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Good thread, great OP. I'd suggest adding a post filled with generic survival advice that applies to roguelikes in general - permadeath can be a hard concept to swallow without something like Rogue Legacy's system in place. Some quick examples:
edit: I forgot 'Roguelikes is the worst genre name in history', but I guess that's not a tip :< victrix fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Aug 9, 2013 |
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Aug 9, 2013 02:27
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 14:33 |
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Potsticker posted:Shmups. Ok fair point. But that's only because shooters usurped their proper title 
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Aug 9, 2013 02:44
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What's the deal with Towerclimb? Is it any good? Coming out soon? The website just says 'on steam sometime soon' Does Risk of Rain support controllers natively? I picked up Rogue Legacy so I'm looking for some other actiony rogueish games. I have a lot of problems with RLs basic gameflow and Spelunky pisses me off, so I'd like to check out some others.
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Dec 3, 2013 02:05
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My fundamental gripe with the 'random' dungeons (and I share this same, quite unpopular view about diablo like games) is that 'random' isn't any more inherently interesting than well designed arenas. The vast majority of roguelike dungeons are forgettable, and quite uninteresting. I remember the fixed vaults/areas or even semi-fixed patterns more than I do the endless procession of hall/door/room. Another thing is that roguelikes (usually) have other tools to introduce randomness. When monsters/items/the player/the environment can all be tinkered with, the physical layout doesn't necessarily need to be entirely (or at all) randomly generated to retain interest. Some argue there's the exploration aspect, I argue that 'moving towards fog of war' isn't particularly compelling exploration to begin with. And a minor but neat point, fixed areas create more of a shared communal experience - plenty of people can talk about memorable encounter X or balls hard area Y when it's the same (or very similar), but randomly generated clumps o rooms aren't memorable or interesting enough to be remarkable. Somewhere between a fixed Doom level, a boring rear end Angband level, and a psuedo random Nethack/Crawl level, there's a happy place to be I think.
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Dec 3, 2013 04:47
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I think some smart weighted procedural generation and fixed designs linked together could work wonders. It's ok if the 'surprise' of an area is spoiled once you've seen it once if the context of that area is different every game. Completely random allows for no preparation and no anticipation, completely static allows for no variation of approach and 'solvable' situations (and note that a lot of the best nethack/adom/crawl players use the fact that there are fixed or semi fixed areas that they can intentionally plan around to consistently progress farther each time, rather than simply taking what the game gives you and brute forcing your way through it). Brogue is a game that I hate the randomness in, the entire early game feels incredibly capricious. You can do fixed seed games (somewhat analogous to RLs dungeon fixing, but I find RL has a lot less variability in the moment to moment gameplay than Brogue), though of course that has other problems. Angband was a game where the randomness bored me, it was (for a good chunk of its lifespan) halls and rooms, and the smartest strategy was farming for vaults at specific depths to loot specific gear, which was about as fun as farming in wow or diablo (which is fun to some people! just not me). In general I agree though, semi fixed and lots of hand crafted areas are the best balance I've seen. Heck, it's even ok if the game does have some areas that are explicitly random (something like the abyss in crawl or the infinite dungeon in adom) if you want to go mash letters in those places. The random dungeon levels in Crawl I always found pretty uninteresting, much like the random CoC levels in adom. A game that can constantly be updated with new areas at a minimal dev cost works best, or you wind up with a Diablo 3 situation where the semi randomness is 'used up' comparatively quickly due to the asset/time cost of creating new encounters/areas/etc. There's still plenty of stuff I've rarely or never seen in Crawl, D3 I'm not touching again till the expac.
