Made by Devlocke
Bathala is a thesis project exploring rule-based difficulty adjustment in a card roguelike inspired by Philippine folklore.
Why we built Bathala
We wanted Philippine folklore to be something you encounter and make choices within. In Bathala, a babaylan guides you through a spirit realm where the creatures, the elements and your decisions all belong to the world’s stories.
We built the game as our Computer Science thesis at the University of Makati, bringing that cultural setting together with a question about game design: how can a game respond to the person playing it?
Folklore you can play
Tikbalang, sirena and the moon-devouring Bakunawa become encounters across three chapters. The almanac gives each creature a story and an origin alongside its role in the game.
A challenge that responds
Players bring different levels of experience. Bathala uses explicit rules to adjust difficulty from how a fight went, tracking health, hand quality and other measures of play. Those rules stay visible in the source.
A different path each run
Poker hands give combat a familiar starting point. Deck sculpting, generated maps and the choice to spare or slay give you room to experiment when you return.
The team
Four Computer Science students from the University of Makati’s College of Computing and Information Sciences, building under the name Devlocke.