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grate deceiver posted:Yes you should, Card Quest owns Agreed. Despite its flaws, the core game is awesome. My #2 played phone game (behind StS)
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Mar 1, 2024 11:15
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Been a few beyond a decade, but KeeperRL has finally arrived at v1.0 with aims for a good future beyond it: https://store.steampowered.com/app/329970/KeeperRL/ quote:Ambitious dungeon simulator with roguelike and RPG elements. Take the role of an evil wizard and study the methods of black magic. Equip your minions and explore the world, murder innocent villagers and burn their homes. Build your dungeon, lay traps and prepare for an assault of angry heroes.
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Mar 1, 2024 12:48
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Serephina posted:Thinking about it, is anyone out there making new traditional RLs with high production values? Like the last I heard of was Tangledeep, which I might not have liked but I certainly bought and supported and was happy to have done. Shiren 6 just came out, does that not qualify as a traditional RL? The Mystery Dungeon games have had a reasonably steady release rate for decades. "High production values" is a big ask for a niche genre, unfortunately. The difference between ASCII art and no sound, vs. nicely-drawn and -animated art with good sound effects and music, can easily be over $100k.
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Mar 1, 2024 14:50
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Caves of Qud is coming out soon that's one.
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Mar 1, 2024 15:04
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I bought Dicefolk. Only had time for one run so far but it seems pretty cool. Go around an actual node based world map (not StS style "choose a path and go down it", you can actually move around) recruiting pokémon, improving their stats, finding them equipment, tweaking your dice and fighting enemy teams. A basic idea is that in your team of three there will be one "leader" who is the one that normally fights and is fought against, but with some dice you can rotate your formation around. Many pokémon have skills that automatically activate when they rotate in or out of the leader's spot, or activate every turn if they're not the leader. For instance I recruited a wolf who automatically attacks the enemy leader every turn if they're not in the leader spot. I gave my wolf an item that makes its attacks drain health, so I just had to make sure to keep my wolf not at 100% HP by targeting it with enemy ranged attacks etc, and it would do free attacks every turn and healed itself every time. The dice are also neat. You have you own three dice with die faces you can modify at various spots, and also the enemy teams have their own dice. You roll all dice, and then you have to apply all the enemy dice before you can end the dice. But you choose the order of activations. Hmm, I rolled an "attack" and a "rotate left" for the enemy team. The enemy leader is currently a poo poo brickhouse with 8 damage, but the guy to the left is the healer who does 1 damage. Maybe I should rotate the enemy team before triggering the enemy attack? But maybe before then I'll apply my own dice to slap the more dangerous in the head. Add in a very charming and cartoonish art style and it feels like a winner.
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Mar 1, 2024 15:46
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Shiren 6 just came out, does that not qualify as a traditional RL? The Mystery Dungeon games have had a reasonably steady release rate for decades. Chin Strap posted:Caves of Qud is coming out soon that's one.
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Mar 1, 2024 15:52
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I don’t have an input on that game but i do want to say i read “the dice are also meat”
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Mar 1, 2024 15:57
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Captain Foo posted:I don’t have an input on that game but i do want to say i read “the dice are also meat”
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Mar 1, 2024 16:00
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Serephina posted:Sorry I have no idea about Shiren, I think I may have discounted them as jRPGs which I'm allergic to? What're they like? They're extremely traditional roguelikes (in a good way), not jrpgs at all. Grid based, tile movement, non-modal shops, the works. No skill trees or character customization, the focus is on item use and distinct enemy abilities. Nethack is probably the most similar western roguelike, Shiren takes a lot of inspiration from it (including an item that's basically just engraving Elbereth on the floor) The main story has mild metaprogression (you lose everything when you die, but there are npc storylines that progress across runs that make things easier), but it's better to think of it like Necrodancers', where it's just training wheels for the real game - the postgame has 90% of the game's content and most of those dungeons are 100% pure Berlin with no metaprogression of any kind. Snake Maze fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Mar 1, 2024 |
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Mar 1, 2024 16:11
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Is it Switch exclusive?
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Mar 1, 2024 16:16
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mystes posted:Is it Switch exclusive? The newest one is, at least for now. The previous game (The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate) is on steam as well, and it's still a great intro to the series.
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Mar 1, 2024 16:19
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Captain Foo posted:I don’t have an input on that game but i do want to say i read “the dice are also meat” Some dice heal, so in a way they are meat!
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Mar 1, 2024 17:09
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Snake Maze posted:The newest one is, at least for now. The previous game (The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate) is on steam as well, and it's still a great intro to the series. It is also embarrassingly content-rich. There’s gotta be about fifteen post-game dungeons with varying gameplay modifiers on them. Insane value. For higher production, relatively traditional roguelikes, there’s always Jupiter Hell, though I know that’s a wee bit outside the realm of Berlin style. Only a little though, I think. Still waiting on the Switch port, btw.
