@ Roguelike games

Thanks guys! Much appreciated

If it’s worth anything, Cogmind made a podium finish in my personal Top 10 that I’ve posted here and elsewhere.

Absolutely love the game and can’t wait to try the latest build.

Thanks, Aaron! I see both CoQ and Unexplored on your list, too (All three of our games appearing in that PC Gamer article this year...)

Jeez Ferret, over 650 abilities in Demon? I already can't keep track and you keep adding more!

Nice work

athros wrote:

Jeez Ferret, over 650 abilities in Demon? I already can't keep track and you keep adding more!

Nice work :)

Thanks. Things have been slower since I started my new job this past summer, but I'm still plugging away when time and energy permit. I hope to have a pretty big release to announce before toooo much longer...

I don't know how many here play ToME4, but there's a pretty interesting community-run challenge series starting up.
te4.org forum post

Added a small number of achievements to Cogmind for today's new release
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/CrUIqIM.png)

Full release notes for Beta 6. (Also there's a 10% discount this week, but most here already have it anyway :P)

Just a few!

I had a lot of fun with it (Cogmind), never got all that far though. I had the same problem with Stone Soup... I just get wrecked. I always feel like it's the gear's (or lack of good gear) fault, but it's probably something I'm doing (or possibly not doing) that's ending my runs, prematurely.

Sanctuary RPG:Black Edition is 80% off on GOG. Is it worth the buy?

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

I had a lot of fun with it (Cogmind), never got all that far though. I had the same problem with Stone Soup... I just get wrecked. I always feel like it's the gear's (or lack of good gear) fault, but it's probably something I'm doing (or possibly not doing) that's ending my runs, prematurely.

I haven't played for a while, but from memory when I first started playing a Draconian Berserker is a nice way to play. Using berserk will get you out of those pesky situations (Groups of orcs usually killed me!)

Kyzrati wrote:

Added a small number of achievements to Cogmind for today's new release
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/CrUIqIM.png)

Noticed this on your Steam portal.

Awesome!

SpaceDog wrote:

Sanctuary RPG:Black Edition is 80% off on GOG. Is it worth the buy?

100%

Sanctuary has a devious sense of humor. Presentation is ace and the gameplay underpinnings are quite solid.

Cool bananas, grabbed it.

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

I had a lot of fun with it (Cogmind), never got all that far though. I had the same problem with Stone Soup... I just get wrecked. I always feel like it's the gear's (or lack of good gear) fault, but it's probably something I'm doing (or possibly not doing) that's ending my runs, prematurely.

Yeah for most players it takes some serious learning--and rethinking how you normally approach games--to figure out how to get far since it's pretty different from everything else, but it becomes 100% reliably winnable once you do.

The best thing to do if you want to get far without worrying about all that is to just activate the easiest difficulty mode available in the options (or if you have time their are helpful guides and videos, but who has that much time xD)

Aaron D. wrote:

Sanctuary has a devious sense of humor. Presentation is ace and the gameplay underpinnings are quite solid.

The sad thing is the indies (two guys) that made it, basically their first successful game, then turned around and started a publishing company, scamming gullible indie devs out of their money. Unfortunately lots of beginner devs don't do their research, though it's hard to blame them because details on these guys can be hard to find since devs scammed by them are afraid to speak out because they get threatened with litigation.

The devs have been banned from all the major roguelike communities as a result, and multiple times confronted on r/gamedev for their practices.

It's very sad every time I see someone bring up how great their game is. Great or not, the people behind it are scum for what they've done. (I rarely get mad at people on the internet--because I mean hey, it's the internet there's usually little point :P--but they get my blood boiling... I mean, how do you build a business model on taking advantage of people who are already at a huge disadvantage?)

I can point you to a bunch of original sources and horror stories, but this dev's blog post pretty much sums it up.

Yeeks. I had no idea.

That's sad and troubling indeed.

Yeah most people don't know about it, but whenever I see them mentioned I feel obliged to bring it up. Sorry for semi-derailing the thread--should stick to good wholesome roguelike news in general

The 7DRL 2018 results are in! Lots of cool new roguelikes to play here. I made one this year, too, the first since Cogmind 7DRL's creation back in 2012. Mine's POLYBOT-7, sort of a stripped down Cogmind rebuilt into a very different game (I compared the two on my blog). It turned out pretty well and I might do even more with it in the future, though it's a complete game as is.

