What are Reddit's favorite Roguelike Apps?
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
NetHack
Darkest Dungeon
Brogue
Desktop Dungeons
POWDER
Pixel Dungeon
Don't Starve
Rogue Legacy
Tales of Maj'Eyal (ToME)
Shattered Pixel Dungeon
Unleashed Pixel Dungeon
Top Reddit reviews mentioning Roguelike Apps:
Though it is not really mutiplayer, a community based around Nethack (1987?) still very much exists and the game is still updated. It is an ASCII RPG that you should likely check out at least for a bit if RPGs are your thing.
As a Christian, I'm kicking myself for not realizing this sooner.
You know what though- all things considered, I can't help but think that this is deliberate. The darkest dungeon game, IMHO is Dismas's redemption story.
We start with the highwayman comic. Dismas is nothing more than a murder, and it's only after gunning down a child that he fully realizes the monster he's become.
Dismas isn't a young man, if his character image is anything to go by. Who knows how many lives he's taken. How many people he's robbed. How Mapuche injustice he's committed over the course of his life.
At the start of the game, dismas is a broken man seeking redemption- the game itself hints as much. The opening cut scene you get after making a new game file ends with the haunting line, "the old road will take you to hell. But in that gaping abyss... we will find our redemption."
What separates the Dismas from the various brigands and thieves you fight in the game? It's not just that Dismas is on another side- it's that he's left his old life behind in a vigorous (and potentially martyrous) pursuit of driving out one of the greatest evils in the world.
Also, I've got my theory that Dismas was the one the Ancestor sent the letter to, and is actually the Ancester's bastard son with some prostitute from when the Ancestor was much younger (it's been well established that the Ancestor was a unrepentant hedonist). But this is more pure speculation than anything else.
TL;DR Dismas is my favorite darkest dungeon character. I'm a sucker for redemption themes.
Paying for NetHack is like buying bottled water. Just.. WHY
Also, how does this not go against NetHack's license agreement, particularly this part?
>cause the whole of any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is a derivative of NetHack or any part thereof, to be licensed at no charge to all third parties on terms identical to those contained in this License Agreement (except that you may choose to grant more extensive warranty protection to some or all third parties, at your option)
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup: http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/
It's a roguelike dungeon crawl game that's constantly updated by volunteer developers. You can choose from a huge variety of species, classes, and religions, and the dungeons are almost completely randomized to make it have a crazy replay value.
There is a comic that Red Hook released about the various classes, This is the Leper's :http://www.darkestdungeon.com/darkest-dungeon-presents-the-leper/
There is no dialogue, but the things that are inferred are this: He was a loved and respected noble man, who left his home of his own free will despite the adoration of his community/subjects. As for why, it's entirely possible he does this as a Death March, a way to try and do some good before his body falls apart.
As for his combat prowess, there is a funny thing about Leprosy. It tends to dull the nerves and cause vision issues, which could be used to explain why he's such a tanky hard hitter with accuracy issues. It's also possible it's just a side benefit to explain away video game class archetypes.
As for why the hamlet doesn't ostracize him, I don't think Red Hook thought of that sort of mechanic before they implemented the Abombination. So it's likely just gameplay and story segregation.
I have to say I love what the devs did with player ghosts. So much so that often when I encounter a ghost vault in a run, I'll stop and just remark on how great a job they did with game design here.
They maintained the unique and fun element of having this vaguest of multiplayer interactions, while removing any of its accompanying frustration. The vaults themselves are also extremely well made, IMO -- the examples in the blog post are only scratching the surface. Really thoughtful approach, and really well executed.
Also a big fan of the spellbook change. I've been playing DCSS for nearly a decade I'd reckon, and it's incredible to see how the devs continue to make it better with each new release.
I suppose FTL is a rougelike-like, as stated on its website. If you are interested in roguelike then DCSS is really good. It's well maintained and has a very good tutorial mode, unlike many other major roguelikes.
Anyway FTL looks so cool! Can't wait to get a hands on.
Nethack has a copyleft license similar to the GPL. If a program or library links with it or is derived from it, must remain open-source, and it must retain the Nethack public license. Being a truly open-source license, the NH-GPL gives developers the right to sell derivative works, which is what the Vulture guys seem to be doing (A fair price for the convenience of having the game hosted on steam). However, if they ever close source the project, they will be violating nethack's copyright and can be sued by nethack's developers.
Download Gameboy Advance emulator and then this game on it:
http://www.zincland.com/powder/?pagename=about
It's superb, freeware roguelike game with ton of fun, items, spells, weapons, lore and replayabillity. Another great thing about this game (as for pretty much every other roguelike game) is that play session can lasts both 5 minutes and 3 hours and both will be enjoyable.
Why Powder is so great? Once I played as a druid and I got surrouned by enemies, so I used a spell "grow tree" to block enemies from coming to me, but it was still dangerous so I summoned imp to help me. Imp launched a fireball, fireball caused fire in newly created forest and I died in it. Best game ever.
It's good to see writing about crawl!
