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[Roguelikes] ASCII, Permadeath, Turn-based and Oh My...
Rhan9
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Heya folks! I see that it has been years since the previous Roguelike thread. I figured that I'd slap one together for any Roguelike aficionados out there. To talk about Roguelikes, playing them making them, cool stories, upcoming Roguelike news, etc.
What is a Roguelike?
Generally Roguelikes have the following features:
-Top-down view
-Permadeath
-Turn Based
-Grid Based
-Randomly generated content
Or as Wikipedia puts it:
As there is no other place currently to discuss the genre, this thread is primarily about Roguelikes. Not Roguelites, Roguelikelikes, games inspired/influenced by Roguelikes, or games with Roguelike elements.
Roguelikes tend to have all the previously mentioned features, as well as being easily distinguishable from games of other genres. An FPS game with Roguelike elements? Not a Roguelike. A platformer with Roguelike elements? Not a Roguelike. Usually, if you need to explain why a game is a Roguelike, it's probably not a Roguelike. It's very much a case of being self-evident. "Roguelike" is nowadays very much a marketing buzzword for indie games, and is more often than not used to describe games that may be just permadeath, perhaps containing randomized content. These tend to be more accurately covered by PDL (Procedural Death Labyrinth) as a term, since they do not share enough features to be generally similar to Roguelikes, or even other games similarly inspired by Roguelikes.
Family Tree
So where did all these games come from? Starting with Rogue back in 1980, combining features from a variety of previous attempts at computer RPGs. The big three styles are Rogue, Hack (and its descendant Nethack), and Moria (and its descendant Angband). These days, most games in the genre tend to implement different ideas and features, straying from the traditional formula.
Roguelike classics:
Rogue
Larn
Hack & Nethack
Moria & Angband
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
ADOM
Modern Roguelikes:
Dwarf Fortress
Cataclysm DDA
UnReal World
Tales of Maj'Eyal
Brogue
IVAN
Caves of Qud
Infra Arcana
DoomRL
Elona
Sil
For the Tolkien fans, Sil is something delicious as far as roguelikes go. As Drake put it:
amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/sil/
What is a Roguelike?
Generally Roguelikes have the following features:
-Top-down view
-Permadeath
-Turn Based
-Grid Based
-Randomly generated content
Or as Wikipedia puts it:
Roguelike is a subgenre of role-playing video games, characterized by procedural level generation, turn-based gameplay, tile-based graphics, permanent death of the player-character, and typically based on a high fantasy
narrative setting. Roguelikes descend from the 1980 game Rogue, particularly mirroring Rogue's character- or sprite-based graphics. From 2000 onwards, new variations of roguelikes incorporating other gameplay genres, thematic elements and graphical styles have become popular, and are sometimes called "roguelike-like", "rogue-lite", or "procedural death labyrinths" to reflect the variation from titles which mimic the gameplay of traditional roguelikes more faithfully.
As there is no other place currently to discuss the genre, this thread is primarily about Roguelikes. Not Roguelites, Roguelikelikes, games inspired/influenced by Roguelikes, or games with Roguelike elements.
Roguelikes tend to have all the previously mentioned features, as well as being easily distinguishable from games of other genres. An FPS game with Roguelike elements? Not a Roguelike. A platformer with Roguelike elements? Not a Roguelike. Usually, if you need to explain why a game is a Roguelike, it's probably not a Roguelike. It's very much a case of being self-evident. "Roguelike" is nowadays very much a marketing buzzword for indie games, and is more often than not used to describe games that may be just permadeath, perhaps containing randomized content. These tend to be more accurately covered by PDL (Procedural Death Labyrinth) as a term, since they do not share enough features to be generally similar to Roguelikes, or even other games similarly inspired by Roguelikes.
Family Tree
So where did all these games come from? Starting with Rogue back in 1980, combining features from a variety of previous attempts at computer RPGs. The big three styles are Rogue, Hack (and its descendant Nethack), and Moria (and its descendant Angband). These days, most games in the genre tend to implement different ideas and features, straying from the traditional formula.
Roguelike classics:
Rogue
The great grand-daddy. The game from which all roguelikes more or less trace their descent. There were some attempts prior to Rogue, but it was Rogue which established the genre and many of its staples. Find the Amulet of Yendor and escape. The classic objective.
http://rogue.rogueforge.net/
Larn
The first roguelike to include multiple dungeons and a surface world sort of thing (a hub town of sorts) connecting them. I don't actually know much about this, having never played it. These days the latest versions can be tough to find as well.
