← Back to directory

Room Crawler

Explore a string of haunted rooms, choose tactical abilities, and survive turn-based fights in this Ren’Py roguelike prototype.

Heads up: If the embed doesn’t appear, launch the Room Crawler demo in a new tab. Open game in a new window

Gameplay overview

Ren’Py meets roguelike

Room Crawler was created for Gamedev.js Jam 2025’s “Balance” theme. Navigate between rooms, each presenting narrative choices, shops, or combat. Battles play out with turn-based cards—spend your limited actions wisely, upgrade gear, and keep pushing deeper even after beating the core 10-level campaign. Post-victory runs pull from procedural enemy pools for endless replay.

Remarkable Games built the project on top of their Ren’Py RPG template, showcasing how visual novel tooling can power strategy combat with inventories, random loot, and dialogue-driven exploration.

Controls

Ren’Py standard bindings

  • Left-click / Space / Enter: Advance dialogue, interact with UI buttons, confirm combat choices.
  • Right-click / Esc: Open the Ren’Py menu (save, load, skip, preferences).
  • Scroll wheel / Page Up / Page Down: Review the text log/backlog.

Why play it?

Jam highlights

  • Blends narrative exploration with turn-based card combat.
  • Randomized rewards and enemies deliver replayable runs even after the main campaign.
  • Open-source Ren’Py code perfect for developers exploring hybrid visual novel RPGs.

Tips

Survive the descent

  • Invest early in healing or defense cards; attrition matters over 10 rooms.
  • Use the backlog to re-read enemy ability hints before picking your next card.
  • After beating the main run, keep going to farm procedural enemies and test new builds.