I don't think this is a very accurate depiction of meleebug, unfortunately. Somethingawful alone is not at all a good source, and there's a bunch of factual inaccuracies here that are important, the biggest of which is that the bug was patched after one week (halfway through the tournament), not two. In general, strong players definitely noticed that something was up very quickly, and the increase in winrate showed up in automated stats very quickly; it took a few more days after that for someone to figure exactly what (I would put this delay on the game, not on the people). For the very basic facts about what happened when, please refer to: http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/crawl-0-16-1-bugfix-release To get a better sense for the history, I do recommend looking through dev channel communications and tavern posts at the time, again, not SA.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. A community run rogue-like. I've put so many hours into this game and still learn new things nearly every time I play.
If you havent tried a rogue-like game, try the tiles version and you'll be blown away...
While you're already touching the sidebar: Could you simplify that and get rid of the quite superfluous separation between links to a roguelike and its subreddit?
How about something like this:
On top of that, using dark/night mode it's really difficult to recognize that Roguelike Development and Roguelites are actually links and not just sidebar headings.
You might consider looking at Brogue. Compared with more complex roguelikes such as TOME, DCSS, and Nethack, its mechanics are straightforward and transparent. All objects in the game have mouseover descriptions that clearly explain what they do, there are no character classes, there are only two stats (strength and max life), and item boosts come from generic 'enchant' scrolls.
This isn't to say that Brogue is easy - full ascensions are challenging and require you to learn sound tactics and to be creative with whatever items the dungeon gives you. What it doesn't force you to do is learn to how to hyper-optimize your stats, to memorize itemization tables so that you can wish for the perfect set of items for your class, to memorize what side effects various items and spells might have on you, and so on.
edit: One other reason to start out with Brogue is that there's also a small but friendly and active community over on r/brogueforum/ that is happy to give advice to new players. A few people on there are willing to watch your recordings and give specific advice.
I recommend Brogue to everyone (can't link right now, as I'm on my phone). It's gorgeous, has a great UI and is very approachable while remaining complex and awesome.
EDIT: Came back to provide link. https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/
Yep, you have - they made spellbooks much less present in the game. When you pick one up, instead of getting the book, its contents get added to your spell library to learn whenever you want.
http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/trunk-updates-and-0-22-release-and-tournament-info
> Trog no longer has a Burn Spellbook ability. It’s not really viable to make spellbooks as items for one god with this UI and….you know what, I’m going to drop a book bomb here….Trog is strong enough to take a nerf!
/r/roguelikes would be a good place to start and they may be more helpful.
Personally, I love <strong>Brogue</strong>. It's ASCII, but the engine is beautiful (no, really), the interface is fantastic, it's incredibly accessible.
Just want to chime in and point out that in the new official DD website, in the "Game Overview" section, this image appears after the Shieldbreaker's one.
I suspect an intended teaser. Hopefully we'll get more news soon.
I'm a huge fan of a single player game called Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and it runs well on my netbook and older machines. If you like diablo or nethack this game should be fun. DCSS is a rogue-like game where you can play tile graphics version or ANSII from the terminal. You can also play the game from your web browser and chat with other players.
I also like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. You can also play on http://crawl.lantea.net:8080/#lobby.
I'm a bit spoiled by Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup's tileset. Is there a good tileset for nethack?
I would recommend Brogue as a good starting point for old school roguelikes. Its basically a simpler nethack with some modern and polished game design.
Brogue. This is exactly what you're looking for, word for word. I'm not sure about terminals on Apple computers though.
Find it here
You might also like Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. Find it here.
You can certainly play ADOM without wikis. All the info you need is in the manual (accessible through menus) and the game itself.
Sources
Darkest Dungeon: http://www.darkestdungeon.com/ Monster Girl Quest (I don't know if there is an official website so ill just link the wiki): http://monstergirlquest.wikia.com/wiki/MonsterGirlQuest_Wiki
I read the licensing agreement just now and it looks like you copy and pasted, part of one sentence while removing the rest of the context...the rest of the context which talks about the terms of COMMERCIAL distribution.
Now I'm not a legal expert but before anyone grabs their torches and pitchforks just take a minute to read the WHOLE license agreement, not just a fraction of one sentence.
Also for anyone not aware there are also numerous versions of Nethack available for IOS and Android for sale.
If you read the whole license agreement which is only 4 paragraphs long, paragraph 2 and 3 both talk about the terms of commercial distribution.
>c) You may charge a distribution fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. You may copy and distribute NetHack (or a portion or derivative of it, under Paragraph 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Paragraphs 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: a) accompany it with the complete machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Paragraphs 1 and 2 above; or, b) accompany it with full information as to how to obtain the complete machine-readable source code from an appropriate archive site. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution.)
If you like Vulture but don't want to pay for it, it can still be downloaded for free. If you don't like Vulture, there are numerous other frontends for playing Nethack and if you're a purist...there's always plain ole' Nethack of course.
If you want to try a real-deal roguelike for a change, I recommend downloading Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup:
This is a proper roguelike, but it's the most gentle introduction to the hobby out there. The Crawl developers have worked really hard to make it accessible. For example, there are many fewer keys to memorize than classics like Nethack and ADOM, and you rarely need to "cheat" by looking things up online - everything can be figured out pretty easily in the game.