Hack & Nethack
Probably the second most well known Roguelikes, directly inspired by Rogue and grown over the decades to contain an absurd degree of complexity. Known for its randomness, brutality, and replayability. As with Rogue, the objective is to find the Amulet of Yendor. You don't plan to escape however, and instead want to offer it to your god as a sacrifice to ascend to immortality.
Still worth playing, a true milestone of gaming. Nethack at least.
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~aeb/games/hack/hack.html
http://www.nethack.org/
Moria & Angband
Roguelikes heavily influenced by Tolkien, the objective is to kill a Balrog within the Mines of Moria. Or defeat Morgoth, if you're playing Angband. They are extremely tactics and combat focused, and Angband especially can be blisteringly difficult. Many people have never gotten far, despite years of playing.
Worth trying for the theme, and solid gameplay refined over decades.
http://www.remarque.org/~grabiner/moria.html
http://rephial.org/
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
A continuously developed Roguelike, tracing its descent from Crawl, and Linley's Dungeon Crawl. It is one of the most popular Roguelikes these days, and has a wide variety of races and classes (some of them very different from what you're probably used to) to choose from. It's a dungeon crawler, and a very good one at that.
Play it!
https://crawl.develz.org/
You can also play/watch games online!
ADOM
Ancient Domains of Mystery features an overworld, a plot, and randomized dungeons. An all-around solid Roguelike, it is due to receive an updated version (https://i.imgur.com/xKxBFkj.png) on Steam in the upcoming months.
A classic worth playing!
http://www.adom.de/
Modern Roguelikes:
Dwarf Fortress
Dwarf Fortress is basically the originator of its own genre. It's included in this list due to the adventurer mode, which is a wacky Roguelike mode featuring much of the insane mechanics of DF as a whole. The wrestling system itself is hilariously comprehensive, allowing you to suplex an enemy, and systematically break every bone in their body if the fancy strikes you. As the game is under development, many mechanics can be unexpectedly unbalanced, such as capturing butterflies to use as shuriken, decapitating ogres.
DF also features the better known Fortress mode, where you build a fortress with idiotic dwarves that follow your orders to their best ability (i.e. not well), and mostly you'll be finding new and interesting ways to have your fortress implode on itself, usually in tragicomedic ways.
Dwarf fortress is under constant development, and has been for a long time. Features get added, things break, new things appear. It's a living, monstrous thing, that keeps getting more and more complex. It'll probably eventually end up being the most comprehensive fantasy world life simulator ever made. Well, it already is.Oh, and it has a difficulty wall a mile high. Use wikis, online tutorials, and any aid and tips and tricks you can muster. It's a doozy to learn, but incredibly rewarding once you do.
Also, never trust the elves. Strike the earth!
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
Cataclysm DDA
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. A game about surviving after the apocalypse. Basically anything and everything apocalyptic has been jammed into one game. Zombies? Got it. Skynet? Got it. Dangerous survivors? Got it. Mutant experiments run amok? Got it. Fungaloids from space? Got it. You get the idea.
Featuring a robust character generation system, crafting mechanics, and the ability to significantly evolve your character as the game progresses (provided you manage to survive) lends a huge amount of replayability to this. You can aim to be a survivalist, cyborg, mutate yourself with dodgy canisters of mutagens into a velociraptor, the possibilities are numerous indeed!
Can be a bit tough to get started with, but very rewarding.
http://en.cataclysmdda.com/
UnReal World
Essentially a unique game, there's really nothing quite like it. A survival Roguelike set in a fictionalized version of Iron Age Finland. You create a character, and try to live your life. Battle malnutrition, weather, hypothermia, wild animals, evil eastern tribes (who could that possibly be?), etc.
Features a very comprehensive and realistic crafting system, simulates life in villages, cultures, and simulates the aspects of life in the Iron Age to a degree that no other game does. It even has a graphical interface and tiles, and is being continuously improved and developed. As it has been for over 20 years. This is not a game abandoned by its developer.
URW has been Greenlit, and will probably show up on Steam soon-ish. Regardless, the latest versions are available on the developer's website.
