Dungeons of Dredmor

To me, Permadeath can be a really interesting game design choice if you build more into the 'player progress, not character progress' concept. Kill the character but keep adding to something for the player. In most roguelikes, that's player knowledge and some consistency from game to game. For example, dying in Nethack can (but does not always) save the level you died on and put you in it as a vengeful ghost. You can defeat your prior self and regain some of your lost stuff, but now you have to deal with the taint of death on all of it, so you have to deal with all of the newly attached curses.

This is just about ideal to me. I think there's room for other designs, like some kind of legacy that lets you put very small bonuses like passive buff affects on your next character based on the progress of the one before.

I keep clicking on Steam waiting for Dredmore to show up.

No one wants a deathly taint.

Why isn't this up yet? If it doesn't hurry I might end up being productive today.

You guys should know from the Steam sales when Steam updates. Sheesh.

[size=0]1 PM ET[/size]

No sign of it on Steam. Do want! Update now!

[quote=garion333]

mooosicle wrote:

Permadeath makes things more tense and interesting. "Modern" roguelikes (read: console) tend to use a death mechanic that isn't quite as harsh as your standard pc text based roguelike. They add in things like storage where you can keep weapons and armor so when you die and lose all your experience/gold/etc. you can use them to give you a leg up.

I don't know where this game stands.

Edit: But Farscry does.

By the way, an important note is that permadeath is an option in Dredmor, unless I'm remembering wrong. Or maybe it was something to do with the saving. Eh, I just remember something that was an option to enable you to "get around" the permadeath if you don't like it. Me, I think it adds too much to the gameplay to give up the permadeath hanging over your head all the time.

Edit: And yeah, I've been waiting weeks for this to finally officially release, it's a lot of fun and I can't wait to play more again!

Hey, there's even a 10% discount (FIFTY CENTS, MFERS!)

I've bought a copy. Will play later tonight!

Woohoo, I got in a whole 5 minutes before I had to get back to work. Totally worth a dollar a minute.

Hmm, I must've screwed up. I'm stuck in the tutorial after you get the potion and nothing is happening. I think I was supposed to put it in my backpack rather than just chugging it. Story of my life.

I'm personally fond of one of the Archaeology skills: "It belongs in a museum!"

necronomiconomics

**

Steve the Footman
"He choked like a disease"

Killed by a Lil Batty on Level 1

**

Yup, it's a roguelike alright

In-depth preview here for those undecided.

Puce Moose wrote:

In-depth preview here for those undecided.

That would be me, thanks.

Also, subscribing.

Damn it, these "paper-cuts" will be the death of my bank account. I must check this game out.

Ack - ok, first black mark against the game - it crashed on me and shut down when I entered a shop, and since the game only saves when you quit...back to the start again for me

Other than that though, loving it.

Hypatian wrote:

The kind of humor employed makes me a bit leery. (It's a bit *too* self-satisfied.) But, well, it *is* a roguelike. I look forward to hearing more about it.

Any thoughts on this? From what I've read, it seems to try a little too hard to be "quirky".

Crashed on me in the second tutorial. Bah.

I'm having a good time with it so far. It looks like there are a ton of different traps to make, which makes me happy; setting traps is one of my favorite things to do in games. There's also a wide variety of cheeses and mushrooms, which also gets a thumbs-up.

Humor-wise, it's been a bit like a less-funny Kingdom of Loathing for me. It's not bad, it's not great, but there have been several smile-inducing descriptions. I think this is pretty indicative of the humor type & 'level' from what I've seen so far, so if this mildly amuses you you'll probably be (at least) mildly amused by most of it.

IMAGE(http://www.pucemoose.com/pics/fisk.jpg)

25 minute impressions? It's tough. First run I kicked open a door and there were 15 monsters in the next room. Oops.

Second run, I stepped on a trap in the 2nd room. Dead.

It's a roguelike! Woohoo!

I've definitely spent $4.50 on much lesser things and considered them a good buy.

"Congratulations! You have died!"

This game needs a boss button, showing a Lotus Notes, or Word Perfect document so my co-workers don't know I'm goofing off

yay this caused a smile!

IMAGE(http://www.pucemoose.com/pics/LevelUp.jpg)

I just bought the farm on a mostly cleared-out Level Two; watch out for those acid traps, they mean business.
Also, you may want to back up your saves before the first patch hits; apparently there's a save corruption issue affecting quite a few people. The devs have apparently found the error and will patch it in the errr, first patch.

I've enjoyed the variety of items so far. It's great to get descriptions besides just utilitarian summaries of function. Hooray for flavor! I've also been happy to find various texty-posters around the dungeon with various statements. It's one step closer to a story-and-character-rich rogue-like, which is something I've always wanted.
+ FIRE BOLTS! It is a wonderful thing to shoot something, set it on fire, then beat a hasty retreat as it burns to death in its merciless advance.

A few things I haven't been too keen on:
- Font and icon size: Holy crapola those are some small icons! I'd love to see an option for a visually double-sized inventory, as well as an increase in font size. I found the fonts in the font folder; I wonder if a TTF editor could be employed to effect such a change? I've never messed around with font editing.
- Necromancy branch: No raising skeletons/zombies? No legion of undead followers? Arrgh! If the skill descriptions are to believed, it's mainly a series of horrible curses that hurt the player as well. I suspect this is skill trees that will be praised by the hardest of the hardcore and ignored by everyone else. Maybe a bit more time with it will reveal something rottenly wonderful.

Puce Moose wrote:

Also, you may want to back up your saves before the first patch hits; apparently there's a save corruption issue affecting quite a few people. The devs have apparently found the error and will patch it in the errr, first patch.

given I can't load my save game without the game closing, I think you may be right. How annoying.
Oh well, I'll just mess around with it until it gets patched.

***

oh, and watch out for those chests of evil - they 'aint messing around.

I am enjoying this immensely!

It was sad when I put a steel sword on an anvil of Krong and he was unhappy - afterwards it said something like "this sword is made of sadness and disappointment"

MikeSands wrote:

I am enjoying this immensely!

It was sad when I put a steel sword on an anvil of Krong and he was unhappy - afterwards it said something like "this sword is made of sadness and disappointment"

Krong is a fickle bastard. He blessed my steel chestpiece, and cursed it a couple of minutes later. WHAT DID I DO, KRONG? WHAT DID I DO?!

Really enjoyed the 90 minutes or so I played last night. I've almost completely cleared lvl1. Most of the time has been spent dragging items to the shopkeepers to sell. Damn my packrat tendencies!

Some UI annoyances -
1) smaaaaaalll icons
2) no toggle / hotkey combo click for "put item in open inventory slot" or "put item in open quickslot" ?
3) I'd like Escape to close all open menu / interface screens.

Hehe got the game and played about 90mins of the game:

Pros:
1) It is a rouge-like BUT thank god they have a non-permadeath option + save options. So now this rouge-like can be played as an dungeon crawling RPG.
2) This is what I wanted Deathspank to have been been. Humor, tons and tons and tons of items. Great ways to kill and be killed.

Cons:
- It did crash on me several times on Level one. So save often.

I took wands and ... unsure about them. I started off with 3 wands which ... as fas as I can tell did absolutely nothing! Then found one which literally causes a column of stone to crush anything on the square you pick. So still 50/50 on them.

Overall having a ball exploring. I love this game so far. And so many skills to explore! I took mostly mage skills and "Aeromancy" or whatever its called, has a Breath of Fire spell that is my main attack. LOVE it.

My first game i started was in that initial room with locked doors on ever side and no lockpicks... ho hum. A restart was way better but still...