It's free, so it's easy to get started. It has both the traditional ASCII mode and several tile sets - pick whichever version you like.
That it doesn't get enough funding as it should.
While people are comfortable paying multi-million salaries to elite athletes and sportsmen, interns have to starve in scholarships and beg for funding.
I’m not implying that those people don’t deserve the money they earned. Just that science is being neglected and bastardized, when it is almost the sole reason for humanity’s current level of prosperity.
If not, ask Wilson and his science machine.
Footnotes
Proportionally though its not a good comparison because the 'standard' size of a game back in the day was tiny anyway.
I always find it insane how quickly games have ballooned in size in the last 25 years...Early-mid 90s was a few Mb per game, late 90s to early 2000s was 500Mb-1Gb and now nobody bats an eyelid at 30-50Gb per game, that's like 10,000-20,000x bigger than 25 years ago.
Brogue (Open source Rogue, https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home) has been my go to for a long time as a timewaster, spend an insane amount of time playing that game and its both free and about 1.5Mb as a standalone with the extra unneeded files stripped. (3Mb without)
Brogue. It's has a tiles version (http://oryxdesignlab.com/brogue-tiles/) but the ASCII version (https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/) is actually the game that got me comfortable with ASCII in the first place.
Roguelikes! That's the sort of game you find in the FOSS world.
There's the grandaddy of 'em all: Angband.
But there its grandaddy: Nethack.
There's also its grandaddy, Rogue, but I can't find a properly good place to link to for an authoritative version of the game that started it all.
Since the developers of Dwarf Fortress spent a year implementing beekeeping, I can only imagine what the game would be like if it were FOSS. It'd have beekeeping, wasp-keeping, hornet-keeping, and naked-mole-rat-keeping.
I'll make a safe suggestion: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (DCSS). Other than overall quality and its fairly frequent updates, I really like the auto-explore feature.
A magic system is simply one component of an overall game. As a general philosophy for game design I believe everything should be focused towards non-overlapping, non-obvious choices. Far too many games out there have a glut of very obvious choices (linear upgrade paths with built-in obsolescence). What's the point of having a choice if one option is always better than the other?
One example of a rather well designed magic system is that of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It features many spells, divided into schools, with very little overlap. Any overlap that does occur is mitigated by the fact that you cannot reasonably master all of the schools with one character. The spells are extremely varied in their costs, utility and rarity. There are also many different ways to utilize the natural synergy that exists between a lot of the spells.
Dungeon Crawl. Another roguelike with a greater focus on character customization than item choice. It's more forgiving and accessible than Nethack (it has a great tiles version and a mouse interface), but, let's be real here; you'll probably never beat it.
NetHack is not the best choice to start with. (I know, because I did.) Hardly anything is explained in-game, so unless you read spoilers, there are lots of things you can't find out until they come up and kill you.
I'd suggest Brogue. Both the tiles and the ASCII look really good and it's easy to understand what's going on (even in ASCII). It doesn't have classes and levels -- all characters start the same, and improve only by the items you find. Some things are similar to NetHack, like the potions and scrolls with unidentified effects or the way different items interact with the dungeon (for instance, triggering a fire trap in the middle of an area of dry moss), but there are a lot less ways to die out of nowhere, and a lot more documentation in-game about how monsters, for instance, behave.
Tales of Maj'Eyal is my absolute favourite at the moment, it's fantastic and has a great expansion up on steam. Brogue is also one I keep going back to, a work of art in terms of game design.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is pretty awesome if you can get past the non-graphics. I've undoubtedly played it hundreds of hours by now.
Come join us in /r/roguelikes if you like it and want to play more games like it.
SanctuaryRPG is a really cool game that DOES use ASCII in an interesting way. I'm glad you're enjoying it. As people are pointing out though, it's definitely not in the real family of roguelikes. If you want to try a good beginner Roguelike, I really recommend Brogue. It's pretty, it's easy to understand, it doesn't have a lot of keyboard commands, but it's still really challenging to beat. Give that a try.
I actually felt this one was pretty clear, but I didn't understand what happened in Men at arms.
I think the Leper was a former king? Unclear on why the Arbalet's s dad was getting mobbed.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is pretty much the best rougelike imo. There's a lot of classes and races to mix and match, and the interface is really easy to use.
It's possible if you install an X11 server on your work machine, eg. xming and enable X11 forwarding in putty.
Can't vouch for the performance over the internet though. You'd probably have better luck with VNC.
Or, you know, the windows version of the game.
use a roulette wheel instead of a die?
Alot of the comments here recomend an automatic death on a 1 or whatever. That isn't neccesary. You don't have to make the game harder to make it more stressful. EG: Darkest Dungeon has a mechanic called "deaths door" meaning that when you hit zero hitpoints you are now on deaths door and any blow can kill you. In reality this mechanic makes the game easier. It's different for tabletop games, but the norm for video games is that death happens immediatelly at zero HP. The mechanic makes the game easier, and more stressful.