Don't forget to check the Mods linked there, including a graphical overhaul, increased recipes, and more. How many games allow you to track and hunt animals, skin them, cook the meat and tan the skins. Sew clothes for yourself, fell trees, build a cottage, fish, grow plants, domesticate animals, adventure, become a cannibal, and more? The developer is working on setting up an entire family system as well. It's the game for you, if you want to play a legit survival game, and the historical setting has any allure.
http://www.unrealworld.fi/
Tales of Maj'Eyal
Originally Tales of Middle Earth, which in turn were based on Angband, the developer of ToME veered into a separate setting and theme. Features a customizable graphical interface, some MMOish ability cooldowns, a bunch of unlockable classes a whole bunch of other things. Also available on Steam. While the versions are free on the developer's website, the Steam version includes the donor bonuses. Which are apparently some extra features and items, or thereabouts. Still, it's nice to support Roguelike development.
A solid game to play, good to lure people into Roguelikes due to a graphical interface, and easier adoption of mechanics, at least if the person in question has some familiarity with MMOs or RPGs.
http://te4.org/
Brogue
Essentially a modernized, prettier and overall smoother and better Rogue.
'nuff said. Play this instead of Rogue.
https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/
IVAN
Iter Vehemens ad Necem (violent way to death). A game about a hapless banana plantation slave (you) tasked with delivering a letter, which leads to a monster hunt and/or clericide (I guess that's what killing a high priest would be?).
Features an extensive system for dismemberment, but not to worry! Losing a few limbs is okay if you keep your life. You can always try to get them back through piety and the blessings of the gods, or maybe just steal the missing parts from an unlucky passerby. Limb reattachment for everybody!
http://ivan.sourceforge.net/
Caves of Qud
A Roguelike set in a post-apocalyptic future, with plenty of scifi archeotech, vault-dwelling True Men, filthy mutants (mutants are fun!), camel-men, severe lack of water (it is both required for sustenance as well as used as currency), and plenty of world and caves to explore.
The ASCII version of CoQ is free, while there is a version running a pretty swell tileset available on Steam. The game is still under development, but it's very solid already.
Definitely recommended!
http://freeholdgames.com/
Infra Arcana
A Roguelike set in the early 1900s, where you investigate the Church of Starry Wisdom in search of an artifact called The Shining Trapezohedron. Which supposedly is the key to all the secrets of the universe. While avoiding
monsters and going insane.
Yeah, it's straight up Lovecraft. A solid roguelike under development.
https://sites.google.com/site/infraarcana/
DoomRL
It's a Roguelike version of Doom. What's not to love? You run around, gunning down demons.
Until you are the demons.
http://doom.chaosforge.org/
Elona
A silly Japanese Roguelike, with nifty graphical tiles and nutty humour. All sorts of random stuff happens, you can do and see and learn a multitude of more or less useful things, and adventure in a whimsical Roguelike setting. The game is something of a mix between a life sim, sandbox RPG and a traditional Roguelike. You can do things ranging from starting a farm to raising pets, adventuring or running a store.
Definitely worth trying just for the batshit hijinx!
Since development stopped a few years ago, the base Elona version doesn't see any more updates. Elona+, a version continued by other developers based on the released source code is still regularly updated, and features many more things to see, do and experience compared to the base version.
http://homepage3.nifty.com/rfish/index_e.html
http://wikiwiki.jp/elonaplus/
Sil
It's pretty awesome!Sil is a carefully researched use of Middle Earth as a setting, specifically Middle Earth in the First Age. The First Age was the childhood of the Elves and a time of incredible wonder and horror. A time that is the root of all conflict, when many of the first Elves lived in the West with the gods, among the light of the Trees. In these times the greatest Elf who lived captured the light in three perfect gems, called the Silmarils. The gods demanded the gems and the Elf refused, creating a schism that wasn't healed until the events of The War of the Ring. Eventually the Silmarils come to the posession of the dark lord Melkor, who wears them upon an Iron Crown as he sits on his throne, deep within his fortress of Angband, the Iron Hell. Your goal is to descend to the depths, knock the crown from Morgoth's head, pry loose a Silmaril and escape. A deed worthy of the greatest songs and legends. A deed that forged the eventual salvation of Middle Earth in the Third Age.