Don't worry, Kyzrati (I had to scroll up 6 times to make sure I got that spelling right :P). I had no idea, and appreciate the illumination. I might have been tempted to buy it, but knowing that turns it into a steaming pile of "no thank you" - probably even more than Kingdom Come: Deliverance (another game I was interested in).

New DLC for Tales of Maj'Eyal is out: Forbidden Cults. With a 10% launch discount!

Looks like all sorts of Cthulu-y fun.

Math wrote:

New DLC for Tales of Maj'Eyal is out: Forbidden Cults. With a 10% launch discount!

It looks like a R'lyeh good time.

ftfy

Kyzrati wrote:

Yeah most people don't know about it, but whenever I see them mentioned I feel obliged to bring it up. Sorry for semi-derailing the thread--should stick to good wholesome roguelike news in general

Ahhhhhhh that has answered a tweet I had back (in Jan) from Golden Krone Hotel dev, when I suggested a certain indie game podcast show related to these 2 devs company.

Thanks for the headsup Kyzrati, I was totally clueless.

Caves of Qud has added alternate starts in the Beta build, which is something I've wanted in the game for a long time.

I just started playing Caves of Qud and I was wondering if folks had any pointers for me? I've played some roguelikes but never particularly well, and I'm not sure how to start getting a handle on everything. I've basically taken a couple of quests and died pretty fast each time, so I don't have a good sense on how to approach a new run.

Qud is awesome.

There was a quick & dirty Beginner Guide that helped get the ball rolling for me, but the link appears to be dead.

Luckily I had a copy of it on my phone so I'll just cut & paste it here.

Pinback's Beginner's Guide To Caves Of Qud

Spoiler:

(This guide contains very minor spoilers, which really shouldn't be spoilers, they should be shown to you immediately upon loading the game up, right on the goddamn main menu screen, and then maybe guides like this wouldn't be necessary.)

Until recently, my experience with Caves of Qud had been limited to purchasing it, installing it, being dropped in the middle of god-knows-where with a bunch of crazy crap on the screen, pressing the "go north" button 100 times and dying for some reason I couldn't understand. Then I'd try going east 100 times, and I'd die for some reason. Then west. Death. Sou--DEATH. It was like some overly-convoluted, less enjoyable version of Annoyotron. Eventually I realized there were a couple of "introductory" quests you could sign up for on the first screen. I attempted them about twenty times, and on the rare occasion I was able to actually find any of the places they were telling me to go before I died, I would die shortly thereafter, surrounded by a bunch of blinking characters and inscrutable stats and gobbledygook. Then I said, "f*ck this", and uninstalled it.

Caves of Qud is an incredible game featuring a massive, bewilderingly creative world to explore, which is almost impossible to do, because though it's been in development for nearly a decade, it still does such a phenomenally woeful job of welcoming new players that I am sure my story is a common one, and Qud remains uninstalled on computers all over the world because of it.

So over a year later, I reinstalled and committed to finally figuring out what the hell was going on. I did this because the idea of the game -- a huge world in a far-future semi-dystopian science fiction setting -- still appealed to me, and I did love the pseudo-retro look of it, and I paid the $10, so goddammit I'm gonna figure this out. I scoured everywhere I could for tips and help. And I died a lot. But every time it'd take a little longer to die, and eventually I was able to complete the intro quests, and then it really started to click.

But I wouldn't wish that experience on anyone, so this guide is my attempt to help kickstart your enjoyment of the game, if you want to get down with the Qud, and get down in them Caves.

1. UNDERSTAND THE GAME WORLD.

As soon as you get into the game, hit the "<" key to go to the world map. I didn't even realize there was a world map a year ago. It is then that the scope of the game begins to hit you. The (fixed) world map fills the entire screen, and you're in a single square way down in the southwest. You can traverse the world without ever going to the world map, and you definitely should explore that way for a while, just to see how amazingly huge the game is.