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Dec 3, 2013 05:40
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The issue with creating a 'traditional' roguelike with the types of interactions Spelunky has as core gameplay is extremely difficult for a few reasons, not least because you're (usually) dealing with turn based grid (or hex? haven't seen any) mechanics, and those tend to be fairly uninteresting in general. When you go for hardcoded interactions, you end up with something like Nethack, which grows ludicrously bloated and insanely unfriendly to newbies due to frequently illogical or extremely unintuitive mechanics (granted, a lot of them are 20-30 year old jokes at this point, so that's part of it for nh). Brogue is, I think, a good attempt at having more emergent gameplay with a sort of puzzly approach to dungeon delving in general - combat isn't always (or even usually) the best approach to most situations, and stealth, magic, tools, companions, or running away in various combinations can get you through most encounters. Dungeonmans is actually making a decent attempt at trying to make grid based combat somewhat interesting from what I've seen, with a lot of positional and multi-grid targeted abilities (both player and enemy). Tome4 has that sort of combat variability in spades, but something about that game just didn't do it for me. The combat felt too disposable, if that makes any sense. Encounter fatigue I think. One of the reasons Spelunky is so successful isn't just the (relatively) always fresh encounters due to the interactions between various objects and traps, it's also the tightness of the pacing - it's a short game, overall, so it doesn't overstay its welcome, and that also lets each encounter have more meaning. I'd like to see more roguelikes trying for brevity over bloat, I think a good clean extensible core could be a lot of fun if designed right. Consider something like DoomRL, which was very simple to begin with, and slowly gained more items/complexity over time. A solid core combat engine and a host of items and item/monster/class interactions that are interesting (and explained, for fucks sake) could be awesome. Basically take something like Nethack level item complexity, but instead of burying all the interactions in obscurity and the insanely annoying identify minigame, have a shorter list of items and interactions that are clearly explained, and let the player experiment with the way those items interact with the world each game. A major issue with roguelikes (and, broadly speaking, games in general) is that for a lot of them, the only 'language' we have to speak to them is 'kill, kill faster, kill harder'. There's nothing wrong with that at all, but when you give the player tools to interact with the world in other ways, the players 'vocabulary' expands and you often get interesting emergent gameplay. Done well, it's also fairly well balanced and enjoyable. Done poorly and, well, look at any feature bloated rl that is interesting conceptually but just not fun to play.
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Dec 4, 2013 09:27
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I have yeah - there aren't too many I haven't played  Also even games I praise might not actually be games I actually enjoy (see: Brogue, Spelunky). I can recognize good solid design even if I don't find it fun myself 
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Dec 4, 2013 10:17
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Just wanted to say that if you haven't tried One Way Heroics, you should pick it up. $2 is a criminally cheap price for a fun game.
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Dec 10, 2013 09:21
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Lawman 0 posted:Whats new in adom 1.2? http://www.ancardia.com/changelog.html I think I'm getting old and lazy, I tried to play ADOM again and I just can't handle the UI any more. Same story with Nethack. After playing some really streamlined roguelikes lately with decent ui/graphics/etc, I find the older ones just too clumsy to enjoy.
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Dec 12, 2013 19:34
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One Way Heroics kinda owns in that respect. You can literally play it with the numpad only. (I actually wish it had more hotkeys so you could bind abilities, but otherwise, it owns!)
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Dec 12, 2013 19:52
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Levitate posted:I've been playing Nethack (half-heartedly) off and on for probably over a decade and finally ascended for the first time with a Samurai Congrats  I'm pretty sure it took me about that long as well, granted, I started when I was a kid. Oh god I'm so old  After that first one I ascended several others in rapid succession - it really helps your confidence to get that first win in. Something else that helped me immensely was teaching someone else to play - when you're explaining everything it naturally slows down your play, which is always the safest way to play any roguelike. That and realizing that Never Melee is the best way to melee, until you're suitably invincible I can't play Nethack any more these days, too much fiddly ui bullshit, but I still have a soft spot for it, such a wealth of gameplay options and so many random goofy funny tidbits. We need a modern Nethack - Dredmore and Dungeonmans ain't quite it.
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Dec 17, 2013 03:59
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dis astranagant posted:Is it possible to get enough arrows/ya to never bother hitting things with your sword(s)? I haven't played Nethack in a decade and was always a dumbass "I hit it with my swords" guy. Like the others mentioned, it can be really strong, with a stack of enchanted daggers and appropriate skill. But even without, just using thrown/range stuff early and running away from anything remotely dangerous hugely increases your life expectancy. Really the main thing though is just using thrown stuff early in the game when you're still a pussy. Nethack is happy to let you become I think that's one of the reasons that classes like Valkyrie and Samurai are 'easier' to ascend, you can start off face mashing and do ok in comparison to some of the other classes that start with crap gear. Also if you still enjoy playing it, do try a Wizard sometime. They're a little slow to start, but the mid and late game is so much fun when you can fling around powerful spells with ease. I've tried playing some of the newer source ports/tiles versions of Nethack, but I just really don't like any of them. I always played Nethack in ascii, and I no longer like either ascii or the Nethack ui, so I just don't really play it anymore, which is a shame. Gehenna can gently caress right off though. I even tried a few mods that replaced it and even they were still a slog. Probably one of the reasons I enjoyed my Wizard run - I magic mapped and dug straight tunnels between every staircase in that hellhole (haw). Made descent and escape so much faster.