Also you need not mess with mechanics to generate stress. Doing things like attacking the party while their hp is low, usually with pretty weak enemies (although the party shouldn't know that) or using enemies that inflict nasty status effects. One I usually steer clear of due to it being unfair, yet highly effective, is the threat of permanent harm. Enemies that do permanent damage to players stats or hitpoint maximum, or who can destroy players gear. Threatening a players gear is often more effective than threatening their characters life. (once again, use sparingly because you want to create stress, not anger.)
Lastly I find that you can even create stress by siding with the players. Whenever a player dies, make sure to look through the rulebook for any minute loophole that may result in them not actually being dead. Give them a few moments for their death to sink in, and then drop the bombshell: "oh, joe blogs, you might not actually be dead.... Yeah see grenades do less damage at the edge of the blast radius, can you roll d6 - 2?"
Roguelikes originated back in the day before actual graphics on computers, when everything was text. I remember reading an argument on fidonet in which one grognard was complaining that introducing colour to the text-based graphics had completely spoiled the game.
They're typically complex and quite hard, too. If you want to try a roguelike in the traditional mode, can I suggest Nethack. Your character sprite will be an @ symbol, so if you like you can add the Falcon's Eye mod which introduces isometric sprite-based graphics (completely spoiling the game, obviously).
I don't know how much minecraft you play, but I still find myself in awe of some of the landscapes it creates, and to build a full minecraft world by hand would be ridiculous. It's totally unecessary. It's a big sand box you get to play with. It doesn't need or want the kind of detail like something like Zelda certainly.
Procedural generation can be excellent, and needed for some games. There is a tile, turn based roguelike called Dungeon Crawl In which you pick a species and a class and make your way through a dungeon to find the orb of zot.
This game is ridiculously hard and everything in the game is great at killing you. The idea behind the game (and rogue-likes in general) is that every death is a lesson, but if the game was just a structured linear level then the game wouldn't be about learning how to react, it would be a game about rote memorization, which isn't nearly as fun.
Not really directed at you fine sir. I'd just like to add that if you liked dungeons of dreadmor and wanna try your hands at other roguelikes games, I'd suggest Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It's free and the game is pretty easy to get into plus it has tiles.
I was trying to build the Antiquarian from Darkest Dungeon. Essentially a relatively combat weak and sort of cowardly support character on their own, whose combat abilities were all based around buffing allies and debuffing enemies and who was otherwise most a skill monkey whos main strengths were out of combat being good at finding treasure, support healing and dungeon delving. So expertise, jack of all trades, bardic inspiration, song of rest, and cutting words were pretty central. Magic was the LEAST important part of the character. Hell, if there was a 1/3 caster or 1/2 caster version of the bard (or a rogue variant with bardic support abilities) I'd have take that because "magic" was in no way the focus
You are doing yourself a disservice, sir. Not quite as steep a learning curve, but if you cut off both my hands, I could still count how many people I know who've beaten it on my remaining fingers.
Some 8-bit music :):
echo "main(i){for(i=0;;i++)putchar(((i*(i>>8|i>>9)&46&i>>8))^(i&i>>13|i>>6));}" | gcc -x c - && ./a.out | aplay
Source: http://www.xkcdb.com/9067
In case that I win, you can keep the key; I don't use steam anyway. Nethack for the win^^
http://www.nethack.org/v330/info.html
The "net" refers to how the devs networked to work on the new version of Hack. I mean, the game was released in the 80's adding "net" certainly did not imply a multiplayer game back then.
The NetHack dev team is still alive and kicking. They posted an update on the official website about four months ago regarding a (new) leaked version of the game: http://www.nethack.org/
September 21, 2014 Announcement
>The NetHack Development Team feels it is necessary to publicly address an issue that has surfaced in the last week.
>Recently a NetHack source distribution has appeared, claiming to be NetHack 3.5 or 3.5.0 or 3.4.4.
>This claim is partially correct. This is our code. However it was not released by us or with our authorization. This code is not ready for release: it is unfinished, unpolished, and almost certainly very buggy. It has not been play-tested for balance or functionality. It is best considered a partial and unfinished rough draft. We will not be supporting this code, nor will we be releasing binaries or bugfixes for it. It will not be available through our website.
>Due to this incident and to prevent confusion, we will not now nor in the future release anything with a version number of 3.4.4, 3.5, or 3.5.0.
>We thank those of you who play and develop both NetHack and its many variants for your support and encouragement at this time and over the many years NetHack and its progeny have and continue to evolve.
Maybe POWDER?
Is easy to learn, the tiles are lovely, you can use the mouse and even make shortcuts to spells (almost like in Ultima Online... ahh memories...) There is a wiki but is not an obligation to read it, you can learn a lot of things just by plating the game and paying attention. There is XP leveling, with an unique class/gods system. About stealth... not so much =(
Rogue is still enjoyable! Although Brogue, as DesiQ has mentioned is a very nice alternative. (https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/)
HSSEKEBSH... must mean something. It's obviously an intentional way for the developer to broadcast his feelings of homosexuality, abortion, guns and smoking. If only I knew what it meant..
The devs of Darkest Dungeon just released a bunch of sounds for twitch streamers. I think some of them are pretty dank, do you guys think they will trump the Trump?
