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 The last roguelike thread was several years old, and a lot has happened in the genre in that time, so it's time for a new OP! First things first, defining the drat word. The first roguelike ever was a 1980 game called Rogue, hence the name of the genre. Roguelikes are games that share a philosophy of game design cribbed from Rogue. Defining the borders of a genre can be very tricky, but a lot of time has been spent by a lot of people trying to do just that. The most well known such effort is the Berlin Interpretation. During the 2008 IRDC (International Roguelike Development Conference) in Berlin, participants came up with a list of "high value" and "low value" factors that roguelike games would share. If you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of defining a genre, that's probably where you should start. Let's not get into the details though. For the purposes of this thread, it's always seemed like a game having the following characteristics is roguelike enough for us to talk about it: Random / procedurally generated levels: Every time you play a roguelike, it's going to be different; the monsters, the loot, and the dungeon levels (or their equivalents) are randomly generated for every game. The gameplay mechanics do not change between games, but the individual situations that your character faces change in every new game. This is a huge part of why roguelikes have such replayability. While some roguelikes do have elements (story, level portions, quests) that are not randomly generated, the random nature of an individual game is fundamental to roguelikes. Like Ashenai from the previous OP, this is probably the most important criterion for a game being a roguelike, and the only one where I don't really think there's a counterexample. Complex, emergent gameplay: Roguelikes are generally designed to have enough complexity to allow several solutions to common goals. For most roguelikes, there are a large number of strategic and tactical options for every situation, and experienced players can often pull some hilariously off-the-wall stunt to escape even the most hopeless situations. Permadeath: Most roguelikes feature a system where if you die, then that's it, your character is dead and gone, and you have to start all over again. Because the games are balanced around this fact, and because of the random environment, permadeath is intended to offer tough but not unfair difficulty, and a real sense of accomplishment to players who manage to beat the game. Permadeath remains a staple roguelike feature, but some roguelikes, especially the more action oriented ones, allow for persistent character or world development between games. Traditionally, roguelikes were also turn-based single character CRPGs, with either lovely or ASCII graphics, revolving entirely around hack'n'slash / dungeon crawling gameplay. That is not necessarily the case any more, as we shall see. All that being said, if you're unsure of whether or not to talk about a game, please follow this advice from DalaranJ: If you are asking "Is it okay to talk about this game in this thread?" the answer is always YES. If there is any possibility that a game could be considered a roguelike than you can talk about it in this thread because this is the roguelike megathread. Now let's get to the games. A list of many RL style games is over at this here link. Thanks to FlaxAxis for creating and maintaining it.  The Big FourThese four roguelikes were for a long time the games that defined the roguelike genre. Angband, ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery), Nethack, and Dungeon Crawl. They are all traditional roguelikes - turn based RPGs with huge worlds to explore, hundreds of monsters to kill, tons of loot to acquire, and dozens of character builds to experiment with. The youngest of them, Dungeon Crawl, is still almost 20 years old. An important thing to remember is that these games were all free, and with the exception of ADOM, open source. If you played a roguelike in the 90s, it was almost certainly one of these games, and if you're playing a roguelike now, then that game is going to owe a huge debt to one of these games. More than Rogue, these four games defined the parameters of the genre. They have changed over the years, and in some cases have waned in popularity, but they are still the linchpins of the genre, and at least testing the waters in these games is highly recommended. Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup (v 0.13 thread) Cost: FREE  Genre: Turn-based RPG Graphics: Tile-based sprites or ASCII Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Android, Browser-Based Let's Plays:
Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup is an open source roguelike that has been branched off of Linley's Dungeon Crawl. It is under active development and is in fact one of the more popular roguelikes being developed today. It aims for balanced systems that do not require spoiling of the players. It is combat and magic heavy with little in the way of quests, NPCs, story, etc. It's a great roguelike for beginners with an extensive tutorial system and approachable graphics, and is my personal favorite. Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup is also available to be played online through your browser. The great thing about this feature is that other people can spectate your game and you can chat with them as you play. Twice a year there are also online tournaments in which players group up into teams and attempt to beat the game (and complete other goals). It's a great blast, and I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys Crawl and also talking to people. Nethack (thread) Cost: FREE  Genre: Turn-based RPG Graphics: Tile-based sprites or ASCII Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Android, iOS Let's Plays:
Nethack is an offshoot of an earlier game Hack, which dates back to the mid 1980s. It seemingly was designed with the philosophy that more means better, and so the game is a mishmash of folklore, pop culture references, and fantasy tropes. When we speak of complex, emergent gameplay, we're certainly talking about the kitchen sink approach of Nethack, where pretty much every single item can interact with every other item in ways you probably would never have thought of. It's really the anti-thesis to Dungeon Crawl. Having the mechanics spoiled for you is almost a requirement for winning at Nethack. Only in Nethack can you "polymorph yourself into a cockatrice, then (if you're female) lay eggs, polymorph back, and use your own eggs as a thrown weapon that turns enemies to stone (wearing gloves, of course!)". For better or worse Nethack has established most of the parameters that the roguelike genre operates under, and ascending in Nethack is one of those bucket list items that roguelike players have. Nethack isn't for everyone, but if you're at all interested in roguelikes, it's a must play. EvilMike's comment on starting with Nethack: You should also mention nethack curses, which is a massive interface upgrade to the original nethack. The download there contains everything, and the base game itself is unmodified. The screenshots page there will show you what it looks like. Overall I think there's no point playing nethack with the vanilla interface, these days. Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM) Cost: $40 Closed Beta or FREE  Genre: Turn-based RPG Graphics: ASCII or some graphical support Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS x Let's Plays: Forks: not a fork, but ADOM 2 (Jade) is under development ADOM was developed by Thomas Biskup, and as mentioned is the sole "Big 4" roguelike to be closed source. It features a massive overworld complete with towns and quests. A real attraction to ADOM is that not everything is known about the mechanics of the game. For a long time people didn't know what was a bug, or what was intended, and ADOM is really the only big traditional roguelike to still have a small sense of mystery about it. I actually haven't played it very much. I missed out on it back in the day, and I just can't be bothered to get really into it (I have become a graphics whore, I need sprites at a minimum). That being said, it's worth a try. There are a whole lot of people who absolutely love this game. It should be noted that Thomas Biskup is a bit of a dink, but also that he crowd-sourced funding to continue development on ADOM back in 2012, and there have been updates since then. Of note, graphics are now partially integrated into the latest pre-release. ADOM 2 is also in development. We'll probably see it completed in 2025. The write up for that can wait, but the link to download it is above. Angband Cost: FREE  Genre: Turn-based RPG Graphics: Tile based sprites or ASCII Platform: Windows, Mac OS x, Linux (kinda sometimes?) Let's Plays: Forks:
Angband is an offshoot of Moria, a contemporary of Hack. Moria was a Tolkien-esque take on Rogue, and Angband continues that legacy. In Angband you must explore a 100 level dungeon in order to eventually defeat Morgoth. Angband, and Angband variants, are fairly unique in that levels are generated each time you load them, rather than once per game. That means that Angband is a much more "gameable" roguelike than Nethack, DCSS, or ADOM. The emphasis is on combat, equipment management, and loot (Diablo is also considered to be a Moria / Angband offshoot). Because of the ability to generate an infinite number of dungeon levels, games of Angband can take weeks to complete. If this appeals to you, definitely give it a shot. Also of note is the sheer number of Angband variants. Unlike DCSS and Nethack, Angband has been latched on to by developers interested in building their own games, and holy crap there are a lot of them. I've listed a couple in the forks section, but really only scratched the surface. There are zombie variants, multiplayer variants, Cthulhu variants, and even  anime variants. Rock Paper Shotgun's Kieron Gillen wrote a great article about ZangbandTK (download here), a grapical version of one of the more zany Angband variants. EvilMike suggests that people start with NPPAngband: NPP stands for "no pet peeves" and NPPAngband is basically about removing annoying stuff and adding cool stuff.The New Traditional RoguelikesThe big 4 roguelikes should all be experienced by people interested in the genre, but roguelikes have come a long way since Rogue was developed in the early 80s. This list of games includes roguelikes that adhere to the turn based CRPG model, but you'll find that most of them have more of an emphasis on graphics / sounds / animation and the UI, as well as (in general) a more inclusive approach to the genre. A number of these games are commercial titles. Tales of Maj'Eyal (ToME4) (thread) Cost: $10 on Desura or FREE / Donation-ware  Genre: Turn-based RPG Graphics: Real 2d graphics and animations! Tile set designed by Shockbolt. Platform: (On Steam Greenlight) - Windows, Mac OS x, Linux Let's Plays:
Tales of Maj'Eyal is an expanded version of Tales of Middle Earth, which was initially an Angband variant. The developer DarkGod redid his world to remove references to Tolkien, and built an entirely new engine to run the game on. ToME4 has quickly become one of the largest roguelikes around, having now won the RL of the Year poll every year since 2010. ToME4 features an overworld with wandering monsters, a quest system similar to ADOM, tons of character builds, and a combat system designed to provide you with all kinds of options. Even melee characters have lots of cooldown based abilities with which to deal with their foes. The game is, in a word, sprawling. You travel across two continents to fight an evil orcish menace, and you deal with way more world lore than in most other roguelikes. Unlike most other roguelikes you have the option to play in either a permadeath mode or by using limited lives system, and it really does seem like the game is designed around the limited lives system. The game feels very much like a more traditional CRPG if you take advantage of the limited lives system. Note that not everyone sucks at it like I do, and that there are people who win in permadeath mode. One of the most interesting (and best) features of ToME4 is that similar to Dungeon Crawl, it operates online. By logging into your ToME4 account, you get access to the in-game chat system, and are only a button press away from being able to ask for advice. This is really something that more games would do well to integrate, and I think it's a huge factor in ToME4's popularity. The final thing to note about ToME4 is that while it is free, there is a premium version that gives you access to an exploration mode as well as a small amount of premium content. The game is already on Desura and attempting to get onto Steam via the Greenlight process. Dungeons of Dredmor (thread) Cost: $5 on Steam  Genre: Turn-based RPG Graphics: Real 2d graphics and animations! Platform: (Available on Steam) - Windows, Mac OS x, Linux Let's Plays: Forks: No, but there are three DLC expansion packs available for it. Realm of the Diggle Gods, You Have to Name the Expansion Pack, and Conquest of the Wizardlands. All are recommended. Dungeons of Dredmor was the first roguelike to really hit it big outside the traditional RL community. Unlike the big 4, and unlike ToME 4, DoD is a commercial game. It was developed by Gaslamp Games and came out on Steam in July 2011 to critical acclaim. Dungeons of Dredmor did not attempt to re-invent the roguelike genre. It prettied it up, adding animations and sound effects, and an easily controlled mouse driven UI. It presented a unique skill based character system, rather than relying on classes, and thus character builds could get really wacky. It introduced a lot of humour, from the names of monsters and items to the animations and lore of the game, and it featured an inventive crafting system. What it shares with other roguelikes though? It remains hard as balls. Underneath that pretty little exterior is a bitch of a game that is just waiting for you to turn your back so that it can shank you, or throw you into a spike pit, or spawn a boss monster that reflects all your drat melee damage and one-shots you.  A must buy if you like roguelikes. Plus the devs are cool. Doom: The Roguelike (DoomRL) (thread) Cost: FREE / Donation-ware  Genre: Turn-based RPG Graphics: Tile based sprite or ASCII. Tileset by Derek Yu, and really well done. Platform: Windows, Mac OS x, Linux Let's Plays:
Do you like Doom? Do you like roguelikes? Do you want to play Doom but as a roguelike? Then I have the game for you! Doom: The Roguelike. Seriously, this game is Doom presented as a top down, turn based roguelike. All the monsters you expect, all the weapons you expect, all the heart pumping action you expect. DoomRL features probably the best implementation of a ranged combat system you're really likely to see in a roguelike, complete with an intuitive dodging mechanic that will have you moving as though you were playing the game in real time mode. It also features possibly the best use of atmosphere in any roguelike. Everything about this game's design is tight and on point. Though the game remains free, the developer Kornel Kisielewicz does take donations, and my understanding is that there is a premium content model being used (early access to new builds, though if I'm wrong please correct me). UnReal World (thread) Thanks to Bouchacha for this write-up. Cost: FREE / Donation-ware  Genre: Turn-based survival/crafting RPG Graphics: Awesome LARP pictures and full tile-sprites. Platform: Windows, OSX, Linux. Let's Plays: Forks: No. UnReal World been continuously developed since 1992 by some dude living in the Finnish wilderness, which is appropriate because you get to play as some dude living in the Finnish wilderness. What started out as another fantasy roguelike blossomed into a hardcore survival simulation set in the Finnish iron age. There's a dizzying amount of detail and tasks available to you. You can stalk moose, hunt squirrels with rocks, chase deer with hunting dogs, set bear pit traps, skin animals, clean the hair off to make leather, tan hides in a multi-step and multi-day process (culminating in you beating the hide with a club over a log), set fishing nets, smoke meat in a smoke house for long-term preservation, build a cellar for even longer preservation, grow beans, make bean soup, eat random mushrooms, die, steal crops from village fields, chop down trees and float down the logs on a raft, build a baller cabin with a chimney and everything, dress yourself up in dead animal skins and hunt Njerpez raiders in their own home, chop up their corpses and eat their flesh, make cords out of their clothes in order to hang their meat for drying in the winter, put random herbs on your wounds and hope they help, freeze to death in the winter, and of course go skiing! The game also introduced a detailed wounding system before DF made it cool. The game as you can see is quite detailed and very satisfying in how you're only tasked with surviving. While it's continually in development, it does suffer at the moment from lacking an end goal but in the works are plans to incorporate marriage and village building in the future, as well as dynasty hopping through your children. I credit it for providing me with a great appreciation of the outdoors and the many skills involved. It's a great diversion when you just want to build poo poo instead of kill orcs. If you're going to download it, it is highly recommended that you get this graphic mod!. Elona/Elona+ (thread) Thanks for Chakan for this write-up. Cost: FREE  Genre: Turn-based JRPG Graphics: Tile based sprite Platform: Windows (Java port as well) Let's Plays: Forks: Elona+ is actively developed and generally considered superior. There are download directions in the first post of the SA thread. Eternal League of Nefia is a wonderful adventure that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. The game is brutally fair; if you've got enough strength you can hug someone to death, but if you try to cast a spell without enough MP, your HP will be drained. In a genre that seeks to remove itself from tedious grinding and needless keystrokes, Elona seems to actively pride itself on obfuscating the proper game behind hours of mind-numbing grinding. That said, the game is incredibly intelligent and robust, it has an interesting world and it's clear a great deal of facets have been thought through. It's worth reading the thread for all the things other people do, even if you don't want to endure it yourself. This game is a JRPG through and through. It is important to note that Elona+ offers vast improvements over the base game and is very much worth playing over the base game. Note that Elona does not control like most other roguelikes, and playing the tutorial is highly recommended. Brogue Cost: FREE  Genre: Turn-based RPG Graphics: the best looking ASCII graphics around (or a variant with tiles) Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX Let's Plays: Forks: Whereas most roguelikes trace their lineage back to Rogue indirectly, through the lens of games like Nethack or Angband, Brogue goes right to the source for its inspiration, and attempts to answer the question: "What if Rogue had been continuously developed for the last 30 years?". Gone are the complicated class systems that the big 4 brought to the genre. Gone are the overworlds, the dungeon branches, and the shops. Brogue strips the genre back to its core. It, like Rogue before it, is a game about dungeon crawling. Brogue features randomly generated puzzles, a dynamic lighting system, and by far the most beautiful use of ASCII graphics ever used in a roguelike. Cataclysm (thread) Cost: FREE / Donation-ware  Genre: Turn-based RPG Graphics: ASCII Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX Let's Plays: Forks: From the Cataclysm thread here on SA: Cataclysm is a free roguelike post-apocalyptic survival game. You awaken in a evacuation shelter after a biological attack on New England, alone and armed only with a penknife. you leave the shelter and you find unspeakable horrors, irradiated craters, streets lined with wrecked cars and the shambling corpses of the once-living. This is your world, and you must survive. Food intake, sleep deprivation, morale, limb damage, mental health and many other things must be managed constantly, and one wrong move can result in your death. Staying in one spot is near-impossible without starving, so most of the game depends heavily on exploration. Cataclysm just successfully funded their Kickstarter, and one of the purposes of said Kickstarter was to add graphics. So expect the game to look prettier at some point soon, if that is important to you. Sil Thanks to uPen for this write-up. Cost: FREE  Genre: Turn-based RPG Graphics: ASCII Platform: Windows and Mac Let's Plays: Forks: No. In Sil you play as an Elf (easy,) Dwarf (medium,) or Human (loving hard,) who needs to dive 100 floors down Morgoth's lair and steal one of the three Silmarils on Morgoth's crown. To accomplish this you need to master what is probably the best tactical combat system in any roguelike. Combat in Sil is pretty much the definition of easy to learn & hard to master and there are tons of extremely different ways to play so you can try something different after getting murdered a dozen times in a row. You can be a magic clad blender that dices everything, an archer singing songs of death and destruction while murdering everyone from across the room or a shadow on the wall that gets in and out of the dungeon with nobody the wiser. This game shares almost nothing in common with Anband so don't let its heritage scare you away, it is stripped down, intuitive and very fast to play. I'm having a hard time describing why exactly Sil is so much fun so I'm just gonna crib the paragraph that initially sold me on it. 'There are no wizards or priests, no platemail or magical scrolls. Instead, it is the Norse Saga inspired world that Tolkien imagined, with warriors clad in shining mail, singing songs of rage or sorrow as they slay. The magic of the world is subtle yet powerful: there are songs of fear and of binding, rather than spells of fireball and teleportation.' Dungeonmans (thread) I would just like to note that while this game is still in development, it is being developed by madjackmcmad, a regular poster in this thread and on SA, and it is already pretty good. I highly recommend checking it out, and even tossing him some coin for it. Check out the thread for more details. Cost: $10  Genre: Turn-based RPG Graphics: Tile based sprites and animations Platform: Windows, planned (?) Mac OS x & Linux support Let's Plays: Forks: No. Dungeonmans is a traditional roguelike set in a fantasy world and revolving around dungeon crawling and combat. It features a randomized overworld complete with towns, dungeons, shops, and wandering monsters. Unlike most traditional roguelikes it also uses persistent world development in the form of The Dungeonmans Academy. As you adventure you have the option of using the baubles you find to improve the academy so that future characters will start the game with a leg up on their predecessors. Like Dungeons of Dredmor before it, Dungeonmans places a clear emphasis on humour in both the setting and the writing. The art has a whimsical feeling to it and the entire game doesn't take itself too seriously. But be warned - like in Dungeon of Dredmor, beyond the pretty surface lies a real live roguelike, and it will eat you up and spit you out if you're not paying attention. Uncle Jam posted:Dungeonmans is a fun game where you kill scrobolds and think about nothing else other than having fun. Then you die, and you go look at the fresh grave with your next character. Dungeonmans recently completed a pretty successful Kickstarter campaign where they were able to raise over $40,000. Expect the full game sometime in 2014. Occult Chronicles Thanks to Geokinesis for this write-up. Cost: $20  Genre: Turn-based RPG, Board-game Graphics: 2D room tiles and nice card and encounter art. Platform: Windows. Let's Plays:: Forks: Nope. Occult Chronicles is an commercial strategy game with roguelike elements and a light Lovecraftian theme currently in Beta. It features perma-death and a randomly generated map. You are an Occult Defense Directorate (O.D.D.) agent on a mission in an old mansion, there are 4 different missions which affect what kind of encounters you'll find. All encounters (battles, spells, lore check, trap avoidance etc) are done via a card game where you have to score a certain number of tricks to succeed, your chances with the cards are affected by your stats which can be improved directly or through edges (read perks) by levelling up. After an encounter you are shown 10 face down cards and given a number to pick, if you won the encounter you'll likely find some good things (health, sanity, bullets) if you lost some bad things (losing sanity/health) amongst blank 'no effect' cards. Luck does play quite a big part with the cards which is double edged, sometimes you'll lose an encounter due to a bad draw but on the results screen you'll draw only blanks so you end up losing nothing. Games to be added to this section:
The Smaller Roguelikes ListNot all roguelikes are commercial projects or somebody's life's work; in fact most roguelikes are smaller projects that get worked on for a couple years before fading into obscurity. This is a list of those types of roguelikes. These games are feature complete, albeit probably not perfect and bug free. They are turn based, real time, experimental. A lot of these are mobile games (I may separate this out later). AliensRL Thanks to Destro85 from the previous thread for this write-up Cost: FREE  Genre: Turn based RPG Graphics: All ASCII Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X Let's Plays: Forks: No. AliensRL is made by Kornel Kisielewicz, who also created DoomRL. It is a really excellent attempt at blending the roguelike genre with the survival/horror and action genres. It has great music and sounds and has a shitload of atmosphere. It is one of the few roguelikes that has had the ability to make me forget that I was staring at a screen full of hashmarks and percent signs. If you like the break from the standard roguelike fare that DoomRL gives you, definitely give AliensRL a shot. Interesting to note that it was originally created in only 7 days, for the 2007 7DRL competition; it is one of the most successful 7DRL entrants. These are more small games to be added.