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Dec 17, 2013 15:47
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madjackmcmad posted:What are the core things you'd carry forward if you were bringing Nethack into the glistening neon future? Item interactions, and by extension, world interaction. Nothing else comes close to the number of crazy ways you can interact with items, monsters, and the world as Nethack. Also to be clear that wasn't a knock on Dmans or Dredmore - I like both games, they're just the only 'whimsical' roguelikes I can think of. Crawl is comparatively 'serious' and bleached of amusement or any significant item interactivity either. I'd also drop the entire id minigame, because gently caress that minigame. In general the 'gotchas' in Nethack are poo poo design imo, as the majority of them are 'once you know this, you're safe, before that, you die and get to restart!' Nethack isn't any less fun when I have lots of fun things to play with, but the design of the game works to prevent you from getting to that point as a new player. In most roguelikes, the vast majority of complexity comes from combat mechanics, interactivity is usually way lower on the list, if present at all. When combat is the only 'language' you have to speak to the game, there's less 'dialogue' you can have with the world - and you're straining the limits of creativity to come up with new and interesting ways to make 3x3 grid combat and letterbumping engaging.
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Dec 17, 2013 16:31
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 Nice work, plenty of good new games listed there
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Dec 17, 2013 17:50
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Hah, I hate pets. Actually one of the major reasons I don't like Brogue.
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Dec 17, 2013 18:04
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Are there any good Gauntlet style games with roguelike/procedural elements?
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Dec 18, 2013 01:47
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madjackmcmad posted:I like the idea of secrets in our roguelikes, but I like them best when discovering them makes your gameplay better. The opposite are secrets that you have to know about to even progress. ADOM has a button dedicated to wiping mud off your face, that's such a gotcha the first time you need to do it. I know that's touted as realism, but the reality is if there was mud on your face you'd wipe it off by instincy, unless you were some mad crazy kata fighter with an iron will. I kind of think 'secrets' as a gameplay tool are dead, or at least undead. The internet has killed them. I'm also not convinced they're worth the design time compared to the time that a new player spends enjoying (or hating) them. Rather than obfuscated game mechanics or true hidden 'gotchas', I think a broad and deep pool of gameplay possibilities is just a better way to design games period, roguelikes included. And I don't strictly mean 'more' - games that have interesting encounter permutations from a handful of well designed enemies/weapons/tools/levels often have very long legs indeed. I can't think of many cases where I kicked the bucket due to something I hadn't seen before made me particularly happy, but I always enjoy the moments where I stop completely and sit and think about my options for awhile - and Nethack specifically was pretty rad about usually having any number of possible solutions for a given situation. Granted, there was usually an obvious one, but still, the increased number of possibilities would create unusual situations when your options were more limited (usually in the early/midgame, but even lategame problems could occur with specific mixes of enemies and the wrong kit). And again, this isn't a criticism of something that's more purely hack and slash like Crawl (or even, say, Diablo 3), simply an observation that in roguelikes, I like having the extra options. Curiously both Tome and Brogue do a pretty good job of having an insane variety of combat options (Tome) or situational answers (Brogue), but I don't really enjoy either game. Come to think of it, spellcasting in Crawl is one area where that game gives you lots more tactical toys to play with, but I dislike the hoops you have to jump through to reach the mid/lategame with a caster to actually play with those toys extensively. I hate Crawl earlygame, and I really hate it as a caster. I also think roguelikes (and games, again) are a bit lazy in terms of enemy design. Levels are partly to blame for this. What's the difference between a level 1 Orc and a level 50 Ogre in terms of gameplay? Unless the Ogre does some sort of unique attack or movement, not a lot. Yet a lot of roguelikes (and games in general) will spend the time to add in 'more content' that is functionally the same in terms of gameplay. How many trash mobs in mmos do nothing more than walk up to the party and hit people? And they get how much time from artists, animators, and designers? Angband is/was the king of all 'holy poo poo I'm cleaving through a mountain of boring letters oops I died to something actually dangerous while I was asleep on an arrow key', but a lot of roguelikes are guilty of having 50 different melee foos and 20 different ranged foos with only a handful of creatures with unusual abilities. There's definitely room for popcorn enemies to bracket more unusual encounters (if for no other reason than to avoid paralyzing the player with constant complex encounters), but it's an area I'd like to see more work done with. Brogue is pretty good at this, with many different unique