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bebopedI'll say right off the bat that this game is awesome, and if you don't download and love it I'll think less of you as a person. But I digress. Ahem, every nerd's gotta grow up someday. In time superhero comics transmute to Alan Moore graphic novels, and after a while DBZ VHSs metamorph into Evangelion DVDs. Today I'm going to ask you to take the next leap, the next step in your nerd evolution: play a Rogue-like. It sounds daunting, I know, I've been there. I tried playing Nethack when I was a lad of 15 and I just got baffled. There weren't any graphics to speak of, I died roughly every minute, and there were ten different ways to drop your items. Shit got confusing. I felt there was something amazing lurking underneath though, so ever since Derek Yu popped my procedurally-generated cherry with his little cave game I've been wanting a Rogue-like fix. DoomRL admirably fills this role, and is a perfect introduction to the genre. Instead of twiddling your thumbs and waiting to pay your Activision-Blizzard overlords for a re-skinned Diablo II, play this thing.
The developer brands DoomRL as a "coffee-break Rogue-like" and that sums it up fairly well. Think of this as the Nirvana of Rogue-likes -- simplified but polished as hell. Which is fitting, because that's exactly where the game takes place. Seminal FPS Doom is the inspiration for this work, and DoomRL follows suit with its streamlined design. The controls and verb set take a while to get a hold of but are manageable; just keep the readme available as reference for your first few playthroughs. Deciphering the ASCII graphics is like reading the Matrix, but instead of 'blonde, brunette, redhead' you'll see armor, shotgun, and Mancubus. The sound effects are straight from Doom, but the MIDI music wears thin after a while. If you listen to anything of the metal persuasion I'd advise it -- personally I dig the drone-doom band Earth. Beethoven would work in a pinch, though.
Once you get past the initial learning curve you're in for a literal blast. At your disposal is a varied skill tree that can turn you into Chow Yun-Fat or 'Boomstick' Bruce Campbell, provided you spend points in the right slots. Combat is quick and satisfying; you have the same primal joy of blasting demons that you get from the original title. The game plays out as a dance of resources; you juggle your needs for ammo, health, and upgrades as you shoot your way to each level's exit. The randomization keeps every playthrough fresh and warrants a surprise or two every time you step into Hell. It's hard, so if you want to make it past the second level (on Normal difficulty) you better learn how to side-step and run when the need arises. The permadeath may be a shock to those weaned on countless save spots and corpse-looting but it really adds to the experience. You have the threat of final, game-ending Death looming over each playthrough, so it makes each minor victory and found item all the more rewarding. The tension of being low on health and being hunted by a pack of Revenants is something you definitely won't see in Diablo III.
There is a great deal of polish to all of this, and it really is a fun time. After having dropped a couple dozen hours into this I just might fire up Nethack or ADOM. That is, if I can pull myself away from this game.
stone soup
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is the definitive roguelike these days, in my view. It comes in a nice graphical tile version too.
http://crawl-ref.sourceforge.net/
"and after a while DBZ VHSs
"and after a while DBZ VHSs metamorph into Evangelion DVDs"
You got my number.
Of course, there´s the retro pixelated look and then there´s the super-hardcore ASCII look, which pre-dates my generation by a slim margin. I don´t see why every RL dev doesn´t throw a set of luscious tiles on to make their game more playable, but maybe I just don´t get it, awashed in my own biases as I am.
It was never really the visuals that put me off on old-school rogue-likes, its the interface. Aesthetic is one thing, but context sensitivity is really a step forward for interaction, this pretty much ruined Dwarf Fortress for me.
I´ll give this one a try though.
Rogue
Rogue originated not even on CRT terminals, but on teletype machines, and the "refresh" command is for when you lose track of where you are from the last print-out, and you want the keys to hammer the paper again to update your knowledge of your current position.
It's pure ASCII, because that's all the teletype machine (and later the CRT terminal) could do, updated with color when CGA came in.
The sometimes obtuse interface is, of course, because you have a full keyboard, but no mouse or any conception of menus and windowing.
None of that pertains any longer, of course, but on the other hand, there's no problem getting a Roguelike to run on your machine. And it's not at all clear that expensive, hand-crafted 3D models and animations provide a better gameplay experience -- indeed, they basically just slow things down.
"The tension of being low on
"The tension of being low on health and being hunted by a pack of Revenants is something you definitely won't see in Diablo III."