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Mar 1, 2024 17:21
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Compared to vast vast majority of games that get called "roguelikes" Jupiter Hell is as traditional as it gets.
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Mar 1, 2024 17:24
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It feels embarrassingly shallow, especially because Jupiter hell meets my need of being playable on a controller, but something about the isometric angle and everything else about the presentation and soundscape made me put it down. Maybe it's because I just wanted it to be doom RL again and hear Doom sound effects I'll give it another shot next time it's on sale
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Mar 1, 2024 17:54
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Tea Party Crasher posted:It feels embarrassingly shallow, especially because Jupiter hell meets my need of being playable on a controller, but something about the isometric angle and everything else about the presentation and soundscape made me put it down. Maybe it's because I just wanted it to be doom RL again and hear Doom sound effects it's very good op
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Mar 1, 2024 18:23
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unattended spaghetti posted:For higher production, relatively traditional roguelikes, there’s always Jupiter Hell, though I know that’s a wee bit outside the realm of Berlin style. It's an almost perfect match for the Berlin interpretation, except for ascii graphics and the "modal" requirement. https://roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Berlin_Interpretation Shiren also fails those criteria specifically, and has metaprogression too. Few people are mentioning the fact that you can hoard and upgrade gear across multiple runs. In theory, you can beat the main game without using this - but it's a clear advantage to use it. And some bonus dungeons don't let you take your advanced gear in, while others strongly encourage that you do so. Shiren 5's "night" system is pure metaprogression, though it seems to be gone in Shiren 6 (yay!). (Also the Berlin interpretation needs revision badly. Or something to replace it.)
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Mar 1, 2024 18:29
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Tequila Bob posted:And some bonus dungeons don't let you take your advanced gear in, while others strongly encourage that you do so. To be clear, the balance is skewed very heavily in favor of the dungeons that don't let you carry anything in. For example, of the ten original postgame dungeons in Shiren 5, two of them allow you to bring items in. The other eight do not allow you to bring anything in or make the dungeon easier in any way, with no metaprogression of any kind.
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Mar 1, 2024 18:39
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Snake Maze posted:To be clear, the balance is skewed very heavily in favor of the dungeons that don't let you carry anything in. For example, of the ten original postgame dungeons in Shiren 5, two of them allow you to bring items in. The other eight do not allow you to bring anything in or make the dungeon easier in any way, with no metaprogression of any kind. Yeah the metaprogression that exists in Shiren is more to get people who aren’t playing it explicitly for the challenge through the story. For the rest of us there’s the postgame.
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Mar 1, 2024 18:52
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Metaprogression sucks, I hate it and all, but it's never made sense to treat it as genre-disqualifying; it's present in vestigial form as far back at Nethack, and the Mystery Dungeon series is concurrent with most of the recognized foundational roguelikes.
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Mar 1, 2024 18:57
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Tequila Bob posted:(Also the Berlin interpretation needs revision badly. Or something to replace it.) Sounds like a thankless job to me. As soon as you define a genre, someone'll make a new game that destroys your definition. Even when the Berlin interpretation was made, it was obviously imperfect, and they had a wishy-washy "most of the games we're talking about have most of these characteristics" disclaimer up top. Games are even more varied now, so, good loving luck.
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Mar 1, 2024 19:00
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Tequila Bob posted:(Also the Berlin interpretation needs revision badly. Or something to replace it.)
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Mar 1, 2024 19:02
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Metaprogression sucks, I hate it and all, but it's never made sense to treat it as genre-disqualifying; it's present in vestigial form as far back at Nethack, and the Mystery Dungeon series is concurrent with most of the recognized foundational roguelikes. I’m not interested in the metaprogression debate, tbh. I’m of the opinion that mechanics in and of themselves aren’t inherently good or bad. I think it’s all context and method of implementation.