Here's their post with the download link: http://www.darkestdungeon.com/ancestral-bestowment/
Yes, they're technically breaching the public NetHack GPL since the linked Steam libraries remain closed.
However, note that the public NetHack GPL does not have to apply to them. It is in the power of the NetHack copyright holders to give the Vulture team NetHack under a different license.
Rogue Legacy is fun, but gets pretty grindy after a while. The majority of the game's randomization comes from permanent equipment that's passed on from heir to heir, monster reskins, and the shifting castle layout. I enjoyed it for a few hours but I found it getting awfully repetitive. If you're into 2D platforming games, give it a shot. You can also fine a demo here.
And the Pit just felt really iffy. The presentation was poor and it didn't really stand out for me. Glad I got it in the Humble Roguelike Sale instead of paying for it full price.
It may be a little simplistic, but you might still get a kick out of POWDER. It's usually the one I recommend as an introduction to the genre as a whole, especially due to its four-way movement (many people have trouble thinking about diagonals and optimal movement patterns when just starting out), but it's good enough I often go back to it myself... And I've been playing these games ever since discovering NetHack over a decade ago! :P
It has no races (every player is human), and technically no class either. There is a gods system that sort of acts like a class system (one god favors sneak attacks and other rogue-like conduct, another prefers his worshippers to never back down from a fight and to shun the use of magic, like a barbarian, etc), but you can switch gods in the middle of a run (beware angering them with your 'betrayal' though), or choose to follow no god and be as flexible as you want (at the expense of not getting divine gifts and other help from a god along the way). Your starting items are a bit randomized (you always get a basic armor of some sort, a weapon, a book of spells and one of non-magic knowledge like a guide to basic weapons, but you can never really be sure which ones you'll get), so they do sway how you start your run, but what you'll become by the end of the game depends entirely on what you find along the way...
Drakefire Chasm is pretty quick to beat, especially if you're min-maxing (i.e. ignoring one stat/skill type completely in order to max out the other two). Using a red dragon with a focus on will and stamina, I usually complete the game in about half and hour. It'll take longer if you're NOT min-maxing, especially since the different dragons are not very well balanced and some are WAY weaker than others, but it should still seldom take much more than 2 hours at the worst (if you can survive)...
POWDER is another to look into, but slightly longer. I've heard of people beating it in under an hour, but on average I'd say it takes 2-3 hours to make it to the end. EDIT: FYI, that's judging from videos I've seen; I haven't done it myself. Thanks to /u/justinjustin7 for making me realize my original comment made it sound like I'd done it personally (I was half-asleep at the time of writing, lol)...
Extremely surprised that Darkest Dungeon hasn't been mentioned yet. It's extremely similar to XCOM in terms of attachment to characters that can and will be lost at some point. With that comes a steady stream of training replacements for the dead or recovering.
The setting is a very psychological dungeon crawl with some Transylvania and Cthulhu thrown in. Characters build up stress dealing with monsters and darkness, and the will eventually have mental breaks that add random penalties to work around. For example, your cleric might need to start flagellating herself to destress.
The game plays out in a very "by the skin of your teeth" fashion that makes it really rewarding to keep people alive and accomplish goals. Character skills are similar to XCOM in terms of choosing from a few to choose well for the situation. The strategic battles are done really well and each class has both front and rear skills that make mixing and matching different teams extremely interesting.
The game is still in Early Access, but it's probably one of the most complete titles I've seen that isn't officially released. You could easily spend 40 hours on it as is. The loop of dungeon diving, leveling characters, recovering, and going back stays really fresh, so it's not a game I worry about exhausting by playing early.
http://www.darkestdungeon.com/roster-patches-and-content-update/ describes the Arbalest as a field medic, and says the MaA has "rallying shouts".
As for Dogbro, all I've got is his existing blurb: "Hound and master have kept order in every dirty pub and bandit-strewn village from coast to coast. A specialist in harrying blows and crippling, bleeding strikes, this pair is sturdy and versatile. By cudgel or teeth, they will keep the Law."
Agree. This is in line with the analysis of others like Ludicsavant. Hopefully some re-balancing is coming down the pipe soon. Personally I'd like to see the Plague Doctor given a stronger healing kit.
Most of the abilities in the game seem rather basic and simple at this point. Direct damage, dots, single turn stun. I hope the developer's explore some more complex mechanics. Charming opponents, locking out skills, tanks that can protect the rear ranks, etc. This game is already pretty amazing but it has crazy potential with the right design effort.
No, because it's not grid-based and it's real-time.
For instance: This is a standard roguelike.
As is this though some people only consider ascii based games as "true" roguelikes.
I talked to Kornel (who hosts the site) and he said the host shut down the site because of performance issues. Kornel said he might only be able to upgrade and host the wiki on a different server in January.
In the meantime, you could use the knowledgebots which will have most of the info but in a different format.
All these comments and no one has mentioned POWDER? A seriously under-rated game. Its 4-directional movement is easier for new players (most people I've introduced to the genre seem to have a lot of trouble with diagonals for some reason), Its player-characters are all human, and its classes are done mid-adventure by choosing to follow a god, so it doesn't overload new players with a complex character creation system; you can really just jump right in. But it still has the common roguelike tropes such as character levels, magic, cursed/blessed gear, unidentified scrolls/potions, etc...
