Video Game / Level 13

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Level 13 is an Adventure Web Game with Idle Game elements by nroutasuo. The player finds themselves on the thirteenth level of a Layered Metropolis that has fallen to ruin. Stranded in darkness, hungry, thirsty, and with a wounded leg, they need to overcome their predicament, create a camp, and get other survivors to join them in their quest to discover the fate of this world.

The game can be played here.

Level 13 provides examples of:

• Beef Gate: As soon as the player is able to build elevators to floors, they will be able to access both Level 1 and Level 14. Trying to go to the latter will quickly put you into an area so radioactive that not even your best equipment at that point can handle, and you will need to go to Level 1, obtain spiritual insight, and use it to research both Hazmat Suits and Hazmat Boots which will allow you to tread through the highly radioactive zones.
• Continuing Is Painful: Falling to despair because of running out of food, water, stamina, or losing a fight with an enemy can cause you to break or drop a number of your items, give you an injury that causes Maximum HP Reduction, make you lose party members, and/or make you lose Augments that provide extra max HP or stamina. These dropped items can even include vital ones like your bag that grants carrying capacity.
• Critical Hit: Both the player and enemies have a chance to deal double damage on a hit during combat.
• Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Most of the gameplay takes place in the darkened ruins of a Layered Metropolis, and the player is accustomed to the dark. If the player avatar moves onto a square lit by sunlight, it hurts their vision to the point where the screen itself turns abnormally bright, causing an Interface Screw, and their vision level (and thus scavenging efficiency) also plummet and has to slowly regenerate as their eyes get accustomed to the bright sunlight.
  • This can happen to the player in the real world, too. After so long of looking at a dark screen, the levels near the endgame may be difficult to play because they're white and normal brightness.
• Despair Event Horizon: If you have nowhere to move due to running out of food, water, stamina, or being in a hazardous area without the proper protection and no safe space next to it, your only option will be to Despair, which basically knocks you out, respawns you at camp, and confers several punishing losses.
• Diagonal Speed Boost: Moving diagonally one square will only cost you one Food and one Water as if you have only moved one square instead of two.
• Early Game Hell: You start the game off with no food, no water, and a minor leg injury. The first two can be solved by scavenging around, but the third cannot be fixed until you construct a Clinic which takes a good while from the start of the game. This means your health and stamina operates at 90%, and things can get even worse or even unwinnable should you accrue more injuries. Your weakest source of light that you obtain very early is not enough to prevent you from getting injured or losing items/equipment while scavenging or scouting, the latter of which can snowball into an even worse scenario.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: One of the enemies you can encounter is an "Antagonistic Fire Door", a Stone Wall enemy with crazy high defense, but low attack for its level and a 0.5 attack rate. Even the city's automated fire doors are out for your blood.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: When encountering an enemy, a description representing your chances against them will be displayed: Fairly Harmless (>90%), Slightly Unnerving (80-89%), Intimidating (60-79%), Risky (50-59%), Dangerous (40-49%), Very Dangerous (20-39%), and Deadly (<20%). This however does not take into account the chances of both the player or enemy scoring a Critical Hit or dodging, meaning that it's very possible to lose to a "Fairly Harmless" enemy if it pulls off enough crits or dodges.
• Killer Robot: Various robots are some of the enemy types you can encounter, and all of them have shielding instead of health. This makes them immune to items like the Poison Dart, which only works on organic enemies.
• Layered Metropolis: The massively sprawling location you find yourself in is a metropolis made of several layers, all of which have fallen to ruin. You of course, start on Level 13.
• Maximum HP Reduction: Getting an injury will drop your maximum health by 10% (minor), 30% (medium), or 50% (serious), stacking multiplicatively with each other. This also subsequently drops your maximum Stamina Meter, which is 10x your maximum health. Environmental hazard effects will also drop your maximum hit points if you lack adequate protection against them, although this is temporary and lasts for a few seconds once you leave the affected area or put on adequately protective gear.
• Nature vs. Technology: Invoked. Most of the game is spent surviving the various layers of the dilapidated technological city, with several man-made hazards and obstacles like pollution and radiation. When the player reaches Level 1, they come across a tree in a grove that grants them nature's spiritual insight, allowing them ways to overcome a number of these obstacles by unlocking favor to the spirits and upgrades.
• Power-Up Letdown: The Improvised Bazooka is a weapon whose crafting blueprints are obtained after you can craft the Rifle, and it not only has 5 less attack power, but also gives a 20% penalty to your attack rate.
• Rate-Limited Perpetual Resource: Scavenging will eventually run out, but traps and buckets will provide food and water simply by waiting. Once the player can obtain workers, they can also produce basic resources as well.
• Reclaimed by Nature: A fair bit of the Layered Metropolis has been reclaimed by nature, as evidenced by wild animals prowling several of the lower areas. Level 1, the lowest floor, has almost been fully taken over by nature, with the floor being organic and several streams available in the area.
• Resources Management Gameplay: When exploring a level, the player needs to keep track of their food, their water, and their stamina. 1 unit of food and 1 unit of water are consumed when moving to another tile, and stamina is consumed from moving tiles or performing certain actions like scouting, scavenging, or combat. Lose all your food/water or stamina without a way to replenish it and all you can do is despair, which knocks you out and respawns you at your camp with several punishing losses.
• Unstable Equilibrium: Suffer an injury, break/lose an item, or lose a fighter party member via falling to despair or losing a fight makes your subsequent progress harder by virtue of Maximum HP Reduction and Maximum Stamina Meter Reduction from an injury, having fewer items to aid you, or the loss of attack/defense buffs from the party member that left. This makes you even more likely to despair from running out of resources, or lose fights more easily, and accrue even more injuries and broken items unless you can heal or repair them.
• Wizard Needs Food Badly: Moving a tile costs you one Food, one Water, and some Stamina. If you're unable to move because of a lack of food, water, or Stamina, you're forced to Despair in order to return to camp.