Heh, so true!
Though I will say if you take spelunky's model, where you sometimes met a tunnel guy and he would let you put a downpayment on a level skipping tunnel, this counteracts the opposite side. That being when you are not being hunted by a pack of revenants but you just blunder a bit in a fairly uninteresting way and die.
It reduces the excitment alot when you relise all progress can be lost not just to awesome exciting scenarios, but also to a pretty mundane blunder. So you can waste alot of time because of something fairly boring. Not that a play to win game can't be that way. But I think play to win games should 'coach' more than that, since...well, I think they are about teaching skills.
Philosopher Gamer Blog
I guess that stepping on an
I guess that stepping on an altar in ADOM and being sacrificed by an enemy counts as a blunder...
Still, I don't think I'd remember the stupidity of that move if I had been able to just reload a game. Spelunky's level-skipping model is indeed a good midway between a 'pure' non-save Roguelike and a 'just quicksave-all-the-time' type of game.
Excellent indeed
I surely smiled upon seeing an update for this game again after such a long time. Hopefully development stays brisk and effective for awhile again.
By the by though, you should give Triangle Wizard a whirl again as there have been a tremendous amount of meaty updates and improvements since it first appeared on here so very long ago. The vector/ASCII stylings should also be of great help to deal with versus pure ASCII.
Sorry, but this isn't a good place for noobs to start with RLs.
We live in a world where for some bizarre reason pokemon and roguelike can and should be mentioned in the same breath.
In fact thanks mostly to chunsoft the NDS has more roguelike games than I thought I would ever see on a console. Well, not in english translations anyway.
Personally my favourite RL is Shiren, it's as polished, simplified and mainstream as you can take a RL whilst still remaining true to the genre. The other chunsoft and atlas titles just feel too dumbed down to me. Although it's hard not to consider them all successes when you think that thanks to pokemon there must now be countless 5 year old kids that know how to play roguelike games.
Seriously, go play Shiren now, hit up the original snes version even, it is a thing of great design beauty from the main game play itself to the wonderful training puzzles.
RE: All
Patrick:
The interface really is the limiting factor for newcomers, but with DSi and iPhone a context-sensitive touch screen interface seems like a no-brainer. This coupled with a save feature at the end of each level would make a nice portable experience. I searched the App Store and found iNethack, and once I get that game down I'll see how the interface holds up.
Callan:
I'm tempted to write up an in-depth analysis of Spelunky some weekend (I mention it pretty much daily anywho), but here's my short answer: The death is your 'coach'. When you die you learn something new about the world or get reminded of something you should already know. Those blunders are totally all you. =p
XIX: Those Shiren knock-offs are terrible though. I'll give Shiren a shot though, and see how it holds up. And that goes for the other recommended RL's too.
Does anybody know of any horror-tinged Rouge-likes? With the permadeath and scavenger motif it seems like it would work well.
horror roguelike
Zomband is your premiere horror roguelike:
http://zooptek.net/drupal/index.php?q=node/15
There is also a good-looking SF roguelike called Prospector in development:
http://code.google.com/p/rlprospector/
To XIX: Yeah, shiren is
To XIX: Yeah, shiren is good! And much like how I mentioned spelunky's level tunnel system, shiren has a warehouse system where you can store stuff that stays there, even if you die.
Which might sound like it makes things easier, but on my final big try, at the warehouse picking the items, it was like those moments in a movie where the hero goes to his armory, picking out his weapons of war. Hell, that gear mattered more to me than any I found in WOW (though I never raided, so maybe I dunno)
To Dustin: I think at some point you have to decide if a game is too hard for you. Each death at something mundane is a point scored for 'Too hard', since it's not even that big a deal and yet it beats you. Now if the author wanted the difficulty that high (or atleast to appear that high, even if in his opinion it isn't), fair enough, then he's right on target with design. If he didn't want it to even appear to be that difficult, his design is off, because repeated deaths and restart to mundane crap give the impression of higher difficulty, even if it's not warranted.
Philosopher Gamer Blog
kinda horror Roguelike
Legerdemain...though it might count as surreal moreso.
http://roguelikefiction.com/
more horror roguelikes
a "plaguelike": http://plague-like.blogspot.com/
a spanish offering: http://tinyurl.com/y8q6s6v