I'm running POWDER on my PSP (original, not vita) and I've logged hundreds of hours on it. It's been my favourite hand-held game for years.
Didnt really love crashlands, though i think its quite solid. It just didnt have quite enough to hook me. Worth checking out if you are interested, I think.
Blueprint Tycoon isnt fun. I loved the idea, Ive been looking for more things like Factorio or puzzles like SpaceChem where you optimise and make your own supply chains, this didnt do it for me. Bad tutorial, too complicated from the get go, and a poor UI made it a chore to play.
Desktop Dungeons is brilliant. One of the best ideas in puzzle games in years and years. Check out the old alpha that does give you a great taste of the gameplay. The steam version is a million times more polished and balanced, though. Great great game, just remember that not every board will be solvable, accept that you will have a great time.
Never heard of fortresscraft, thanks for pointing it out!
I dare to disagree. Desktop Dungeons is a great little indie title and really very addictive. There is a free, nearly feature-complete alpha available at the developer's website that can give you a good idea of the central gameplay. DD for $10 and getting the other two games for free is not a bad deal at all.
It's not a standard roguelike - it can be very punishing if you are not careful how much and when you are exploring. It's almost like a minesweeper RPG and I would recommend checking out the free version of the game first here. The retail version offers some progression between dungeon runs and is a nice little time waster.
Brogue - While I'm not a huge fan, it's one of /r/roguelikes' most recommended game for a lightweight roguelike. You can save with a simple Ctrl-S and it takes seconds to load up, if that. All movement and combat is turn-based, so there will never be a spot where you'll "fuck I just gotta wait thirty more seconds to kill this thing before I can go"
It's relatively in depth, and very difficult to win, requiring you to adapt to what items you find throughout the dungeon similar to Slay the Spire requiring you to adapt to what cards you're provided.
Highly recommend these two: Brogue and The Ground Gives Way
The Ground Gives Way has a very nice tutorial and isn't too complex. Both games are free to play.
Enjoy.
Edit: Why don't we make this thread a sticky on the sidebar?
One of the biggest flaws in a lot of games is having too much stuff. Spelunky keeps a nicely low item count, and FTL manages to make everything inter-related so it all works nicely (plus you only find x things in any given game).
You should try Brogue, it has a good scope to it, and has the right balance of randomness and skill. The randomness is in what you find as you play, and the skill is in making use of those in an effective way. Much like FTL.
Its from the Twitch voice notification post Red Hook posted like 9 months ago. I just recently reposted it and I think they might of saw it there.
First off, buy some torn jeans and add rivet spikes all down the legs. You'll need sunglasses, and a mac, any mac will do, the older the better though.
Then put on your outfit, sit down and grab the software from: http://www.nethack.org/v343/ports/download-mac.html
In no time you will be furiously typing codes into a cryptic ascii hacking window and looking stylish while doing so.
http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/trunk-updates-29-august-2021
> Summoning Changes
> For a long time summons have applied an XP penalty, stealing up to half of the XP reward from each kill. This was used as a balance tool, because allies in crawl are very powerful. However, over the past many versions a lot of the sources of ally power (summons attacking out of LOS, sources of permanent, very long lived, or cheap and powerful allies) have been removed.
> Summoning spells were still extremely powerful, owing to the large number of creatures that could be brought to bear on a problem. In trunk summons and allies are changed in the following way, to enable removing the XP penalty.
>Summon caps are reduced:
>* Summon Small Mammal, Summon Hydra, and Monstrous Menagerie are capped at 2. >* Haunt is capped at 8. >* Summon Horrible Things and Dragon’s Call keep their old summon caps. >* All other summon spells are capped at 1.
> Summon-capped summons all time out uniformly and disappear after 10 auts.
> Shadow Creatures is made a monster only spell.
> The XP penalty is removed from all temporary allies.
> Permanent allies from Beogh and Yredelemnul currently retain the XP penalty, with a hope to change their design in the future in a way that allows us to fully remove the XP penalty.
I was going to wait until they released a mac version, but whatever. It's not easy if you've never built anything before, as you have some installing to do.
- Install XCode.
- Open XCode. Go to the downloads tab in its preferences (in the menu bar XCode>Preferences). Make sure to download/install the command line tools. (If its not here, you can also get it on the right hand side of this page).
- Download the dcss0.14.0 source tarball from this page. Make sure to get the one with deps (dependencies).
At this point, you should have XCode installed, the XCode command line tools installed, and an archived copy of the dcss source, located at somewhere like ~/Downloads/stone_soup-0.14.0.tar.xz (the tilde means <your home directory>).
Open up Terminal.app and enter the following lines:
cd ~/Downloads tar -xJf stone_soup-0.14.0.tar.xz cd stone_soup-0.14.0/source make APPLE_GCC=y NO_PKGCONFIG=y CONTRIB_SDL=y TILES=y
That's for a tiles build. For a console build, replace the last line with
make APPLE_GCC=y
This will take some time. Ignore any warnings that happen. Hasn't finished yet for me, so I can't say exactly where the .app file will be located but it shouldn't be too hard to find.