If you've ever read the Silmarillion you should play this. Because not only is all the lore correct, but the game's systems are fantastically in tune with the setting. You won't find scrolls of Magic Missile or Identify. Instead you learn Songs of Power. Song is a very powerful force in Tolkien. Probably the most powerful since it was used to create the universe. Song can drive your enemies to fear and panic, drive you to incredible fierceness in battle, light your surroundings, and even bring quiet in a wonderfully useful paradox that feels more like magic than any Magic Missile spell I've ever cast. The game is all about light and darkness, song and silence. The combat system is totally redone too, creating a tactical system of risk and reward, running battles and desperate last stands. Gear you find is all lore inspired, appropriately named and imbued with subtle powers that enhance your skills. Your character can learn to forge much of this gear for themselves. Round this out with a fantastic stealth system and you get the greatest implementation of Tolkien's Middle Earth in a game I have ever seen. It's far more than just using the right words for things, all of the elements come together to recreate the dark tone and desperation of late First Age Middle Earth. Carry a light into the darkness with a song in your heart and a blade in your hand.
amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/sil/
Rhan9 on
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Also pretty hype about ADOM and URW coming to Steam soon as they are both favorites too.
Or more likely, die to one of the first 5-10 enemies you ever meet, and achieve nothing.
My current Caves of Qud run consists of a weak psyker type, who proselytizes to random NPCs in order to convince them that working for free as my meatshield is the best thing ever.
Dungeons of Dreadmoor would be too, if it wasn't Goddamn unstable.
I like SotS: The Pit too but I haven't really sunk a lot of time into it yet.
I don't know of any multiplayer roguelikes, but that's something I could get behind.
...I am wracking my brain trying to think of one, and nothing. There are multiplayer games with some rogue elements (Don't Starve Together, Minecraft), but none I can think of that are the whole grid & turn-based package.
And yes, this game is totally free as well. Why should you buy the Steam version? It comes with all of the paid expansions (and some free ones too) and of course it's swell to support rad games like this. And if you hate Steam you can get stuff straight from that website I just linked.
I've had a hard time going back to the classic roguelike style. Stuff like Spelunky and The Binding of Isaac is more my thing these days. My brother plays the hell out of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup though. I really should give that one another shot.
My Backloggery
But I'm a pretty big fan of the classic turn based tactical grid movement roguelike too. ASCII or tiles it doesn't matter much to me. I admit to a preference for ASCII. I just love staring into the matrix so games like Brogue are really magical for me. Caves of Qud has some really well done ASCII too. And I'm a huge fan of the ASCII in DCSS. I'm constantly amazed by how creative developers can get with some colors and simple characters. Simple little tweaks for the imagination to latch on to that say so much.
Triffids are nasties you may encounter in forests and what have you. They're basically fungal trees and zombies.
A Triffid queen is a sand worm, Dune style, made of that shit. And it will chase you, uprooting and destroying everything in its way.
Don't get me wrong, Rogue Legacy and Binding of Isaac are a blast but they can support their own threads and I'd like to see traditional titles get some love.
That was kind of the original intention for the thread. I even had a bit about it in the draft of the OP, but it sounded kind of snappy and passive-aggressive, so I took it out.
EDIT: OP has been changed to encourage focus on proper Roguelikes.
Even if it does sound a little passive aggressive or whatever, I'd suggest putting something in the OP that sets a definition for Roguelike vs Rogue-Lite. People can get the terms confused, and that way we're all on the same page about which specific games the thread is for.
Thread inspired me to fire-up The Pit again, and now I'm left wondering something:
Rogue was one the first PC games that featured chests that were actually monsters, right? Because that was a brilliant thing that not enough other games have copied.
Yeah, I always loved ASCII. I remember thinking that Rogue seemed very creative at using it as art. Of course, back then I had no idea what "ASCII" meant.
My Backloggery
Other games in the same series (Mystery Dungeon) are either tied to other franchises (which I often find introduces distracting elements) and/or lock the core roguelike experience behind rote singleplayer RPG campaigns.
I don't believe Shiren DS is too expensive on the second-market, either.
I'm not sure how I feel about Shiren. It seems like the game initially sets you up to fail; not unlocking several core mechanics until you've played a few times. And one of those core mechanics is sending equipment to perma-death-proof storage. So it's actually not optimal to try to beat the game when you start out. It's weird.
