@ Roguelike games

This week Axe of the Blood God podcast discuss kitchen sink old timey roguelike Nethack as their 23rd out of 25 RPGs of all time. The shows host Kat interviews gaming books author David Craddock who has done a number of titles on the history of roguelikes, their developers, Diablo, Starcraft and the D&D RPG gaming scene in general.

Worth a listen, as roguelike mechanics in a number of very popular RPGs are discussed including Dark Souls, Diablo, even Horizon Zero Dawn!

https://bloodgodpod.libsyn.com/octop...

I ran into a Glowmoth in Caves of Qud last night when I was lvl 5. I question the Easy tag on this thing. I was dead before I even knew what happened. :hmm:

Nethack was my gateway roguelike. I went from that to Dwarf Fortress to Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup and some other good ones like Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead.

Nethack wasnt the first game I played with an ASCII palette though. That goes to some Civil War battle sim on the Apple IIe (I think, or some early IBM) that I haven't seen since.

Ahhh, so nice to see a flurry of activity on the RL thread lately!

spelk wrote:

This week Axe of the Blood God podcast discuss kitchen sink old timey roguelike Nethack as their 23rd out of 25 RPGs of all time. The shows host Kat interviews gaming books author David Craddock who has done a number of titles on the history of roguelikes, their developers, Diablo, Starcraft and the D&D RPG gaming scene in general.

Worth a listen, as roguelike mechanics in a number of very popular RPGs are discussed including Dark Souls, Diablo, even Horizon Zero Dawn!

https://bloodgodpod.libsyn.com/octop...

Definitely will listen to that one. I loved Craddock's Dungeon Hacks book! Grabbed the audio book from a Humble Bundle. Highly recommend!

Also, really enjoyed your beginner's guide podcast for Qud, spelk! Listened to it on the way to work and can't wait to have a chance to give it a go!

JeremyK wrote:

I ran into a Glowmoth in Caves of Qud last night when I was lvl 5. I question the Easy tag on this thing. I was dead before I even knew what happened. :hmm:

I saw those things killing crocs like it was nothing in my game last night. I'm glad they've been friendly to me so far.

Picked up ADOM on a whim and am quite enjoying it so far.

It another one of those 'been in development forever' deals. This one first appeared in '94. But it's had a complete makeover of late and it looks really sweet while still retaining all of that crunchy goodness under the hood.

Seems to make good use of both k/m UI as well as a strict keyboard-only interface if you're feeling more traditional.

Looks like this game has NPC-directed questing as well.

Big thumbs up so far.

Game is $15 on Steam but you can also get a recent build for free on the official site. I think the free version is only missing some extra frills like Achievements, Weekly Challenge, difficulty adjust, etc.

ADOM is amazing. I remember taking turns playing it with my brother right after the first public release. We were checking 3 or 4 times a day for updates because Mr. Biskup was adding things like a madman. It's huge, obtuse and can be very frustrating. It is also a wonderful roguelike that'll have you discovering new things for years. I never ever won this game. I came very close a bunch of times, but never had the luck/skill to finish the last few levels.

Caves of Qud (which I haven't played a lot of) seems to be an homage to ADOM in a lot of ways. Maybe if Mr. Biskup had taken a lot of hallucinogens and lived on a commune growing up...

Homard wrote:

Caves of Qud (which I haven't played a lot of) seems to be an homage to ADOM in a lot of ways. Maybe if Mr. Biskup had taken a lot of hallucinogens and lived on a commune growing up...

Gamma World is frequently cited as a primary inspiration, which makes a lot of sense. A lot of old school post apocalyptic TTRPG’s are mentioned, but Gamma world was the big one

And Gamma World was based largely on Metamorphosis Alpha, so Cogmind is even more old school! Yeah!

"The only problem with fightin' in a corridor is, yer fightin' in a corridor!"

Spoiler:

Now I'm just making sh*t up...

Caves of Qud - Joppa Spoiler

Spoiler:

So was I the the only one that didn't know there was a secret passage to Red Rock in Joppa?

What the what?!

Aaron D. wrote:

What the what?!

Spoiler:

It's hidden in the water on the NW side of town. Blew my mind when I stumbled across it this morning.

That's pretty sweet.

So in Enter the Gungeon. I didn’t think to switch guns sometimes instead of reloading to save time in between shorting things.

JeremyK wrote:
Spoiler:

It's hidden in the water on the NW side of town. Blew my mind when I stumbled across it this morning.

Spoiler:

Oh so that’s where that goes to! I just found it at the start of my last run but ran away and hadn’t returned yet. Good to know. Thanks!

There’s a DCSS tournament starting up on Friday, if anyone around here is interested in joining one of our GWJ teams. Join us!

So I got this today, and so far I am really liking it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/7...

Nice!

Love the CRT window presentation.

Interesting theme too.

Veloxi wrote:

So I got this today, and so far I am really liking it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/7...

Oh, I'll give that a whirl! Thanks for the heads up!

Man, there's like no gameplay vids for Shadowcrawl anywhere. None.

Just little 30 second promo vids here and there.