The Old Roguelikes ListA number of roguelikes are no longer being developed, but are complete products that may still be worth exploring. Check out the roguelikes on this list not only for their value as games (and they are mostly pretty solid games), but also for their historical value. Many of these games demonstrated a different path for roguelikes that was not to be developed further, while others show potential that other games would later build on. Sword of Fargoal Thanks to Dana Crysalis for this write up. Cost: Depends on version   Genre: Turn-ish based RPG Graphics: Tile based sprite Platform: Commodore 64 (original), iPhone/iPad, PC Let's Plays: Forks: Written in 1982, this is one of the earliest roguelikes. It was initially going to be called Sword of Fargaol (gaol meaning jail), but a producer convinced its creator Jeff McCord to change it. It was the first of the microcomputer games to have randomly generated levels, and also, it's friggin hard as hell. You have to find the sword between level 15 and 20 (which I have never done) and as soon as you DO find it you have to make your way back up under a strict time limit of 2000 seconds. The levels are rerolled every time you exit and enter them, so... Depthwise, there's not a lot to the game. There's a little over 20 monsters, items are very specific (healing potions, light spells, +1 to your weapon strength, some others), there's no skillsets or anything, and found gold is only used to turn it at temples on the map for bonus XP. Your warrior can move freely around the map. Monsters move on a timer that gradually speeds up as you get lower in the dungeon, until they move almost as fast as you do. No idling! The lack of depth does not make it any easier though, it's known as one of the harder C64 games to complete. There was recently a completed kickstarter for a sequel to the game (Sword of Fargoal 2). More old games to add!
A section for games that are not completed but may be worth looking at
And finally, a quick look at 7Day RLs that might be worth picking up.
If anyone has games to add, let me know. Particularly interesting smaller / older RLs. I wanted to get the new OP up today, but it took wayyyy more time than I thought it would. I probably won't actually finish it until next week. If anyone wants to help out with descriptions of the games below, feel free. I'll probably crib descriptions for older games like GearHead from the previous OP. Jordan7hm fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Dec 24, 2014 |
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Hybrid Roguelikes (Roguelike-likes) (Roguelites) These games are heavy on rogue elements, but defy the strict conventions of the genre. The common thread is permadeath and random level generation. Desktop Dungeons Thanks to andrew smash for this write-up. Cost: Free! Alpha, 15$ for Full Version  Genre: Light Fantasy Puzzle Hybrid Graphics: Tiles Platform: PC/Mac Steam version; also plays in your browser with Unity plugin Let's Plays:
Forks: None, but there are two versions of the game, the older of which is completely free! Desktop Dungeons is a "coffee break" puzzle/roguelike hybrid developed by QFC Design, very reminiscent of the old Lucasarts Yoda Stories game if anybody aside from me ever played that. Individual dungeons only take about ten minutes to finish and always start with a new character, but any given dungeon only represents a tiny slice of the game. As you progressively crawl through dungeons, you unlock more and more of the slew of races, classes, spells, items, areas, and challenges you can take on leaving you ultimately with a shitload of content for the price of the game. The puzzle aspect comes from the fact that enemies don't move at all and don't attack until you hit them first. That being said if you just smash your face into enemies you'll die really fast, even with the traditionally face-smashing classes. Timing and positioning of your attacks are critical to clear the tougher dungeons. In addition to the normal dungeons there is also a puzzle mode within the game. Puzzle mode consists of pre-generated scenarios, smaller than normal dungeons, and generally have a "perfect" solution designed to teach you how to use a given game mechanic. They're pretty good as an instructional tool, plus you can use them to unlock other stuff just like regular dungeon runs. The original version of the game is completely free and a great introduction to the game. It's well worth playing as a demo if you're on the fence about this game. The full version is basically the alpha x100. FTL: Faster Than Light (thread) Thanks to quiggy stardust for this write-up. Cost: 10$  Genre: Real-time-with-pause spaceship simulator Graphics: Simplistic but very nice lo-fi pixel art Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux. DRM-Free or on Steam. Let's Play: Forks: None, some small mods are available and an expansion is inbound. FTL is a hybrid roguelike / strategy game that features surprising strategic depth, punishing difficulty, and permadeath. You play the captain of a spaceship with sensitive documents vital to the survival of the Galactic Federation on the run from an approaching Rebel fleet. At the start of the game you select one of a number of unlockable spaceships with different layouts and subsystems and must survive to the end of the game and defeat the Rebel mothership to win. The game puts a large emphasis on balancing the energy usage of different subsystems, so if you've ever wanted a game where you can say "divert power from the weapons to the engines!" you can do just that in FTL. In addition to blowing up the enemy ship with lasers, you can also attack them with drones, board them with your own crew members, set fire to their ship, disable their own subsystems or flee deeper into space. The game is notable for having many ways out of a bad situation. For example, many players prioritize improving the doors on their ship to delay boarding parties from reaching critical subsystems. In that time other doors and airlocks can be opened to expose the boarding enemies to the void of space, killing them without having to endanger your own crew members. All crew are randomly generated, develop skills and experience as they perform tasks around the ship, and are lost permanently when they die. The game does occasionally offer new members, but a team of veterans is always preferred to a team of rookies. It is worth noting that the game has received some criticism for being overly random. While very, very good players can usually mitigate the randomness and win a good percentage of the time, expect many times to be screwed over entirely by the RNG before getting a handle on the game's many complex features. This is especially notable when it comes to unlocking ships, which often rely on very rare events that are difficult to execute properly. That said this is an excellent game, well worth the cost of entry to experience a unique twist on the standard roguelike formula. Meritous Thanks to madjackmcmad for this write-up. Cost: Free download    Genre: Monochrome Exploration Bullet Hell Adventure Graphics: yes! Music: Synthy 16-bit era chip Platform: PC Let's Plays: Forks: None On the outer fringe of the Roguelike ecosystem, Meritous has a massive (seriously look at that map) procedural dungeon with lots of baddies and limited continues. You have one interaction with the world: hold space bar to charge up a circular blast, let go to fire. Holding it longer increases the range, damage, and recharge time. That's it. Run around this bigass dungeon collecting crystals, upgrading your weapon and a reflective shield, finding teleport markers and compasses that lead you to the next boss or critical piece of plot loot, and dodge tremendous clouds of bullets, lasers, and bouncy stars. Fast paced and simple, with a cool visual and audio style that does a better job setting the mood than you'd think. Enemies are very creative and get tougher as you progress, world pickups evolve your character slightly with such abilities as being able to see how many baddies are in the next room. You have a set number of lives, when they're out it's game over. You can reload your save, but you have the same number of lives as when you saved so if you get down to 1 left and have made no real progress, you're probably better off starting over. Meritous is a palette cleanser, a great little game that can get you thinking about just how much room for variety and creativity there is in the genre. The Binding Isaac (thread) Thanks to drink_bleach for this write-up. Cost: $4.99 (but it goes on sale often for much less, wait for a sale)  Genre: Twin Stick Shooter Graphics: Yes Music: Danny Baranowsky! Platform: PC Let's Plays:
Forks: None, but there is an expansion (Wrath of the Lamb) Without any facts to back this up I'm going to say this is the most successful action roguelike. It has a dedicated community of twitch players, as well as the BOILeR (Binding of Isaac League Racing). In addition to being popular, this game is fantastic. It plays like a mix of Zelda, traditional roguelikes, and Smash TV. You play as a young boy navigating a dungeon with the eventual goal of killing your crazy-rear end mom, and eventually making your way to heaven or hell. The game features a very interesting religious theme and a whole lot of poop jokes. The sheer number of items and modifiers is insane; there are hundreds of items, a handful of different characters and even the monsters can have different modifiers to mix up the gameplay. Every modification you pick up visually changes your character and can drastically change the way you play. If you liked Link to the Past but wished Link could somehow become a Lovecraft-ian abomination full of growth tumors and excrement you'll love The Binding of Issac! Rogue Legacy (thread) Thanks to andrew smash for this write-up. Cost: $14.99 on steam   Genre: Fantasy, "genealogical rogue-lite" platformer Graphics: Sprites Platform: PC/Mac/Linux Let's Plays: Forks: None Rogue Legacy is a platformer with minor roguelike elements; namely, permadeath and random dungeon generation. Character progression takes place between runs and carries over to each new character that you make; classes, items, and stat upgrades are all permanent once purchased. The flow of the game essentially is to make as much progress into the dungeon as you can and ultimately die so that your offspring (subsequent characters) can benefit from your haul of cash. Bosses represent milestones within the castle you're exploring and they stay dead once you kill them. An interesting addition to the game is the rune system; once you've discovered them in the castle and subsequently paid an NPC to be able to use them, runes can be attached to your equipment and add a number of different enhancements, the most interesting of which change your platforming abilities (double jump, triple jump, timed flight, dashes, faster movement etc). In one of the above screenshots you can see that dash, double jump, flight, and two kinds of resource leech are equipped. Bionic Dues Thanks to MrBims for this write-up   Genre: Turnbased Tactical RPG Graphics: Tile-based sprites only Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X Let's Plays: Forks: No. Bionic Dues is similar to the XCOM style of combining a tactical 'battlescape' with inventory management, soldier progression and an overall campaign against an enemy that is gathering its own forces at a similar or faster rate than you are. You play as a pilot of robotic exosuits, of which you select 4 of any combination from six types and can switch between those 4 during missions as you need. Skynet is coming to play in your home base in 50 days, so you have that long to salvage all the parts you need and make inroads into the robots' forces in preparation for that final battle. The battlescape is done in traditional roguelike form, with corridor-crawling to find randomized loot, evade traps and find the exit, though that exit may involve destroying all or some specific enemies based on the mission chosen. You have four 'lives' with your four exosuits, but each one you lose nets you one less piece of loot at the end of the mission and makes the mission harder. Losing a mission isn't the end of the world by itself, but you only get to lose a few. New parts for your exosuits are placed into slots and modify stats, like +500 shields or +100% attack power. You can't add new weapons, but you can change how you might use a weapon, like prioritizing between range, AOE, ammo and damage. Exosuits can be given the ability to move invisible, lay mines, place sentry turrets, hack doors to find loot and ammo caches, infect robots with a virus to turn them to your side, etc. More Hybrid Roguelikes include:
Console RoguelikesWhile roguelikes have mostly been the domain of computer users, some have made their way over to consoles. Similar to how Wizardry found a new home in Japan, Nethack style roguelikes mixed in with JRPG sensibilities have existed in Japan since the days of the Super Famicom. If you've got an urging to play roguelikes on a console, then these are the ones you should check out: Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer Thanks to quiggy for this write-up  Genre: Turn-based RPG Graphics: SNES-era JRPG style pixel art Platform: SNES (Japan only, with fan translation), DS Let's Plays: Forks: No forks, but Shiren is part of an extensive series of games that has appeared on most post-SNES Nintendo hardware. The SNES / DS games are considered the best of the bunch. Shiren the Wanderer is a Japanese roguelike by Chunsoft, best known in the states as the makers of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series. It's heavily inspired by Nethack in terms of dungeon layouts, shop layouts, item types, and so on, but has a lot of unique elements too. The main quest spans 30 "floors" which represent a quest from a starting village to the top of Table Mountain. Unlike most traditional roguelikes, permadeath does not mean the loss of all progress: quests completed remain completed and items stored either in warehouses or in storing jars will remain. However, you will regress to level 1 and return to the starting village with each death. In addition to the main quest are small side quests to be completed, bonus dungeons after completing the main dungeon, and the Puzzle Dungeons, small one-floor dungeons each designed with a specific trick necessary to beat it. The Nintendo DS version is the only version of the original game to make it out of Japan. It's notable for its rescue system, in which good runs can be saved by other people doing rescue runs via a password system. Do note that a given incarnation of Shiren can only be revived once, however. The DS version is also easily the best roguelike on the system and, in my opinion, the best portable roguelike period. It's got the difficulty and strategic depth of a classic roguelike, the progression of a JRPG, and some of the best art, music, and sound of any roguelike ever. Seriously, go track down this game and play it. You can also read John Harris' thoughts on the game or listen to the guys from RL Radio talk about it. More Console Roguelikes to be added
Mobile RoguelikesThe roguelike genre seems designed for mobile gaming. Roguelikes are quick enough to pick up and play while on the go, while deep enough to maintain your interest for a long time. The greatest mobile roguelikes are available on PC as well, but as we get a lot of requests for mobile roguelike suggestions, I thought they deserved their own category. Games here are primarily designed for mobile devices, including the iPhone, Android devices, and the GBA / DS / PSP. Powder Cost: FREE  Genre: Turn-based RPG Graphics: Tiles Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX, PSP, GBA, Nintendo DS, Android, iOS, pretty much every platform known to man Let's Plays: Forks: No. To understand Powder, you need to know the platform the game was intially developed for: the Gameboy Advance. Powder was designed to be a roguelike that you could play without an entire keyboard at your disposal. It's got cute graphics, a very intuitive interface, and a wonderful tutorial system. In terms of gameplay, Powder probably owes more to Nethack than any other roguelike. It doesn't have the scope of Nethack, of course, but if you go into the game expecting it to be a "mini-Nethack" you probably won't be dissapointed. It is possible to kill the dragons in the tutorial. Liberal Crime Squad Thanks to Bouchacha for this write-up. Cost: FREE  Genre: Squad-based guerilla simulator. Graphics: Menu and text driven, with ASCII "cutscenes" Platform: Windows, Linux source available, Android Let's Plays: Forks: No. Before Toady got the internet's lifelong admiration