewhat contained in the other two. Complexity allows knowledge, strategy and tactics to be non-trivial. When you have enough complexity then you get possibilities that far exceed simply "knowing" the best course of actions for each situation and that force frequent adaptions in strategy and tactics.
Complexity is best achieved not through a single highly complex system, but through multiple reasonably complex systems that interact with one another. Not fully understanding a game system is very frustrating for players. Having multiple simpler systems that interact with each other gets around that problem. The player does not feel like they are "not understanding the game" even though they actually "don't understand the game".

This would be the vector I'd advice you to focus on when you want to bring up the "skill ceiling" in a game that does not allow for "precision" skill