Hope that helps!
EDIT: nope this doesn't build a .app, it builds an executable file named crawl. THis will be in the /source/ folder and will run if you double click on it, but can't be moved. That should hold you over for now, at least.
The docs don't say how to build an .app bundle for crawl, so I can only assume it's using the included xcodeproj, but I don't feel like building it again.
Depends on exactly what you're looking for.
If you're looking for another challenging game with permadeath, randomization, and varied starting options I would suggest Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It's a rouge-like based around playing well rather than around simply knowing secrets like many rouge-likes, and it has a major emphasis on removing tedious scumming aspects.
You haven't played many roguelikes, have you?
Try a game called Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. It is very much a proper roguelike, where you can, if you're unlucky enough, stumble upon an ogre on the first floor, or maybe you'll get teleported to Satan by a teleport trap.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is pretty good, and still under active development. It has hi-res icons if you are ASCII challenged.
It's worth a go.
Screenshots. Scroll down for included basic tiles.
Nethack - can't believe anyone has mentioned it, it's a classic, chances are you've already played it if you've played DF though.
Generally, all the rougelike games out there are pretty good. I lost interest in Nethack and a lot of other because they haven't been updated in years.
My favourite one at the moment is Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup because it is updated regularly and seems to be more complex than most other roguelikes out there, apart from DF becuase DF is insane! Also, Stone Soup has a ton of race/class choices and combinations, which I love.
Great thread though, love nearly all the games mentioned here. URW rocks, been playing that for about 10 years now! (Whoa...I'm getting old...)
If it has different attributes and behaviour than a normal rat, then that's ok.
If it's just like a normal rat with more health points, then hell no.
An example of this done well is POWDER. It has mice (very low hp, low attack, simple behavior), rats (more hp and stronger attacks, more random & aggresive behavior) and giant rats, which can even wield armor and weapons.
I think Powder makes a better roguelike 'tutorial' than most games' actual tutorials. Its cardinal-only movement is good for beginners (I've noticed that many new players have a hard time with diagonals), it's a decent introduction to the most common roguelike tropes (unidentified items, character leveling, permadeath, etc), and it doesn't overcomplicate things by presenting the player with a million races and classes to choose between.
After they learn the basics in Powder, I usually introduce my friends to DCSS as a good middle-ground; it plays similarly to Powder, but with much bigger levels, diagonal movement, and race/class selection.
And finally, after they've learned the ropes of DCSS, I ask them if they prefer the short-term tactical complexity or the long-term character development. If they like the tactics, I give them Brogue, and if they like the character development, they get ADOM.
Powder comes to mind. Cardinals only (but one class can move diagonal), I think the only hotkey I actually use is G for get, and you can use the mouse for just about anything else. You're also allowed to make shortcuts on the outer ring of the screen for things like look/examine or cast spells or pray or so on, so that's immensely helpful.
There's POWDER (http://www.zincland.com/powder/) It doesn't feature most of your requests, but it was originally intended to be played on a GBA, which means you can load it up on an emulator and play it using a few buttons. And once you see the error in your ways and come back to ascii graphics, The ground gives way (http://www.thegroundgivesway.com/) features the simplest control scheme ever seen, and it doesn't have millions of menus for you to navigate.
Seriously. It is like they are saying that no more roguelikes are being created while we have so many good roguelikes that are new and stick to the same pricipals. Even if you don't think that games like Don't Starve should count as a roguelike we have games like Dungeons of Dreadmore and Powder, (a game that I would highly recommend). These people show nothing new about the game that differentiates it from other roguelikes.
Powder is a fairly traditional roguelike, drawing inspiration from many roguelikes. The creator wanted it for his GBA, but it's freely accessible to any OS.
Have you checked out Powder? I haven't played it in a while, and it doesn't look like its been updated recently, but it is completely playable by mouse and pretty light-hearted. It has a very unique and strange leveling system, however.
Get it here:
http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=about
It's a very fun roguelike in it's own right, but being able to play it on my GBA makes it awesome. It's got a very interesting religion/class system. I highly recommend it.
(Thanks to ceolceol for reminding me post a link to the site.)
Edit: Also the unofficial wiki if you're into that kind of thing.
If you'd like to find out for yourself, you can download an early alpha version for free.
Or you can play the same alpha version in your browser.
Dungeons of Dredmor if you like a good roguelike. Cthulhu Saves the World/Breath of Death VII if you want a throwback to early 90's console RPG's. Dwarf Fortress (free) if you like a brutal sim with a steep learning curve, deep complexity, and don't mind a few huge bugs here and there. Terraria if you want a 2d sandbox sidescroller similar to Minecraft except with more focus on adventuring and combat. So many more I could mention, I'm sure others will.
EDIT: Also, if you liked Amnesia, try their earlier Penumbra trilogy. Similar gameplay, vastly different setting.
EDIT2: Decided to add in a lesser known title I enjoyed thoroughly: Desktop Dungeons is a unique roguelike/puzzle combo
Honestly? Jump into a roguelike without understanding. The joy of discoveries is absolutely a major core interest in roguelikes.