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Mar 1, 2024 19:11
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The important part of the Berlin Interpretation is that it's very explicitly not directed at constraining what kind of games get made, but rather to define an intentional community, a group of people who are interested in a particular type of game. e: The slide in definitions is obnoxious not because Spelunky or Hades or Slay the Spire or whatever are bad games (on the contrary, they're brilliant), but because it flooded communal spaces with people who would react with confusion and distaste towards the very topic the communities were originally about, and also because the wave of "roguelikes" (which are really much closer to a resurgence of run-based arcade games) cynically capitalized on the reputation of roguelikes for depth and challenge at a time when a lot of AAA design was heading in the exact opposite direction, while simultaneously sanding off a lot of the perceived "rough edges" that were essential to that depth and challenge, because the average consumer wouldn't tolerate them. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Mar 1, 2024 |
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Mar 1, 2024 19:11
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I stand by the Necrodancer comparison. Like, in that game, it starts out having very, uh, "rogue-lite-like" metaprogression. You can buy permanent stat upgrades for your character, and add new items to the drop pool, and stuff like that. But then you finish the story and move on to all zones mode, and it turns out all that stuff was just training wheels as you learned how the game works, and from here on out it's a much more traditional roguelike where every run is the same regardless of whether it's a new save or one that's played for 999 hours and done everything. Shiren is the same way. In 5 it's definitely possible to just keep using escape scrolls and undo grass to leave the dungeon when things go south, until you eventually smash through the main story with some +30 weapon that oneshots everything. (6, to its credit, actually gets rid of almost everything that made this possible and is much more focused on teaching new players how to win "properly" from a mostly-fresh start). But that's just the training wheels, and if you actually get into the game then 95% of your playtime will be spent doing runs that have no metaprogression or carryover at all, just like Nethack or DCSS or Caves of Qud or other trad roguelikes. Which I bring up not because there's anything inherently wrong with metaprogression, but because I know personally it's a huge breath of fresh air to get a new trad roguelike that's all about player skill and has no metaprogression, and I don't want other people who also want that to miss out because they thought it was something different.
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Mar 1, 2024 19:27
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:The important part of the Berlin Interpretation is that it's very explicitly not directed at constraining what kind of games get made, but rather to define an intentional community, a group of people who are interested in a particular type of game. It may not change anything in practice, but I think it's cynical for no real reason to say the elements those games "sanded off" was because of perceived market demands and not because those are the games those developers wanted to play and make. Especially in the case of StS and Spelunky, both by devs who have been extremely blunt about their personal tastes in games and design.
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Mar 1, 2024 19:28
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Snake Maze posted:I stand by the Necrodancer comparison. Like, in that game, it starts out having very, uh, "rogue-lite-like" metaprogression. You can buy permanent stat upgrades for your character, and add new items to the drop pool, and stuff like that. But then you finish the story and move on to all zones mode, and it turns out all that stuff was just training wheels as you learned how the game works, and from here on out it's a much more traditional roguelike where every run is the same regardless of whether it's a new save or one that's played for 999 hours and done everything. I think it's very clever how it makes it easier to learn the game since you start by doing different levels separately and you get the motivation of feeling like you're "unlocking" stuff without having any metaprogression or unlocking in the real mode, which you are free to go straight to right from the beginning mystes fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Mar 1, 2024 |
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Mar 1, 2024 19:29
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Snake Maze posted:you eventually smash through the main story with some +30 weapon that oneshots everything. (6, to its credit, actually gets rid of almost everything that made this possible This is the most compelling thing I've heard about Shiren 6 and is definitely gonna make me get a copy. Thanks!
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Mar 1, 2024 19:44
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Snake Maze is right. Everyone play Shiren. Always has been, always will be one of the greats. I expected to get a clear sooner than I have. I think I’m out of practice and zoning out more than I ought to heh.
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Mar 1, 2024 20:02
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ExiledTinkerer posted:Been a few beyond a decade, but KeeperRL has finally arrived at v1.0 with aims for a good future beyond it: I haven't finished the tutorial yet but I have already killed a child with a club, so I'm gonna go ahead and say it's probably a good game. 
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Mar 1, 2024 20:02
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Yeah, metaprog is just a gamedev tool, and done well it serves a really useful purpose of providing a smoother onramp to a tougher challenge - games where you die, that's it, and all you gained is intrinsic knowledge (if that) are great for a very specific group of people, but a lot of the gaming public will not tolerate that. If metaprog helps to get their level of play up to a point where they can succeed with or without it, it's done a Good. Now, games that have +0.5% to physical damage per point as their upgrade tree can gently caress off, similarly games that make you choose between meta currency and in-run currency, also awful. There were a lot of conversations about horizontal vs vertical progression in this thread years ago, metaprog can run down either or both axes, but it can also do interesting things when combined with procedural generation - unlocking entirely new elements on the map/levels/etc in-game, allowing it to serve as a soft tutorial by not overwhelming the player with options early (infodumps in the first 10 minutes of a game are one of the absolute worst possible ways to tutorialize games), a means of expanding run complexity, and other interesting tricks that can't be done in a one size fits all dungeon/run/adventure gen, keeping the player engaged by promising new things to discover each run (that they're more likely to experience as their skill and personal knowledge and execution levels improve). It's often used as the bad kind of blunt number-go-up engagement tool, but that's an issue of implementation, not a fundamental problem with the concept.
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Mar 1, 2024 20:04
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victrix posted:Yeah, metaprog is just a gamedev tool, and done well it serves a really useful purpose of providing a smoother onramp to a tougher challenge - games where you die, that's it, and all you gained is intrinsic knowledge (if that) are great for a very specific group of people, but a lot of the gaming public will not tolerate that. If metaprog helps to get their level of play up to a point where they can succeed with or without it, it's done a Good.
