The ROGUE-LIKE Thread

the you-know-if-we-aimed-for-tongue-in-cheek-it'd-be-painful-so-we-just-went-for-deliberately-bad narration

ADOM makes it to Steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/333300

anyone into caves of qud? i'm not experienced with this genre beyond an ancient version or three of nethack (and less classical stuff like ftl) but have been sucked into this.

when i was like seven, my dad helped me build a little unfinished roguelike in C, and i remember having my mind blown by how quickly we got unplanned but stable emergent behavior from our monsters. (i also remember trying to add a new enemy while my dad was at work and thru a lack of real understanding of code creating a terrifying, invulnerable, phase-shifting bug of a monster.) it was the first time i'd understood the computer as something you could use not just to build worlds but to grow them. the density of the overlapping systems even in o.g. rogue and hack make promises that maybe haven't been fulfilled outside of the genre.

anyway caves of qud is an endless cascade of systems (run screaming from a "dreadroot", slip on the pool of blood from the monster you just stabbed, slide into the embrace of a carnivorous wall vine, etc) but in other respects an outlier: it's a lore-dense game with a huge, sprawling overworld (aligning to scale, screen-to-screen, with the huger underworld beneath it) and reams of cod-gene-wolfe descriptive text. this blends strangely with the permadeath and unforgiving mechanics: rather than death meaning losing a relay runner at an easily quantifiable point of progress (and trying to surpass that point next time), it means losing a longtime resident of a giant nonlinear world. i've barely scratched the surface and maybe never really will, and i'm not sure it actually ends -- there is a "main questline" buried in the heap but most of what engages me is exploring and breaking things down for scrap. (this is also what engaged me in fallout 4, which btw i have stopped playing like everyone else.) when my characters die there is much less of a sense that some narrative has been violated and left incomplete than there is in almost any other rpg i've ever played -- i'm just one more casualty of the wastes who couldn't keep eking it out. are roguelikes where the best game stories are?

reams of cod-gene-wolfe descriptive text

was just thinking what a nightmare this must sound to thomp. this stuff really only appears when you use "look". find i've gotten less patient for plotty game text with time but i do like being able to read a lil graf about a kobold. enjoy the grotesquely garrulous pillars of eternity for similar reasons.

bwahaha i saw that bit and i was about to reflexively go OH GOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

so is this stuff ~slightly procedural~ because that's kinda neat i guess

https://waltorious.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/xrl-2013-02-06-12-30-14-42.png

lol @ caslainard and polluxus. i'm not sure if the prose is procedural, tho other things about recurring npcs def are, including their places in a giant faction system which may or may not have an implemented point yet. (so-and-so is "disliked by X for Y"; you're always finding banners or armbands or necklaces of teeth that are +100 to rep with A or -100 with B.) btw check out the style on that light-obfuscating lens.

lots of combat moves (with experience), including "stances" and the like. a complicated second skill tree for mutants (growing new limbs etc) i haven't really touched yet because i've been playing as unmutated arcology dwellers, but i think you can, like, have a different magic battle axe in each of six hands, if you want.

world map is always the same but individual screens are randomized based on terrain type. adom, which i've never played, maybe has this stuff covered, but i've enjoyed the different kinds of underground terrain: twisty corridor-and-room dungeons giving way through ruined walls to screens and screens of wide caverns, with maybe a river of flickering blue tildes running through them. anyway, idk, just lost another char to this, somewhere in a gloomy cavern of apostrophes. definitely a game for lovers of compulsive "depth" over people looking for something more elegant and iterative.

yeah i was really hoping 'caslainaird and polluxus' was the output of a prefix-suffix dictionary mishap

i am still playing and not particularly enjoying dream quest while i wait for michael brough to finish making what sounds like that game only good

Trying our Alphaman on Dosbox tonight, so far quite intriguing. Post apocalypse themed.

Anyone familiar with it?

"Killed by a centipede"

hmm

Not familiair with it but perhaps I should get acquainted.

What did you name the wimpy monster?

haha Moggy, after my mates wimpy cat

Anyone played The Swindle (stealthy roguelike-like for all PS platforms)? It's on sale in the PS store this week and I'm considering it but reviews suggest that its difficulty level is brutal.

They had a convention!!! nobody tells me anything

https://roguelike.club/schedule.html

Coverage:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/281688/Rogue_cocreator_permadeath_was_never_supposed_to_be_about_pain.php

http://kotaku.com/rogue-creator-says-we-need-a-better-word-for-permadeath-1786822855

it won't be a conventional roguelike but i am stoked for aria end

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-extremely-strange-world-of-infinite-dungeon-video-games

peter burr rules
porpentine charity heartscape appears to rule too but i'm just learning about her stuff

I enjoyed this article about blind people playing roguelikes via screen readers:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/04/05/playing-roguelikes-when-you-cant-see/

That's p. hardcore.

was reading that this morning, it is a good piece. used to work with a visually impaired guy who was into interactive fiction

that's a great piece, thanks!

we have to comply pretty strictly with WCAG and 508 for all our stuff and in my limited experience it's impressive how much accessibility requirements actually improve the UX for everyone.

good read

for those that love to roguelike and enjoyed rogue legacy 1:

The release of the Drifting Worlds marks our third content release patch, and the halfway point on our road to completing Rogue Legacy 2. It’s hard to believe it has already been 9 months since the game entered Early Access, and we’ve added an immense amount of content and features. Since launching we’ve released 4 new biomes, 7 new classes, numerous major systems, and a consistent stream of new enemies, spells, traits, skills, relics, and runes. RL2 is absolutely brimming with content, and we believe it is time to raise the price from $19.99 USD to $24.99 USD. A price-rise was always on our roadmap, and our development trajectory has not changed since we launched in Early Access.

Before all this though, we want to celebrate the release of the Drifting Worlds and the passing of our halfway-mark milestone, so starting on May 18 at 10 AM PDT and ending on May 24 at 10 AM PDT, RL2 will be discounted at 20% off its current price (not the raised price). The hike in price will only occur after the sale is over, so this gives gamers an opportunity to get Rogue Legacy 2 at its lowest price ever. This is the lowest price it’ll be for quite a while! If you’re on the fence, now is a great time to dive in and check out everything new and exciting in the Rogue Legacy universe.

i am diving in

and i just bought it and realized it's pc only. oh.

welp, nbd and it's easy to get a steam refund, but dang. i was getting excited.

Owen P was right in 2011; the game that I couldn't remember the name of in 2005 was Super ZZT, specifically Monster Zoo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6VljA7WSSM

But it's not even a rogue-like, is it!

KM, I loved Rogue Legacy 1, but I'm a little wary after having been really excited for Spelunky 2, then being disappointed with it because it was just "more of the same", even though I had thought that's exactly what I'd wanted.

Haha what a highly delayed exchange/realization

ZZT is not a roguelike in any way, it was an ASCII puzzle-action game designed by a very-young Tim Sweeney (who went on to start Epic, now an Unreal engine/Gears Of War multi-multi-millionaire). I designed a game for it when I was 12 and at least one person played and reviewed it last year haha

https://museumofzzt.com/review/q/tiara.zip

Nice! ZZT graphics really appealed to me as a kid, probably in the same way that Minecraft does to kids today.