with Dwarf Fortress, he made a game called Liberal Crime Squad and gave the source over to another dude in 2004. This is exactly The Baader Meinhof Complex: The Game. You're living in a USA that's heavily dominated by conservative thought, and you're tasked with shifting public opinion (and eventually, government) through various antics. There's many ways you can go about doing this and that's the beauty of the game. You can rob banks, kidnap a CEO and try to convert him to a sleeper agent, raid army bases for guns, take over cable news broadcast, commit industrial sabotage, release prisoners en masse, tamper with juries, steal CIA secrets, even assassinate the president, or just quietly sit back and write articles for your newspaper. The learning curve is very steep but the interface is nowhere near as bad as Dwarf Fortress. It's a silly game that pokes fun at both sides of the political aisle (such as with gun-wielding liberal terrorists advocating for greater gun control) so anyone can play it. I confess I avoided it before because I thought it had an agenda, it's now one of my favorite games ever. Make sure to get the latest beta version (as of Aug 2013: 4.07.3a) as it includes a recruiting screen that eliminates a large portion of the 'grind' found previously in the game. Brush up on your skills at the LCS Wiki. Pixel Dungeon (developer blog) Thanks to Corridor for this write-up. Cost: FREE  Genre: Turn-based RPG Graphics: Pixel art with 3D effects Platform: Android Only Let's Play's: Forks: No Pixel Dungeon is an adorable, but brutal, game by developer Watabou. It started out heavily based on Brogue, balanced around enchantment scrolls, potions of strength, and a hunger mechanic, but has quickly gained a direction all its own. It currently features four classes (with branching class changes) with their own unique equipment and perks. The dungeon itself features puzzle rooms, bosses, alchemy, and quest NPCs. You can also find the bodies of your previous adventurer and fight its ghost for a random item you had when you died. And because the developer is doing it solely for fun, the game is entirely free, with no IAP or ads. Pixel Dungeon uses intuitive touchscreen controls and a few menu buttons to control the action. In the best roguelike tradition, if features all kinds of ways to die, and they are  A section will be added here dealing with roguelike mechanics such as the identification sub-game, food systems, etc. Soon. Want to learn more about roguelikes? John Harris' Column: @Play Over the course of 2 years JH wrote a series of articles examining the roguelike genre. He touches on all the major roguelikes, tons of minor ones, and really gets in-depth with the game mechanics. This column is probably the best resource on the web in terms of disussing roguelike game mechanics. Basically, these are must-reads. Roguelike Radio Up to episode # 76, RL Radio is a fairly regularly updated podcast covering the roguelike scene. Like John Harris'(who appears on the podcast) columns, RL Radio covers not only the bigger roguelikes, but also the smaller ones and really gets in depth with game mechanics. Most of the time the hosts and guests are developers, so there is a real developer bent to the podcast, but again, a must-listen to people really interested in knowing more about roguelikes. 7DRL Challenge Every year the roguelike community hosts a 7 day challenge, during which developers declare their intention to build a roguelike from scratch, and then hopefully follow through. Some of the more interesting experiments in roguelike design have emerged from the 7DRL challenge, like Broken Bottle and The Aurora Wager. This past year there were 154 entrants to the 7DRL challenge, and you can actually watch video LPs for pretty much every one of them here. Rogue Temple The central hub for roguelikes around the web. About as active as an all encompassing roguelike community gets (except for here on SA), and most of the important RL news such as 7DRL results ends up being posted here. Ascii Dreams Andrew Doull's blog. One of the more prominent roguelike developers, host of RL Radio, and a goon. The Ascii Dreams website is mentioned here not because of that, however, but because every year in December it hosts the Roguelike of the Year poll. Last year's winner, despite some fun controversy, was TOME. RogueBasin Wiki A wiki for all things roguelike. It also includes a sidebar on the front page that links to new RL releases, as well as a ton of articles that explain some of the RL development fundamentals. Just a great resource. If people have more links for me to add, let me know. Jordan7hm fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Dec 8, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 05:45
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Ernutetnoiraud posted:Graphics are already integrated, just not the entire set. The latest pre-release has them. Didn't know that. Edited the post to reflect that. Also added the games mentioned to the list for future efforts (including Rogue Survivor) as well as fixed some of my spelling mistakes. e: ^ done.
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Aug 6, 2013 06:10
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DalaranJ posted:Reviewing my posts from the last thread I suddenly remembered about Desktop Dungeons. Turns out it's still in beta. What the hell? I bought the game like two years ago. I played it a bunch during their free week earlier in the year, and I had a blast. It's not feature complete, but it's pretty drat playable. They're a pretty bad example of developers getting lost during the development process though. They had a lot of buzz back in the day, but given how long this has taken them, they just weren't able to capitalize on it. I think they may have missed their chance to really succeed as a commercial game.
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Aug 6, 2013 06:16
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Thanks for the write ups so far. I've added Sil, UnReal World, Brogue, Elona, Cataclysm, Shiren, Powder, and LCS and moved some other stuff around.
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Aug 6, 2013 20:51
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Sir Unimaginative posted:To Add: This is a really cool little game. I really enjoy this type of more puzzle-like take on roguelikes.
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Aug 6, 2013 21:31
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Please do write ups! I haven't played a bunch of these games, so if you like a game your writeup will almost certainly be a better sell job for the game than mine will. Don't worry about looking for stuff like LPs if you don't want to. I can do that.
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Aug 7, 2013 20:02
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Lawman 0 posted:Holy poo poo the food clock in the original rogue is absolutely brutal. It doesn't seem that bad. Is it normal to be stuck in a level without stairs down though? I've search every wall repeatedly for traps and I'm at a loss what to do. Also, is Classic Rogue really exactly the same as Rogue? (I updated the OP with Dungeonmans and AliensRL.)
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Aug 8, 2013 02:45
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BKPR posted:Though people argue it isn't really a roguelike, Cardinal Quest fits the bill. What? Those people are crazy. Cardinal Quest isn't just a roguelike, its a good (though also easy) roguelike. It's maybe the best mobile roguelike (I don't have iOS, dunno about 100 rogues, and am not counting Powder). Anyway you can play most roguelikes with a very aggressive style if you like. Especially if you pick an easier combo, games like Crawl can essentially be tabbed though. You can't quite win in an hour, but you can get pretty close. Try playing a traditional roguelike with the mindset of "dive, dive, dive" and you'll find a totally different play experience. I really like the tips idea. I'll try to figure a way to incorporate it into the OP. I also want to do a bit on bots. I think to avoid bloat in the OP (it's gonna get bad with all the games) I'll just have a bit where I link to other posts for more detailed info. On the note of bots, anyone know of games that have had bots developed for them other than Angband and Crawl?