enemies with unique abilities, as are some others. And realism is a terrible word in gaming discussion, almost as badly abused as poor 'balance' Any time either word comes up, odds are it's shorthand for a much more complicated thought that the person writing can't be bothered to expand (or doesn't even know how to!). In the case of 'keys that do one thing' I'd just call them bad design period. Playing One Way Heroics after mucking with a few Nethack source ports recently was refreshing. You can literally play it with the numpad and nothing else, and it's great. It could benefit from a few extra hotkeys to assign abilities, but otherwise, there's very little I'd touch about its UI. quote:It's true. I'm trying to raise that bar with Dungeonmans but at the core it's a game about crushing monsters and taking their stuff, it lacks the broad collection of world interactions you see in Nethack. There's nothing wrong with that. Many of the best games that I have played and continue to play are done with a singular focus on refining a handful of core mechanics. Not that sprawling messy nonsense can't be a ton of fun (people like DF, right? ).And the kind of interactivity I'm talking about is hard. If it was easy, more games would do it. It's even harder in 3d games with graphical assets that need to be created for every eventuality. Doesn't mean I don't want more of it  (I also think its one of the reasons that Minecraft/Terraria/Starbound are so wildly popular - freeform interactions, randomization, creativity, all in one package)
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Dec 18, 2013 04:39
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This is the same contest that doesn't even have links to the roguelikes in question. It's a pretty dumb page all around.
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Dec 18, 2013 19:18
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Angband is the only one of the big three I never beat, but I don't think I ever will now  Maybe it's massively changed, but when I last played it, it was a huge loving slog to get to the endgame, and one misstep along the way would burn up hours of effort. It always took me way longer to get anywhere in Angband with a shitton of utter boredom on the way there than it did in Adom or Nethack. Plus the dungeon was boring as hell and it felt like Robotron ascii edition to me. Or maybe I was just doing it wrong I'll look at the new version for old times sake.
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Dec 25, 2013 03:04
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One Way Heroics is awesome and you should get it
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Dec 26, 2013 22:08
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Has any indie project like that ever done a restart and actually succeeded?
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Dec 27, 2013 09:36
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Do the Sots: The Pit expansions add any abilities or anything more involved to the gameplay? I picked up the base game on sale, and I like the general aesthetic, but the core gameplay seems to be 'shoot dude, stab dude, run out of durability on your shoot/stab tool'. Also my inventory gets clogged with piles of garbage and I can't find any recipes - is this a wiki-only adventure?
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Dec 27, 2013 19:51
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Think about who their audience is
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Dec 28, 2013 09:14
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Roguelikes are a bit too niche to attract the budget that 'real' graphics would demand. There are games with roguelike elements that look good technically, but I can't think of any remotely 'pure' roguelikes with hidef graphics and animation if that's what you're looking for. Looking for a roguelike to push your machine is a bit like looking for turn based strategy games for your hit of adrenaline. And yeah, play Brogue It's the prettiest looking text game out there!
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Dec 29, 2013 09:44
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dmans is a good game anyway, it's gonna be pretty awesome when all the new sprite art goes in
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Dec 29, 2013 13:14
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Any opinions about Delver the fproguelike on sale on steam right now?
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Jan 2, 2014 05:17
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Desktop Dungeons, yes, no?
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Jan 2, 2014 17:36
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voltron lion force posted:Its cute and fairly competent, but also super bare bones right now. I beat it on my third try in about 40 minutes by simply putting points into HP and equipping the things with the bigger numbers. The hard part I guess is just surviving the early game (avoid getting poisoned) but after that there really isn't much to it. Yeah I checked it out. I adore the aesthetic and I think a roguelike fps done right could be loving amazing, but Delver isn't it yet.
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Jan 2, 2014 20:14
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Is there a savegame edit I can make to unlock all the recipes in Sots: The Pit?
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Jan 3, 2014 17:47
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Random general roguelike thought: I really don't like 'stairs' and static level changes in general. Always leads to cheesiness one way or another.