On the world map, hit "l" to go into "look" mode and just arrow-key your way around it for a while, looking at the names of the various locations. Most of them are generic, but sprinkled around are special locations with specific names ("Rust Wells", "Asphalt Mines", etc.), which you can (and must, for quests) visit and see what's up. And in between these special places, vast, varied lands of unknown to explore. And this is just on the surface. If the game took place only on the surface, it would still offer a full, seemingly endless experience.

But beneath every square of that world map is also an infinite labyrinth of caves. If that doesn't get your roguelike juices flowing, I can't help you.

I say this not so much to sell the game to you as to deal with one of my first questions -- where the hell are the "caves" in "Caves of Qud"? What do you do? Where do you go? Well, the answer is, pretty much anywhere. If you wander around the surface enough, you WILL come across cave entrances, both at the "special locations", and also randomly all over the place. They are not as easy to find as I would have thought, though, which led to my initial confusion. Unlike a game like ADOM, where the overworld is just a convenient way to move from dungeon to dungeon, the "overworld" here is just another (humongous) level of the game world. So walk around. You'll find one. Then you'll find another. Life is in the caves, the rest is just waiting.

2. BUILD A GOOD STARTING CHARACTER.

Do not "create random character" at first, no matter how much you want to. The character creation screens are complex and daunting, but there is a way to build a simple character easily that will let you get into the game without dying immediately.

The idea is to build a "big dumb fighter guy". There are two kinds of characters you can build. One, "mutant humans" gives you a wide array of special, crazy mutations you can choose, and while these are surely a blast to play around with, it adds unnecessary complexity when you're just trying to go 100 squares without dying at first. The other category, "True Kin", just means, regular old dudes. So choose this.

Then choose your big dumb fighter stats. This means put most of your attribute points into STRENGTH ("Hulk smash!") and TOUGHNESS ("Hulk not get smashed!") We're just looking for a lumbering oaf with a big sword who can walk around bashing things and not running out of hit points. That's it. On the next and final screen, choose a caste that looks good to you. "Praetorian" offers more bonuses to strength and toughness, and makes you good with swords. Doesn't get much bigger, dumber, or fighterer than that.

3. HIT F1 AND DO WHAT IT SAYS UNDER "10 THINGS YOU SHOULD DO WHEN STARTING..."

That little help screen is the game's only attempt to be helpful, and while it is completely and utterly inadequate, it's still good information and advice, particularly the very first thing about assigning hotkeys to your abilities. In particular, make sure you map "sprint" to something easy to remember, because it is going to be your main escape method when you realize you are in over your head. Do not be afraid to use "sprint" early and often.

4. DO NOT DO THE STARTING QUESTS RIGHT AWAY.

In the first screen, you'll meet two guys, a farmer who wants you to go to Red Rock to figure out what's eating his crops, and a machinist/tinkerer guy who wants you to go fetch him a bunch of stupid sh*t from the Rust Wells. It's a common refrain among in-the-know Qud players that the Red Rock quest is a bit of a "trap", not meant for brand new characters. But frankly, they're all traps, and if you try to do either of them right away, you will probably end up uninstalling the game (again).

Instead, just go out into the wilderness, get comfortable with the surroundings, bash a bunch of crocodiles on the head with your big sword, and gain a few levels. I'd suggest getting to at least level 4 or 5 before trying the quests. You can succeed at them earlier, but the less stress the better.

5. LEAN ON THE "ALT" KEY.

Perhaps the most important key in the Qud keyboard, holding down Alt shows the current screen in a simplified, color-coded layout, the most important colors being green and red.
NPCs/monsters/plants who are friendly are show in green, and those that are hostile (yes, there are hostile plants) are shown in red. Check it often to see exactly 1) where there are monsters, and 2) whether you need to worry about them or not. Without this, there is so much going on in every screen, particularly on the surface, that it can be hard to tell exactly who is where, and makes it real easy to die before you knew you were in trouble.

6. LEAN ON THE "L" KEY.

Once you have identified hostiles with the Alt key, use the l)ook command to see exactly what's going on with them. Particularly, it will show you how dangerous they are to you at the moment ("Trivial", "Easy", "Medium", "Tough", "Impossible", etc.) Anything "tough" or above, think twice, and if they're coming after you, remember when I said to use "sprint" often? This would be a good time.

