The Strongholds of Silberland

The Strongholds of Silberland
Beta Project
Developer	Silberspiele
Theme	fantasy, abstract
Influences	Desktop Dungeons, Tower of the Sorcerer, Akalabeth Euro board games
Released	2020
Updated	Beta 4, on July 23rd 2020
Licensing	Freeware (pay what you want)
P. Language	Game Maker Studio 2
Platforms	Windows, MacOS
Interface	Graphical tiles, Keyboard, Mouse
Game Length	5-10 Minutes
Official site of The Strongholds of Silberland

The Strongholds of Silberland is an optimization focused, puzzly roguelike, disguised as an old school RPG. It is inspired by roguelikes, resource management puzzles like Tower of the Sorcerer as well as board games (in particular Vlaada Chvatil's Mage Knight and Stefan Feld's The Oracle of Delphi).

Concepts

The goal is to create a procedurally generated resource management game using some of the basic mechanics of an RPG.

Gameplay takes place on semi-open overworld maps and the goal is to defeat a number of bosses (overlords).

Combat is deterministic and happens in a single turn, i.e. all enemies die in one hit, so long as your Attack stat is equal to or greater than their defense stat. Enemy abilities complicate this somewhat.

The game features a Stamina system: Most actions you do, whether it's moving, attacking or using items drains your stamina. Once your stamina is used up, you're forced to rest for the night. Resting does not only make the game's timer tick down, it also removes weaker enemies and replaces them with stronger ones, as well as scaling boss stats.

Silberland foregrounds using temporary items to boost your stats over permanent progression. There are no experience points or level ups per se. Instead of defeated enemies drop gold that can be used to buy items in shops or occasionally permanent stat upgrades at one of the game's rare blacksmiths. Dungeons (which are abstracted to a single fight against an enemy) can also yield items.