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Jan 4, 2014 01:34
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Would you rather one continuous open 2D world? How do you indicate "harder content in this direction" without forcing the generated map to be rather linear? I know there's problems with stairs making it too easy to run away from your problems (and generally chopping the world up into a bunch of discrete elements, which feels artificial), but they do serve a useful design purpose. One Way Heroics Also username + post. But yeah, I think it'd be an interesting place to explore for a 7DRL challenge. There's quite a few ways it could be approached * All one giant 3d world ala DF * One big 2d map, but some gimmicks that constantly generate new threats or situations to be dealt with no matter where you are * Only one level at a time, ironman style * The ability to 'interact' with a limited space around the 'stairs' (see what's around it before you enter, enemies can react to your presence, etc) That's just off the top of my head, I don't know that a stairless crawl/nethack/angband would be a better game mind you, but I'd like to see the results of experimentation in that direction.
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Jan 4, 2014 01:47
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Dredmore's fine with small levels and double speed anims, it's not a super long game to finish with that setup.
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Jan 5, 2014 02:58
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Chinook posted:Does anyone have a good recommendation for a roguelike that is pretty easy to beat? Maybe a bit uncomplicated as well. One Way Heroics for sure. Dungeonmans once its finished. OWH is very forgiving and has multiple difficulty levels, progress of various sorts carried over from game to game, lots of unlockable classes and perks, a variety of endings, and its both easy to play and to understand.
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Jan 5, 2014 03:32
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I've never been a huge fan of freeform/skill systems. I know a lot of people love them, and there's nothing wrong with them really, but I like the added fluff that comes with strong class concepts. They're also almost always horrible newbie traps (and sometimes even experienced players!)
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Jan 6, 2014 08:38
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Levitate posted:That's the frustrating part about rougelikes, I"m not really sure I could have done something different...maybe, but sometimes bad poo poo just happens I go back and forth with them. They're easily one of my favorite genres of games, and I almost always enjoy games with rogueish elements. But at the same time they can be loving infuriating. I find Brogue almost intolerable (despite considering it to be really well designed), I quit playing FTL (same), and I really don't like Crawl's early game. Generally I take multi-month breaks, and I have an annual tradition of delving heavily around christmas (got my first 15 rune crawl win this year ).It's very difficult to make a game hard enough to be genuinely challenging while not also including the possibility of bullshit killing you in a manner that feels unfair. People do have very high win % on very difficult roguelikes though, sometimes even chaining back to back wins, so its definitely possible to minimize the impact of the rng with good play - but reaching that point takes a lot of time. After my first ascension in Nethack, I won multiple classes in very short order - I had 'cracked' the game, and it was obvious how to proceed. But those skills definitely dull over time, I can barely remember item interactions now Honestly I think I enjoy the wussier roguelikes more as I get older. Stuff like One Way Heroics might not be as satisfying as my first Nethack, ADOM, or Crawl victory, but its also way more approachable, fun, and I'm far quicker to recommend a game like OWH to friends or new players. I'm still waiting for a kickass gauntlet roguelike and a kickass fps roguelike. Both could be amazing.
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Jan 11, 2014 17:33
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Jordan7hm posted:Most players can't recognize when they should be cautious. I find playing at that level of alertness constantly kind of draining honestly. Although playing roguelikes to relax is probably slightly silly as well
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Jan 12, 2014 08:54
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I think it's kind of sad that Nethack was kind of abandoned, but to some extent, it had to happen - a lot of what makes Nethack Nethack is based on 20-30 year old dnd tropes and references that just aren't as meaningful today. But at the same time, no one has stepped up to produce a Nethack successor, at least, not what I would consider one. To some extent, I think the level of item interaction we see in Nethack is something that can be done far more easily in a text or even tile based game than any sort of 'modern' 3d environment. Games like Minecraft, oddly enough, are probably closer to the spirit of world interaction than many other rpgs (even something like the elder scrolls, lauded for being 'freeform' and open world). Nethack is definitely worth playing though, there is a lot of stuff that will make you smile or even laugh when you run into it. The absurdity of some of your deaths are pretty amazing.
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Jan 12, 2014 21:21
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Yeah, ambient music and songs for the uh, songs would be amazing.
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Jan 14, 2014 02:42
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Levitate posted:The worst thing about rougelike's is dying in the middle game and getting pissed and trying to blaze through the early game and dying because it's boring/annoying to play the early game over and over and over because you keep dying in the middle game Summary of why I can only handle Crawl in small doses
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Jan 25, 2014 04:12
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 14:33 |
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Eschatos posted:Sword of the Stars 1 was just shy of being an amazing game. I can't think of any other 4x that tried randomized tech trees. Moo1? :P
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Jan 27, 2014 21:39
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