@ Roguelike games

Do try the demo! It's very odd.

Fired up Noita last night. I've only played 70 minutes (including time before 1.0) but it feels pretty nice now! I'm not sure what has changed between patches, but it was just a lot more pleasant.

Still a baffling naughty wizard simulator, still don't really know what I'm doing, but it's engrossing!

The best comment I've seen is that Noita is not a shooter; it's a stealth game. And that certainly helped me. But I still only rarely get more than four levels in (although 3 is pretty standard for me). Obviously I am learning a lot still. It's *hard* to win, but thankfully, fun to play.

A great game for people watching you play, too. My son loves looking over after I die and pointing out that trying to use acid to put out a fire might not have been the best choice (even though I was *knocked* into the acid, I swear!).

BTW, Armoured Commander is rolling along in development, with yet another major update hitting last week. Highly recommend this; it's one of my favorites.

Okay, in Noita? That little air puffer spell? Try puffing fire with it...

Robear wrote:

Okay, in Noita? That little air puffer spell? Try puffing fire with it... :-)

Can anyone enable me on Nolita? I've got Spleunky 2, Risk of Rain 2, and Hades in rotation, but am open to one more :-). The pixel art puts me off but I'm at least mildly intrigued by the idea of customizing my own spells.

UMOarsman wrote:
Robear wrote:

Okay, in Noita? That little air puffer spell? Try puffing fire with it... :-)

Can anyone enable me on Nolita? I've got Spleunky 2, Risk of Rain 2, and Hades in rotation, but am open to one more :-). The pixel art puts me off but I'm at least mildly intrigued by the idea of customizing my own spells.

The pixel art is because the pixels are individually simulated.

So, yeah, not exactly a looker, but the tradeoff is the simulation.

UMOarsman wrote:

Can anyone enable me on Nolita? I've got Spleunky 2, Risk of Rain 2, and Hades in rotation, but am open to one more :-). The pixel art puts me off but I'm at least mildly intrigued by the idea of customizing my own spells.

I can DISable you on Noita, if you like.

I found it interesting, but pointless. The chaotic nature of the simulation felt that you were basically rolling dice to see what combination of things killed you. My victories and failures felt empty because they were nearly all due to luck, rather than skill or care.

I found the upgrade system inscrutable, which fed back into the feeling of not being in the driving seat.

That said, I've not touched it since v1.0, and am planning to go back and see if it feels less that way.

garion333 wrote:

So, yeah, not exactly a looker, but the tradeoff is the simulation.

Now THAT's interesting.

Jonman wrote:

I can DISable you on Noita, if you like.

I found it interesting, but pointless. The chaotic nature of the simulation felt that you were basically rolling dice to see what combination of things killed you. My victories and failures felt empty because they were nearly all due to luck, rather than skill or care.

I found the upgrade system inscrutable, which fed back into the feeling of not being in the driving seat.

That said, I've not touched it since v1.0, and am planning to go back and see if it feels less that way.

Watching a few YouTubers, that's the same conclusion I reached.

I suppose I could just buy it on Steam and return it if it's not living up to the hype. Thanks all for your thoughts!

To me, Noita is a toy. I'm okay with that. Others certainly may not be.

It's a roguelike toy, like a version of that old falling sand software but with weapons, acid, fire, explosive gasses and the like. The object, of course, is to get to the bottom and defeat the big bad guy. The fun is in the trip.

I've never finished it although I came close once.

The general flow of play is that you get a somewhat predictable set of two wands and a potion, with a little variation (in normal mode, there are other modes). You start in an area of Spelunky-like mines and descend at your own pace, while critters try to kill you (and each other), all of which activity will start to modify the terrain, usually in ways that you won't survive if you are at the epicenter of them lol. You earn money by killing critters, and you spend it buying wands and spells.

You'll find new wands and potions in each level. Between each level, you are in a relatively safe spot, and you can tinker with your wands, buy new wands and/or spells to put in them, and get a special perk (like the ability to cause projectiles to curve away from you, or water-breathing, or the ability to dissolve powders or emit electric pulses every few seconds. Each wand can hold 1-10 or so spells, which are either triggered in order as you fire them, or randomly. Some spells are modifiers to spells that follow. You can rearrange them in the wands in the safe area, but usually not in the mines. How you arrange them dictates how they will perform in the next section.