See an interesting thing about Izuna is that it's not truly permadeath. You don't die, you get knocked out, lose all of your money and gear and end up back in town. You keep your experience and levels. At first this seemingly makes the game a breeze. You can just grind levels to beat the initial dungeons if it comes down to it and ignore the crazy loot upgrade mechanics. But you'll never beat that final dungeon that way. It's scaled in such a way that you can only take on the lower depths with the sweetest ninja gear ever created. And if you die and lose that gear you are looking at losing tons of effort. It becomes even more insidiously brutal than traditional permadeath because you've spent the whole game, practically every preceding run, working up to these pieces. I mean, you have to level your gear, maintain your gear, upgrade it with scrolls, and then there is a whole meta process of burning in these scrolls, boosting that gears base stats but returning it to square one in terms of special abilities and status effects and the like.
The game's secret is that your gear becomes the real characters.
It's another one of those Japanese roguelikes that wears a simple face at first and then builds a sense of progression with some deceivingly deep mechanics.
If you like these sorts of roguelikes but aren't into the handhelds you usually need to play them take a look at Voyage to Farland. Funny thing is while this game is in that style, it doesn't come out of Japan. It was made by a guy who decided that the lack of this Mystery Dungeon style of roguelike on the PC should be addressed.
4 Manhacks.
EDIT: Having checked some tilesets, I'd recommend Chesthole's tileset over this. Generally the same, but the player sprite adapts to your equipment.
It's a bit like One Way Heroics, the game continuously scrolls to the left. Basically you have stolen the Orcs greatest treasure, escaped their dungeon and are fleeing for your life. Oh yeah, you are bleeding to death too. This is the entire source code.
Here is a review from Temple of the Roguelike. He hilariously gets the direction you run in wrong over and over. True comedy.
This is a fun coffee break roguelike. I thought once I figured out how to escape from the orc horde I'd tire of it but I still enjoy it now as a quick time attack kind of game. It's good fun trying to beat previous best times.
Cardinal Quest 2
The core of the game is skills. Any character can find and equip any skill. There's no mana, just an individual skill cooldown based on character stats. Did your mage just find a stealth skill? Murder from the shadows! But you can only carry around five skills at a time, and you're certainly going to find more skills than that. Your character also has a tech tree. You're going to want to spend points on it whenever they're available. But what if you later find an awesome skill that doesn't synergize with your tech tree decisions? Oh no!
It also has a simple but extremely satisfying stealth system. Hiding in tall grass and backstabbing guards is great.
The progression mechanic is that you get a persistent in-game currency for doing what your class is good at. Rogues earn it for stealth kills, mages get it for fireballing things, etc. This currency can be used to unlock classes and loadouts. There's also a class that you can only unlock by finding an in-game flask and getting a sample from each boss monster. Spending an entire turn getting a sample from a boss instead of attacking, healing, or retreating is a much bigger deal than it sounds!
http://cardinalquest2.com/
868-HACK
This progression mechanic is twofold. The first X number of times you beat the game, a new ability becomes available in future runs. You also have a running "streak" score that increments for each subsequent successful time you beat the game without loosing.
http://868-hack.neocities.org
Auro
All of your abilities revolve around setting up chain reactions and using enemies movement-based abilities against them. The closest analogy I can think of is Super Smash Bros. Perhaps Sokoban with malicious boulders.
The game's progression mechanic is that it adjusts dungeon difficulty and a target high score based on how well you do. In theory, the game stays challenging without getting frustrating.
http://www.auro-game.com/
@Nbsp hey check out WazHack. I was just playing it and noticed the multiplayer button. Interesting...
And it may appear to be a roguelite but if you ask me it's all there. Procedurally generated levels, enemies and loot. Permadeath, stats, classes and character progression, turn based, the whole lot. It's pretty serious about the Hack part of its name. For example food is a big deal. Item identification is another thing it has in common with Hack. It's pretty neat.
I remember this being the weirdest implementation of multiplayer in a turn-based game ever, though. You're not just getting a co-op game. This is like, a massively multiplayer roguelike. Turns happen on ticks, one or twice a second or so. This was exactly as janky as it sounds; sometimes the tick is frustratingly slow, sometimes it's way too fast.