My recommendation is Brogue, it's an ASCII, turn-based, tile-based roguelike that is both really user-friendly and incredibly deep in its gameplay. It's a good entrypoint to the genre and it's still a great game even when you're deep in roguelike content.
Desktop Dungeons is a really fun puzzle game. But it's much more a puzzle/strategy game than a roguelike. I think it is an amazing game, very unique and deep with lots of room for creative strategies. Worth checking out for sure, I've been playing since the alpha/early beta.
Also it seems like you aren't as into the ASCII scene, but Sil is one of the best games I've ever played. Really clear rule set and very balanced. I'd maybe start with Brogue as it is simpler and prettier.
Darkest Dungeon gets a lot of praise, but here's an interesting counterpoint. I love very hard games too, but that's actually the review that's made me hold off on buying DD.
According to the reviewer, the difficulty is mostly smoke and mirrors, and the best tactic is to ignore almost all of the options in the game, because pure damage output beats everything. People with "balanced" parties are effectively crippling themselves, which is why the game seems more difficult than it is.
I haven't played the game, so I don't know how accurate that review is, but I found it interesting and well-written, at least.
It's an enemy?
Nooooooooooooooo
I want a new character :'[
For you guys i will Link This! which is a mockup i've stumbled upon and i really liked the idea. I feel like the setting in the game lacks a fencer/gentleman/pirate. Anyway, maybe if you show enough love it could happen.
Feel free to link any other character mockups you found.
It's an early access game, so obviously this game isn't finished. It says so clearly on the Store page.
That being said, here's Red Hook Studios' plan: http://www.darkestdungeon.com/an-update-from-redhook/
tl;dr = at least 5 more classes, 2 more zones, a lot of rebalancing, town events, customizable outfits, more curios and 2 bosses per zone instead of 1.
I don't actually have any idea why OP's above comment is being downvoted.
A quick google shows that there are TONS of videos about gameplay.
This past weekend (30th-3rd) began the Week of Torment event where backers were allowed access on the 30th and there was much encouragement (including contests) to get people to stream and make videos.
As an aside: Yeah. We get it guys. You guys fucking hate OP. Can we get back to talking about this game already? OP made a good point here. There ARE videos all over the place. AND streams. Stop downvoting the guy when he's right, just because you're mad at his opinion about other things.
According to the developer, Vulture no longer retains any code from the original FE fork.
Have you read the Nethack License agreement? It clearly allows for commercial distribution. There are only 4 paragraphs. Read paragraph 2 and 3. Pay particular attention to 3a. That is what this falls under. According to 3a. for commercial distribution (which is allowed) the developer must include complete machine source code with the distribution. Then read the sentence right after 3b. It defines complete source code as the orginal or updated source code for Nethack.
So under the terms of the license agreement the developer has to include the source code for Nethack 3.4.3 which incidentally is 3.4mb. He doesn't have to include the source code for Vulture or any third party libraries such as the Steamworks library. That said, Vulture is and will still continue to be open source anyway.
So...why would you pay for this? If you like this frontend, want to support the developer who has worked on this and other Roguelike projects for free up to this point and want the Steam features. (It can also be purchased on Desura)
If you don't want to pay for it...guess what? You don't have to! It's open source! And you can download the binaries for it supporting multiple platforms for free too.
A lot of people have been trying to turn this into a storm in a teacup and this isn't even the first commercial frontend for Nethack either!
So in summation, yes, the Nethack license agreement does allow for commercial distribution. If you don't want to pay a few bucks to support the developer, you can still get Vulture for free anyway.
Those credits appear to be taken from the 3.4.3 Guidebook.
The devteam have not been anonymous so much as keeping game discussions between themselves, lest they be inundated by every @ and his d.
I doubt we'll see another release. Last I heard, the devteam had noted that they'd rather see greater distinction between the roles, rather than new features. But it's been a long time.
The source code is available, of course, so Slash'Em and other variants could be seen as carrying the torch right now.
For replayability, but not really graphics/sound/ease of use, try Nethack. It's an incredible and deep game if you can get past the archaic interface.
Just so you know what you're getting into before you download, here's the pc version. The versions are identical.
Also, /r/nethack.
http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/howto has a list of the 'official' servers (Maybe there's a few that aren't listed there) most of them are pretty reliable.
You have two options:
* connect to one of the servers via ssh (connection details here); on windows you'd probably need to use putty or the like, but other OSs have this built in. Almost all servers support this, but a few don't.
* use tile_display_mode = glyph in your rc and play in webtiles.
Dungeon Crawl stone soup or DCSS. Personally I like the tiles which is a graphical interface, op was using text based. Here is a great starter website. If you start playing welcome to the addiction :)
yup
http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/howto
On that topic, you might want to look into text fiction. No genre can be as good as making it look like you are accomplishing something when you are not...
Pull up half a dozen command prompt windows.
Ping things in five of them.
Play an ASCII roguelike in the sixth.
You'll be making keypresses and seeming techy and busy, all while trying to collect the Amulet of Yendor or whatever.