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Mar 1, 2024 20:06
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ExiledTinkerer posted:Been a few beyond a decade, but KeeperRL has finally arrived at v1.0 with aims for a good future beyond it: It's worth noting that anyone interested in buying KeeperRL can donate $20 to a wildlife fund, animal shelter or animal charity of their choice, email a member of the KeeperRL team and get either a Steam key or the full standalone game in return. Deets at the bottom of this post: https://keeperrl.com/index.html@p=56 I donated 20€ to a local cat rescue and even if their promotion is only valid for charities registered in the USA or something, a local charity still got a donation. E: They said it's open to all charities and gave me a Steam key. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Mar 1, 2024 |
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Mar 1, 2024 20:18
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Diephoon posted:I haven't finished the tutorial yet but I have already killed a child with a club, so I'm gonna go ahead and say it's probably a good game. "Your spirits are lifted."
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Mar 1, 2024 20:22
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Jupiter Hell also has at least 3 more content updates in the pipeline, one soon'ish with v1.8---alongside people going buckwild with the modding capabilities being all but a given as they gain traction.
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Mar 1, 2024 21:01
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victrix posted:Yeah, metaprog is just a gamedev tool, and done well it serves a really useful purpose of providing a smoother onramp to a tougher challenge - games where you die, that's it, and all you gained is intrinsic knowledge (if that) are great for a very specific group of people, but a lot of the gaming public will not tolerate that. If metaprog helps to get their level of play up to a point where they can succeed with or without it, it's done a Good. I think you're making some assumptions that aren't true here. There are a bunch of game genres that function just fine without any metaprogression - fighting games, sports games, racing games, platformers of all sorts, puzzle games, FPS deathmatch games, pinball and other arcade titles - and the gaming public tolerates it quite well. And that's just looking at video games, never mind the millennia of board games which precede them. Chess and Go and Tetris and Street Fighter have no metaprog whatsoever, and the gaming public "tolerates" it just fine in those cases. To me, the idea of an RPG that tests your own skills at playing it is really appealing. Grindy metaprog is bending the RL genre away from that idea and toward making them into shallow grindfests. Like JRPGs but even more repetitive. JRPGs are great since they have the implicit promise that anyone can win - it's just a matter of time, really - but Roguelikes are supposed to be something else. Something that takes skill, and practice, and self-improvement.
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Mar 1, 2024 21:28
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ah cool, now we're having the genre argument via the metaprogression argument
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Mar 1, 2024 21:34
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Tequila Bob posted:I think you're making some assumptions that aren't true here. This is true, but I think there is a broader trend towards players expecting something in terms of meta progress even it's just skins or gallery stuff or cheevos and it's bled far beyond roguelikes and their derivatives. I think the original claim that the gaming public specifically wanted metaprogression in the sense of mechanical crutches missed the mark but more and more players really want some kind of meta carrot.
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Mar 1, 2024 21:38
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The oldschool games with "spoilers" like Nethack etc are really just metaprogression in another form, and are arguably worse in that regard than the +1-to-starting-HP format because they give players the false impression that memorizing a bunch of obtuse secrets and gotchas has anything to do with skill or mastery.
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Mar 1, 2024 21:39
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Serephina posted:Thinking about it, is anyone out there making new traditional RLs with high production values? Like the last I heard of was Tangledeep, which I might not have liked but I certainly bought and supported and was happy to have done. Path of Achra actually inspired me to start thinking about something along those lines, and I think I'd end up with something that covered a lot of the Berlin interpretation, but I do agree with others that it's starting to get a little out of date. Specifically I think the parts I'm not as interested in are just the item discovery / unidentified items part, I think the rest of it is pretty good. To me, ToME is extremely my poo poo, so I was wondering what an evolution or streamlining of the ToME formula could look like, and Path of Achra is one of those examples, which relies on an extremely constrained interaction space. I think that's pretty cool, but not really my jam, so I'm kind of debating more of a spiritual successor to ToME that's a bit closer to Rift Wizard in terms of presentation/etc. King of Bleh posted:The oldschool games with "spoilers" like Nethack etc are really just metaprogression in another form, and are arguably worse in that regard than the +1-to-starting-HP format because they give players the false impression that memorizing a bunch of obtuse secrets and gotchas has anything to do with skill or mastery. I agree with this a lot - I know some people really love that sort of thing but in my own personal view I think it's generally just bad design. Learning that Minotaurs exist in mazes and that they are physical attackers with a simple attack pattern - cool and good. Learning that if you use the almost never used 'chat' function and say 'Minos' to a minotaur, it will get confused and crash into a wall, revealing the secret treasure - bad, dumb. Falcon2001 fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Mar 1, 2024 |
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Mar 1, 2024 21:41
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