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Aug 9, 2013 02:41
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C-Euro posted:I'd put "play the odds and/or always take the sure thing" to that too. I've died quite a few times in these games when I've taken a route that should work instead of a route that always works (i.e. trying to clear one more easy room before going to a merchant for healing, and somehow dying there) The # 1 rule is probably "If something works 99% of the time, but kills you 1% of the time, doing it all the time means you'll never win a roguelike."
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Aug 9, 2013 04:28
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Drakenel posted:This is more along the lines I meant. I like manipulating allegiences like that. I'll give it a look, thank you. There's also Depths of Peril, though it's a hybrid roguelike at best. Din's Curse to a lesser extent. Soldak does some really interesting stuff.
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Aug 13, 2013 18:43
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I just backed Paranautical Activity's kickstarter (and also bought a copy of the game from their website because I wanted to play it now). It's pretty basic, but it's a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to seeing what they can really do with this given some more time and money. In the meantime, if you're willing to support smaller devs and buy into a beta, it's worth picking up. On that note, I should have some more stuff for the OP later tonight or tomorrow. I'd like to knock off the roguelike platformers at least.
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Aug 14, 2013 00:26
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Install Windows posted:They sued him, sure. But last I checked the result of that lawsuit was still no compensation received cuz the guy they sued didn't have the assets. People without money are hard to get stuff back from. The point is that it punishes the person who is basically scamming you out of money by ensuring he has no assets. I think with a game it's pretty wonky though because its not like he promised it would be good, just that you would get it. As long as he releases something he would be off the hook, no? Anyway quitting after taking 34k because you just aren't feeling it anymore is a really lovely thing to do.
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Aug 24, 2013 20:43
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It says a ton about his values that he thinks a lack of steam is an acceptable reason to bail on a project he's already been paid for. Anyway... That is incredibly cool of you. I was actually thinking about you when I read the comment about not having faith in kickstarted roguelikes. I think people have to be careful where they put their money and accept that they may get burnt, but I'm quite pleased to have backed Dungeonmans. Of course it helps that you're an active poster here and have produced a solid and playable alpha already.
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Aug 30, 2013 01:48
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Rapacity posted:I'm not sure why Sword of the Stars: the Pit isn't talked about much in these threads. Its a loving great roguelike and is polished to a shine that games like Dredmore can't approach. The Mindgames expansion added a fuckton of stuff to an already packed game. The developers are constantly updating it to fix bugs and add even more stuff. That would be great. To be honest I tried it and thought it was pretty boring. It also suffers from the same issue as Dredmor - it plays slow. The boring thing might be me just not understanding exactly what I was doing, but it seems like it was easy except for the fact that ammo was incredibly limited and acquiring it was totally random. Once I ran out for an extended period of time, I was hosed. It took til maybe the 6th floor for that to happen? I just played it the one time and then shelved it.
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Aug 30, 2013 02:30
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mune posted:I wasn't really sure whether or not to ask this in the recommend games thread, this thread, or the MUD thread. If it belongs somewhere else, let me know and I'll post it there. Lacking permadeath arguably (in my opinion, unquestionably) eliminates roguelikes from what you're looking for. That being said the games uPen suggested are almost certainly the closest in terms of a combat system. I can't think of anything else that goes quite that in-depth. If you want to play a more simplified combat system (uh, in some ways), not have permadeath, and play around with different character builds, ToME is probably the closest fit. andrewdoull posted:On topic: Is anyone else blown away by how amazing 868-HACK is? I would be, if it were on PC or android.  I enjoyed what little I played of 86856527.
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Sep 1, 2013 02:24
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I think that this really makes me appreciate the way Biskup ran his crowdfunding campaign. His bit on RL radio where he explains how they came up with the goal and talked about taxes, realistic salary expectations etc. It should be a must listen for developers. I'm constantly astounded by the kickstarter campaigns that don't seem to realize that a 20k kickstarter doesn't mean 20k in their pockets.
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Sep 7, 2013 00:41
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Bouchacha posted:It helps that Biskup is the CEO of a software company. Absolutely. He knows the value of his time and his work. He also knows that undervaluing it won't lead to a good outcome. And the tax thing.
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Sep 7, 2013 01:22
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blackguy32 posted:There should be a section for action based roguelikes which I beginning to become quite fond of. The ones that I can think of off the top of my head are Delver, Baroque, and Spelunky. But I would love to hear about more of them if there are any. Tower Climb is a pretty solid one. Still not finished, but it's getting there. *cough* I've still got to update the thread a lot. I will "soon". ... Desktop Dungeons (the beta) is freaking awesome. It's pretty well a complete game, and they should just release the drat thing properly. e: I was looking at the latest indiegamestand game, buy the developers Rake in Grass. They seem to be working on a new beat-em-up roguelike. Early video here. It could be worth keeping an eye on. e2: Also this. Car combat roguelike?  Yes please.
Jordan7hm fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 03:05
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The upgraded version of Spelunky is well worth it, if only to support the developers for making such a fantastic game.quote:Sproggiwood This looks good. Definitely post here once it hits Android so that I remember to buy it.
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Sep 29, 2013 04:31
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Cardinal Quest is a really good portable roguelike. It suffers a bit from an easily breakable magic system, and a lack of a real ending, but its a lot of fun getting there the first time. Ido appears on roguelike radio a bunch and talks about roguelike design, so it's interesting playing the game while also keeping in mind some of his design philosophies. Highly recommended in any case.
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Sep 30, 2013 17:22
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Jeffrey posted:Play crawl and alternate turns. Better agree on that escape plan! In one of the RL radio shows they talked about a handoff game of ADOM where every player gets x number of turns, and then the save moves on to the next guy in the list. If you die during your turns, you're out and the next guy gives it a shot. If everyone dies during their turns, then if the original guy can't survive those x turns, he is out and the save reverts back. Seemed really interesting and fun.
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Sep 30, 2013 20:54
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From the steam thread: http://se.gamersgate.com/DD-TELEGLITCH/teleglitch-die-more-edition Teleglitch for 75% off - 3.25$. From all accounts, very much worth it at that price.
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Oct 7, 2013 17:14
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Alehkhs posted:For fans of Kornel Kisielewicz (DoomRL, DiabloRL, AliensRL): This is an awful trailer. But he'll get my money either way.
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Oct 13, 2013 02:52
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Black August posted:It took me 6 years to get an ADOM 'mod' for the GURPS system up and running. That he wanted to make his own brand new system with this little time to do it was a foolish thing, but I had no idea it was this pressing or time consuming. I thought it was just going to be some sort of D&D add-on or a really small rules-lite fun bonus thing. Hopefully he can get something out and not suffer a tax meltdown and then get back to the roguelike. I think in one of the interviews I heard, he mentioned that he had wanted to make one for quite a while. I guess he just ran out of steam on that desire.