Spells affect the world in big and small, brute and subtle ways, and can be modified. So some spells will toss acid around in various ways, or fire, or water. Others shoot various projectiles, which could be bouncy, or explosive, or boomerang-y, or even just clouds of stuff that you might not want around you. There are bombs and fireballs and slimeballs and dynamite and table saw blades and chainsaws and laserbeams and... You get the idea. Each one costs mana; each wand has its own mana store, firing speed, repeat delay, firxed order or random selection, charge delay (for when the mana is spent, it must be replenished), projectile speed and spread, and maybe even a permanent spell modifier.

The modifiers, which take spell slots, are things like firing two or three spells at once, but perhaps with more spread, or fire one spell in front and the next behind, or cause a spell to zig-zag or drop down or fire another spell when it hits something, and many many more effects. They are predictable in a wand with fixed order of firing, but not in a random one (and most are random). Also, stacking the same spells in order can increase effects; so can mixing certain spells with each other. And you can get creative, too - I recently found a combo that allowed me fire a blast of wind repeatedly, and every second one had a gunpowder trail. Every time there was even a small flame or lamp in the area, that combo created a freaking flamethrower inferno. Of course I eventually died in a melee when a gust blew a flammable barrel of oil down into all the flame and it detonated next to me...

Each section is harder than the next. With luck, you can build your defense and offense as you go, and play to your strengths. Maybe you are an offensive monster - try to find ways to attack first and obliterate opponents. Or maybe you have 3 immunities (say, shock, fire and melee) so not a lot worries you and you have a wand with a chainsaw laser combo that chews up both terrain and enemies. In that case, you can just drop straight down through the terrain and hopefully incinerate nearby enemies and escape down into the rock again pronto. Until you descend into explosive gas or acid, of course...

The world is completely destructible, in every way. Even phase changes can occur; you can freeze things, or boil them, but the frozen stuff will melt and the steam will condense back into water. Fires burn out over time on grass and after consuming wood, but linger on at a low level in coal piles and veins. Acid can completely dissolve stone and produce poisonous explosive vapors, but of course it's used up in the reaction. Toxic sludge kills you slowly (fire is a bit faster). You can blow holes in things, of course, dissolve them, try to kick them out of the way, whatever.

Oh, and you can *eat* things, like blood and meat. You can mix various potions to create new effects; mix a levitation potion and a haste potion and you get a fast flying potion, that's an easy one. You can then suck them up into an empty container and carry them around and spray them on yourself or others to use.

The fun is in seeing what combos you can put together under pressure, and how far you get with them. Over time, you learn to look for combos you know how to use; that can get you a level or two deeper than usual. But there is always something new to try out. It's a great spectator sport, too.

It's a good stress reducer and always good for a laugh. I love it.

That is a fantastic overview Robear, and sells it so much better than my ‘you can set nearly anything on fire!’ pitch, great job

I just wanted to make clear that it's not an "action platformer with obscure mechanics". There are no stars or mushrooms to collect along the way to completing a level. It's a 2D physics sim with violence and stealth and permadeath in many grotesque and unexpected ways.

Screenshots from this are very similar to what an artistically gifted 6th grade male would doodle over the course of a boring math class.

I finally picked up Hades on Epic for a price I couldn’t ignore (sale + coupon). Really enjoying it. Reminds me of Children of Morta in the way they fit story into and between runs and that both have a ton of character to them.

I have been struggling to really get into Hades but didn't want to say anything because I couldn't figure out why.

I think I understand now. Hades has a RPG progression loop, not necessarily a roguelike progression loop. As you get further into the game, enemies become damage sponges and single floors can feel sluggish - this simply means it's time to grind more upgrades.

The game isn't necessarily gated by skill and game knowledge allowing you to leverage the random upgrades, but by farming and making your numbers go up.

It's not my preferred approach to these games. I enjoy hard resets a lot more than meta progression because simply levelling up to make the game easier across runs cheapens the actual victory to me. But now that I understand what Hades is going for, I think I can enjoy it a lot more. It's a RPG with randomly generated maps.

You're not meant to be able to win from the start...and that's fine. I can enjoy a satisfying grind. Especially when the progression is so well-layered. It's just at odds with my expectations for a roguelike/lite.

"Roguelike with meta progression" = "Roguelite". Hades definitely fits in the Roguelite category, along with Rogue Legacy, Dead Cells, Children of Morta (and many others; I'm just naming the ones I keep installed). As someone who also regularly plays both genres, I can definitely see how they both could feel frustrating. Sometimes I want a pure run, surviving only on my own skill and the luck of what the dungeon provides; but other times I want to delve a dungeon and have some lasting permanence of my success (or failure) at doing so.