7. LEAN ON THE "W" KEY.

If you take nothing else away from this guide, take this: Never, never, ever, nevereverever hold down a movement key to go in one direction quickly. Something eventually WILL jump out at you, and WILL kill you before you even realized there was anything there, as the status messages scroll crazily up the screen reporting your injuries until the "You died" window pops up. If you want to move a long distance in one direction, hit "w" first, and then hit the direction key. It will keep you walking in that direction until something happens or you see something (like an enemy) worth stopping for. Do it. You can also hit "0" to auto-explore the entire screen, which is also fine. Just never, ever hold down a mov-- well, I can't say it any more clearly than I already have.

8. LEAN ON THE "~" KEY.

The tilde key is the default key mapping for "rest until healed". Do this a lot. Don't go into danger without full HP unless you absolutely can't avoid it. In combination with the "sprint" ability (remember that, from a few other times I mentioned it in this guide?) you will almost always be able to survive and fight another day. Run away, hide, heal. Sounds like common sense, but in the heat of battle, pride and/or forgetting about it can kill you long before you needed to die.

9. REMEMBER TO LEVEL UP YOUR GUY.

Unlike a lot of games that, once you achieve a new level, will be upfront about asking which attribute or skill you want to upgrade, Qud just quietly puts upgrade points in a little pool, waiting for you to remember that they exist and divvy them out the way you want. Hit "x" to get to your character sheet, and if you have upgrade points waiting, assign them.

10. REMEMBER TO BUY SKILLS.

Like character upgrade points, "skill points" also collect as you progress through the game, and if you don't press "p", you may not even realize you can use them to purchase new skills.

11. REMEMBER TO BUY THESE SKILLS SPECIFICALLY.

This is just my preference, but for a new player, I would recommend the "harvest" and "butchery" skills. "Harvest" lets you gain helpful stuff from plants, particularly "witchwood bark" from Witchwood Trees (which are quick healing snacks) and "vinewafers" from Watervines, which are food. "Butchery" lets you get a lot more food from certain corpses than you otherwise would have, so you don't have to keep worrying about hunger.

12. USE THE WIKI

I ended up spoilerizing a few bits of the game by using the Wiki, but I forgive myself in this case, because I'm too old for this sh*t, and there's tons of great info in the Wiki that may not be clear in (or is absolutely absent from) the game itself.

CONCLUSION

I've barely scratched the surface (literally and figuratively) of Caves of Qud. I don't mean this in the lyrical Steam review sense ("I've played over 500 hours and I've just scratched the surface!") I mean, really. I just figured all of this stuff out within the last two weeks, and none of this should be considered expert advice. However, armed with this guide, you should be able to confidently step into the wild, wonderful world of Qud and have some basic idea what the hell is going on, and maybe not die immediately.

That might be enough to get me to reinstall Qud.

That's easily the best beginner's guide I've seen yet. Thanks Aaron!

Amazing guide. Wow.

Are there any of these types of games that have decent graphics? I've always like the concept of these games but just can't get over the looks of them. Been playing a little of Rogue Wizards on ios and that's probably the closest I've gotten to a more "modern" look.

That's a really fraught question, JeremyK. Many roguelike players and developers want to see only the characters available in the ASCII character set. Others will tolerate basic 2d graphics, to a degree. But you will find that many players are fanatical about their preferences.

Dungeons of Dredmor was one of the first commercial hits that has proper graphics:

IMAGE(https://www.gaslampgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ntx_shot02.jpg)

Shiren The Wanderer games on handhelds and consoles are pixel art:

IMAGE(https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1616/24456168229_226abd48e8_b.jpg)

And even though it's a tileset (or ASCII, it has both, but you clearly won't like that) Cogmind's also the most beautiful thing of all time:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/6x3TMuq.gif)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/kpPqdMT.gif)

Okay, maybe not the most beautiful, but some of the most clever uses of tile art I've ever seen.

Edit: Sorry, forgot to write the name of the game. Thanks, Aaron.

You're not wrong.

Cogmind is gd gorgeous. And a killer game to boot.

Oh, one I haven't played but has been on my wishlist for a while:

Sproggiwood

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/jhKkxic.gif)

IMAGE(https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nV8RGX-z2r4/VJMOwNlppCI/AAAAAAAAgqw/fbIxk5KQ5ks/s1600/1.gif)

So cute! In fact, just hit the buy button on me phone.