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Oct 16, 2013 22:08
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Harminoff posted:Is Paranautical Activity any good? I'm looking for a mix of fps and rogulike elements and it's about all that I can find. You asking this resulted in me re-installing it to check and see how it played now. It's still pretty basic, but it definitely gets the speed of a game like Doom down well. It's very frantic. You may have better luck asking in the steam thread.
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Oct 28, 2013 04:07
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Dodge Charms posted:I like Roguelikes in part because I like to tinker with them. DCSS is pretty much ideal for this, especially since you can have your changes reflected in the actual release builds if they're competent and sensible.
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Oct 29, 2013 22:44
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_jink posted:I drew my esper :-D This is really cool.
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Nov 6, 2013 05:56
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The tipping point for me with roguelikes was understanding that any action that risked death was not worth attempting. Even if the risk is only 1%, repeated enough that will lead to games ending early. Beyond that, understanding the game's systems like the identification subgame really makes a difference. A lot of these systems are mostly solvable. I find that a lot of general advice is going to hold regardless of the roguelike, so figuring out the systems is what I usually focus on when starting with a new RL.
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Nov 7, 2013 18:13
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Most combat doesn't risk death. Most combat drains resources, but death is only a direct risk at certain moments. Identifying those moments and avoiding them is key. You can tab your way through DCSS without any real issues as long as you can identify the actual dangers and adjust your actions at those moments.
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Nov 7, 2013 18:32
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HellsEmbrace posted:Someone literally programmed a bot to do exactly that with a Hill Orc Berserker, it ceded control to the player when it perceived itself in a threatening situation but otherwise just autoexplored and tabbed through the entire game. It ascended as a three-runer in about 32 minutes. Here's the character dump. Has anyone made a lua script that could actually win DCSS on its own? It's been a few years that these things have been around now. I programmed one that got me to zot in ~40 minutes or so but it wasn't running entirely by itself, and I was massively underpowered and died on I think zot:2. Also, it was a FeBe ie cheat mode. e: And talking about Crawl, my favorite thing to do was to make ridiculous berserker combinations. I had a HaBe of Chei that made two unsuccessful ziggurat runs with I think maxed out air magic. I ended up dying to reflect or something on a really late ziggurat level. I could at one time beat crawl pretty consistently, but I never did manage to clear a ziggurat. Jordan7hm fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 04:37
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Desktop Dungeons is just so good. I have nothing to add. Buy it.
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Nov 9, 2013 04:46
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MrBims posted:And add the fact that you are incentivized to skip every enemy that isn't blocking your way, since losing health is significantly more detrimental than missing out on some piddly amount of gold. The game is optimally played like a bullethell game, skipping all the potentially interesting combat or opportunities in order to beeline for the bosses. This, at least, is not contrary to how most roguelikes play out. Combat is often better avoided or trivialized. But yeah, I'd agree it strays a lot further from a roguelike than something like Spelunky.
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Dec 2, 2013 01:59
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Harminoff posted:The idea of a roguelike platformer intrigues me so hopefully someone gets it right. Catacomb Kids is looking pretty good though Spelunky already got it right. Twice. That's a great example of how to do post-game content too. Super house of dead ninjas (or whatever it's called) is well worth picking up, and I'm really looking forward to Towerclimb being finished.
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Dec 2, 2013 07:59
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I kind of like the what is a roguelike discussion if only because it leads people to bring up edge cases I hadn't heard of before. The OP is pretty well what I consider important, though. Also if anyone wants to write some blurbs about their favorite games, I'm still updating it, albeit sloooowly and I don't think I've touched it in like 2 weeks. I'm off for a big stretch in December though, so will have more time to update it then.
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Dec 2, 2013 22:29
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Edwhirl posted:So on a completely different subject, what is the longest and most involved roguelike any of you've ever played? The longest single game I've had was a 15 rune crawl win (or possibly a game that ended in a zig). A dozen hours? I'm not sure of the exact time anymore.
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Dec 2, 2013 23:16
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madjackmcmad posted:It does! And it's super fun, you should totally treat yourself to it. Issacian in that your run is determined early on by the sort of items you get, and that you unlock new items through just playing the game. I've been a little frustrated in some of my earlier runs where I'd play for what I felt was a long time and end up unlocking nothing, but you can avoid that if you want by looking up the goals in the menu and aiming for them. I just got Risk of Rain, and I've got to say that the controller support seems wonky. It could just be because I've got a Logitech 310 instead of an 360 controller, but I've got it set up to xinput and it's doing stuff like not letting me start the game without using a mouse. Other than that it works well though. This game is a lot of fun.
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Dec 3, 2013 04:12
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To me, pseudo random is the way to go. Small set pieces that can be put together to create a whole that will never really be repeated. The map can either be entirely generated this way, or it can be mostly random but with significant set piece content. Crawl's maps are memorable, but that's largely because of how much non-random content is in the game, in the form of vaults. Spelunky is another good example of this. It looks handmade, because it pretty much is handmade. Rogue Legacy, and Binding of Isaac, are bad examples of this. Once you play enough, you see not just a similar dungeon, but literally the exact same dungeon. That's a problem to me. As for auto-explore, I love it. I want the feeling of a grand adventure, but I also want to focus on tactically interesting challenges. Auto explore does that for me. You could just make the maps smaller, but I think you really lose the sense of scope if you do that.
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Dec 3, 2013 04:52
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Thread Contest So turns out I want to have more game descriptions in the OP but don't want to go writing them all myself. Turns out I also have a couple extra copies of various commercial roguelikes kicking about. So... I'm going to give away a few copies of games like Risk of Rain and SotS: The Pit to people who want to do some of my work for me! I'm looking mainly for descriptions of games that you like, in the format that I've used in the OP. Keep them to a paragraph or two at most. Sell me (or any new roguelike player) on why I should play the game. If you want to find me good LPs or include stuff like SA thread links or prices, that's cool, but I can do that stuff myself if you don't want to. I'm not sure how many copies of games I'll give away, but let's say it'll be around 5. I'm also not limiting myself to traditional roguelikes. Risk of Rain, for example, counts. Every description gets you one entry in the draw for the games. You can only win one each, but more descriptions of course increases your chance to win. These will be Steam keys. You don't have to limit yourself to the games I have listed in the OP, and old roguelike descriptions are certainly welcome. I'll keep this running until December 15th and announce winners at that time. e: Also, madjackmcmad is super cool and also giving out a Dungeonmans Alpha backer tier prize to a lucky winner in addition to whatever games I hand out. Jordan7hm fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Dec 6, 2013 |
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Dec 6, 2013 05:11
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madjackmcmad posted:This is a beautiful idea! Jordan if you're so inclined, I'd like to add one Dungeonmans alpha tier backer reward to your collection of gift giveaways. That's alpha access, a whole mess of zircon music, and a pdf of the Dungeonmans Almanac when that's done. That is super cool of you. Definitely ok with that. (From a prize standpoint, I plan to just draw names, post them here with a list of games available, and the winners are first come first served with their choice of games.) Nice start Corridor. I've got that game on my phone but I've never really played it. I'll give it a shot.
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Dec 6, 2013 16:34
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