Yet the dev Wicked Cake Games has a YouTube channel and everything (under the name obscurelobster).

Shame 'cause i'd like the pull the trigger, but not before seeing the game in motion.

Pro-tip: If you want to cultivate interest in your project, make access to media easily accessible.

Aaron D. wrote:

Man, there's like no gameplay vids for Shadowcrawl anywhere. None.
...
Shame 'cause i'd like the pull the trigger, but not before seeing the game in motion.

Well, I captured a few moments of play, but I've messed up the vid borders and b0rked the sound (but given the background music - the worst I've heard in a game - its a blessing) - I have no idea what I was doing, the screen is very cluttered with a lot of retro font hard to see colours, but I think there is a serviceable and possibly interesting roguelike in there. I'll have to turn off the music though.

I got about 8 minutes, of me being a Trog Sword and Board Warrior, where my shield bash could stun the enemies which proved useful... now and then.

No doubt Veloxi will be doing some sort of proper vid coverage if it tickles him enough.

I played it for like 30 minutes and loved it.

Then my game HD died. Like, totally toast.

It's so small though, like less than 100MB, so I reinstalled it on my SSD to play more.

Nice!

Thanks for posting that, spelk.

Boy, the readability of the gameplay action is really sketchy with all those screen effects popping off.

Aaron D. wrote:

Nice!

Thanks for posting that, spelk.

Boy, the readability of the gameplay action is really sketchy with all those screen effects popping off.

It reminds me of the Abyss in DCSS.

Aaron D. wrote:

Nice!
Thanks for posting that, spelk.
Boy, the readability of the gameplay action is really sketchy with all those screen effects popping off.

No worries, I've nuked the old video, and have updated it with a better version (borders fixed, and audio... *shudder*). I was trying to knock something out, whilst cooking the tea.. I've updated my original post.. and the new one can also be seen here:

Dunno whether it will sway anyone into playing it, but I was intrigued and my senses assaulted at the same time!

The November NetHack Tournament has a beta with the 3.6.2 dev branch. More information here

athros wrote:

The November NetHack Tournament has a beta with the 3.6.2 dev branch. More information here

Thanks for the heads-up on this, athros. I haven't played Nethack in probably 25 years, though, I was never really big on the game -- Moria and Angband were more my style. Still, I created a Hardfought.org account and played a game in the beta-test build, and then promptly realized that I really had no idea how to play. Also, that DCSS has totally spoiled me with the auto-explore and auto-fight key bindings.

But still, I achieved a few experience levels, traversed down a few flights of stairs, ate a few things I probably shouldn't have, killed a few things that I definitely should have, and turned into a werewolf, dropping all of my Knight's gear in the process. I didn't last much longer.

I find it fascinating how the skillset necessary for roguelikes can be developed across multiple games.

For example, I returned to my first roguelike love Tales of Maj'Eyal after a lengthy stint running Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Despite winning ToME dozens of times, I'd never done so on the true 'roguelike' difficulty before, only on the 'adventure' difficulty which grants up to 7 lives. This past week I started a new character, selected 'roguelike' and then continued to win on that first try.

I think something I learned from DCSS is that running away is a valid and powerful tactic. In all my previous ToME wins I simply pressed forward until victory (or death, lots of death). Looking at it critically, I think ToME is structured in a way which discourages "tactical withdrawl." First, there are only single sets of stairs between levels. Second, the power-difference between your character and 90% of enemies is so huge that retreating would never occur to you.

Heck, maybe I'll try my luck with some other roguelikes that have stymied me before. ADOM? Nethack? Let's see...

That's an interesting one. Yep, I played TOME a little and the thing that I had the most trouble with is it just seemed like if you weren't strong enough, you just died. It didn't seem like a retreating kind of game.

I played a lot of Angband when I first started rogueliking. Angband is probably the roguelike that skews towards retreating the most. Something nasty, leave the level and never see it again. Angband skews so far in that direction that it can be mind-numbingly boring if you choose to eliminate all risk by retreating.

Nethack is middle of the road. I'd put it with Crawl in that regard. Both make retreating easy, but you'll probably have to deal with the problem later. ADOM seems to skew a little more towards aggressive play, but I haven't played a whole game of ADOM in at least a decade so maybe it's changed. DoomRL, one of my favorites, allows retreating, but it generally doesn't help you very much.

Our very own Ferret's roguelike Demon (which I haven't played for a while) had a very interesting retreat mechanic. You might end of losing a companion or 2 if you retreated, so an early decision was best. A retreat now might sacrifice potential power later.

Came back from the Roguelike Celebration a little while ago. Very awesome event for anyone interested in roguelikes, highly recommended! (I'm pretty sure there'll be one next year as well...) I wrote about this year's so you can see what went down.

I also gave the opening talk, "How to Make a Roguelike," for any of you who are or have ever considered making your own own (except for Ferret, who I'm sure has heard all this piecemeal from me via the r/RoguelikeDev community over the years :P).

And there's now also an article version of the talk, if you'd prefer that format!
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/1XWJtgs.jpg)