I would go further and label them as "action roguelites" to be clear that they're not even turn-based.

I still maintain that the difference between gaining knowledge and gaining XP is mostly* aesthetic. That said, video games are aesthetic experiences so it's not like that's insignificant.

If we want to talk purity of runs and starting from zero, it's a whole lot easier for me to start a fresh Hades save game than it is for me to forget what I know about Nethack.

*"Mostly" is not "entirely." There are significant differences, but the two advancement schemes are more alike than they are different.

we've spent more time in this thread talking about the definition of roguelike than roguelike games. Apparently the next 'final' Binding of Isaac expansion is around the corner. It says Dec 31st but they're known to delay

Vargen wrote:

I still maintain that the difference between gaining knowledge and gaining XP is mostly* aesthetic. That said, video games are aesthetic experiences so it's not like that's insignificant.

If we want to talk purity of runs and starting from zero, it's a whole lot easier for me to start a fresh Hades save game than it is for me to forget what I know about Nethack.

*"Mostly" is not "entirely." There are significant differences, but the two advancement schemes are more alike than they are different.

I think the difference is what makes knowledge-based roguelikes vastly more replayable than XP/meta progression-based ones. And vastly more interesting in the long run, to me.

All I know is, when I want bite-sized fun, Rogue-adjacent games fit the bill.

This is a few weeks late, but Tales of Maj'Eyal (ToME) had a major update/patch.

https://te4.org/blogs/darkgod/2020/1...

In case anyone doesn't know, the base game is free but the (three) expansions are paid.

Fury Unleashed is a combo-driven roguelite action platformer that came out earlier this year and may have flown under your radar.

I picked it up recently and I'm really enjoying it so far. Great graphics, gameplay, and fluid controls. Recommended.

It's 50% off right now on Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/4...
or GOG https://www.gog.com/game/Fury_Unleashed

Finally got around to putting enough time into Golden Krone Hotel to snag a win on Easy. It's a fantastic traditional roguelike on the short and simple side. Would definitely recommend to anyone looking to scratch that itch.

Has anyone played Crown Trick?

I'm trying to fill a void that was left by Dungeons of Dredmor, and something about this makes me think it could come close. Not a big fan of upgrades carrying over through runs, but it seems to have a good level of difficulty and complexity.

Mostly interested on Switch, so not sure if the controls would be any good. Curious to hear thoughts on it.

I own it on Switch, but haven't played it much. Been heavily into other games and simply haven't gotten around to it.

So I've gotten to the end stage of Noita, just not killed the boss. What got me there was combo weapons and immunities. The tactical dodge teleport does not hurt either. Seems like getting your damage up to around 25 a shot is a good thing, and adding in effects like explosions or elemental damage helps a lot too. Basically, the ability to put a lot of damage on target quickly is great. Even the little blue drifty bubbles can do very well if you are firing like 6 or 9 a second and your wand does not run out quickly.

Stealth is important too, as is learning the habits of the different levels. But if all else fails, you can try the teleport-on-damage skill. It might drop you in the sh*t, but it can also power you through levels and get you to the end game quickly.

All in all, a very fun game.

I’ve used the invisibility perk to drop straight to the bottom from the first floor before, but boy oh boy was I unprepared to face the final boss when I did

I used a drill in my last game to drop down 3 levels sequentially. All ready to hit the boss, had a great blunderbuss energy ball weapon, and some kind of amoeba ghost killed me before I could drop in again...

I've been playing Children of Morta over the last week. It's fantastic although I fear the animation and pixel art hurts my eyes a little bit. My only issue with the game is it feels brief for a roguelike. I'm at 21 hours and just reached the final boss. Granted, I tend to have a slightly higher skill level than average at this style game but it feels like there should be another world. There is a 4th area DLC that's supposed to come out sometime later this year.

I've been poking at Rogue Legacy 2 - it's pretty Early Access, but was timely as I dipped back into the first one last summer.

I can't recommend it right now - it's a bit too early, and there's not a lot of content there, BUT it's already clear that I'm going to be heartily recommending it a few months hence. Which is to say that the EA release feels like a "vertical-slice", mechanics are all there, but you only have the first couple of biomes available, and I've mostly exhausted that content.

I've put a handful of hours into it and am pumped for the full release.

Changing tack, I've had my eye on Cogmind for years at this point, but have been waiting for it to get to 1.0 or close before I dive in - can anyone comment on where it's at these days?