Dungeons of Dredmor (high production roguelike) lookin' good

[MisterStone]

Auto saves added.. seems like that should have been a no-brainer, but better a week late than never! Also, steak grilling.

 

[Gragt]

And achievements!

 

[Metro]

A-cheese-mints!

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

FOR GOD'S SAKE NO METRO. Seeing people say cheesemints and cheevos drives me up the wall. Please don't. It hurts.

 

[MonkeyHead]

Notes on My Dude:

Promethean Magic Fireball is a win button even on Going Rogue Permadeath.

Mage characters are tricky to keep alive at the start but by the time you hit dungeon level 3 or 4 you'll start steamrolling and not stop.

Skills were:

Promethean Magic for Fireball and Wyrm Buddy. OP, get it and win

Golemancy for the early Moustache Golem tanking and late game Unliving Wall corridor chokepoint making. The final skill Digging Ray (?) eats through dungeon walls and you can target outside of your LOS, makes traversing areas easier.

Blood Magic : Keeps you fueled on mana, with level 3 blood magic you can come out of a Monster Zoo with more mana than you went in with.

Ley Lines : Extra mana and mana regen, useful but probably not necessary

Magic Training : Not sexy but useful, get it

Mathemagic: First skills is a blink escape. Useful for escaping and for hopping over heavily trapped areas with a bit of luck. As far as I can tell it will not teleport you into a trap. Didn't climb the rest of the tree.

Archaeology : Gives you trap sensing skills, lets you turn artifacts into EXP and lets you re-roll the stats on artifacts you acquire. The last is potentially gamebreaking with enough patience.

Finished Going Rogue / PD in 16 hours final score ~880k.


Notes on the Good:

It's reasonably funny/clever. Expect a lot of nerdy references in items and skills.
Solid fundamental game mechanics, lots of numbers to crunch and abilities to use.
Lots of randomly generated and unique loot as well as involved crafting systems.
Can manipulate the environment with traps, walls, summons, charms etc.
It's got good spritework.
Good music.
Very accessible even without being able to play exclusively with keyboard.


Notes on the Bad:

<Broken, The First> According to the SA forums where the devs and beta testers post enemy skills and spells are not working at all. When I played through all enemies did was try to get into melee range and smack you. Apparently things like ranged attacks and spells were in beta and then mysteriously stopped working in the release version. Smells like a cover up to me.

<Broken, The Second> Expect CTD and Save Corruption, should be fixed in the next couple of weeks the devs seem pretty responsive

Repetitive levels, randomly generated yes but they all end up feeling the same.

Repetitive gameplay if you fireball spam your way through. There are a bunch of quirky skills that could make the game more interesting but if everything just lurches towards you like a zombie and you can just gun them down before they get close you don't need to use anything else. Hopefully fixed when they get varied enemy abilities working again.

In a similar vein all the enemies feel the same, I think there were some minor differences in resistances but it was a case of one fireball or two. I would have liked to see more enemies that made me break out the toolkit more often, elemental or damage type immunity for some enemies would be reasonable. I shouldn't be able to fireball a Lava Golem to death.

All in all it's still worth $5 and you're supporting an indy dev who has clearly but a lot of blood sweat and tears into a labor of love. No, it's not DCSS and if you're looking to die 400 times before you can comfortably reach the middle levels you will be disappointed but it's a fun game with a sense of humor and the devs are quick to respond to feedback so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the negative points are fixed in the coming weeks or months.

 

[Gragt]

Updated my Multi-headed Cow.txt.

 

[mediocrepoet]

The game's easier than I expected, playing on the rogue difficulty with permadeath on, but it's also my first roguelike. I suspect that as far as growing an audience for this sort of game - having graphics rather than ascii art and an easier difficulty curve than veterans of the genre may expect are good qualities to have.

I'm on something like my twelfth character and he's at like level 6, exploring dungeon level 2. He's basically a straight dual wielding fighter with viking magic (the level two root spell is a life saver). I've had a few close calls including breaking up some sort of monster party in a room - fortunately I had two bolts of mass destruction for the occasion.

Definitely worth the asking price - so far I've enjoyed it more than a lot of games that cost ten times as much. I'm not sure that it'll be as fun years down the road like some roguelikes, but I might start looking at others with tilesets or maybe something like ADOM.

 

[7hm]

The game's easier than I expected, playing on the rogue difficulty with permadeath on, but it's also my first roguelike. I suspect that as far as growing an audience for this sort of game - having graphics rather than ascii art and an easier difficulty curve than veterans of the genre may expect are good qualities to have.

I'm on something like my twelfth character and he's at like level 6, exploring dungeon level 2. He's basically a straight dual wielding fighter with viking magic (the level two root spell is a life saver). I've had a few close calls including breaking up some sort of monster party in a room - fortunately I had two bolts of mass destruction for the occasion.

Definitely worth the asking price - so far I've enjoyed it more than a lot of games that cost ten times as much. I'm not sure that it'll be as fun years down the road like some roguelikes, but I might start looking at others with tilesets or maybe something like ADOM.

DCSS's tilemode is fantastic and can be played online through a browser (though keyboard only). Decent tutorials too.

As for Dredmore... I've played a bunch more. It's pretty damn fun. Highly recommend.

 

[mediocrepoet]

DCSS's tilemode is fantastic and can be played online through a browser (though keyboard only). Decent tutorials too.

Thanks for the suggestion. I think I'll check it out once I come back from vacation.

 

[Oriebam]

It's not looking good. Edit that out please, it makes the voices in my brian go loud oh no it's starting again

 

[Metro]

FOR GOD'S SAKE NO METRO. Seeing people say cheesemints and cheevos drives me up the wall. Please don't. It hurts.

Cheevies?

 

[Eyeball]

Well, fireball has been nerfed hard in the latest patch and crossbow bolt recovery rate has gotten a sorely needed boost. The patch also broke my six hour savegame.

It's alright, I got an achievement for trying to load a broken savegame. Finally, a game dev who uses the extremely faggy achievement system sensibly - to mock their customers!

Not a big deal, game's fun enough to replay from the start. Now trying a necromancer/fleshcrafter and enjoying constantly killing myself through careless application of unholy magics.

 

[CappenVarra]

It's alright, I got an achievement for trying to load a broken savegame. Finally, a game dev who uses the extremely faggy achievement system sensibly - to mock their customers!

definite incline of achievements

 

[Gragt]

Seems you get it by having the game crash.

Suddenly The Dungeon Collapses
This achievement is our way of saying "thank you for participating in our voluntary quality assurance program."

 

[Licaon_Kter]

The game's easier than I expected, playing on the rogue difficulty with permadeath on, but it's also my first roguelike. I suspect I'm not sure that it'll be as fun years down the road like some roguelikes, but I might start looking at others with tilesets or maybe something like ADOM.

You did not finish ADOM 3 times already? damn, Sir your magazine subscription should be made void

 

[Daemongar]

As much as I liked ADOM and Roguelikes, they were very niche, with most of the payout coming at higher levels as your understanding of the game grows. You just can't sell something like that, and I think this developer understands that.

 

[7hm]

As much as I liked ADOM and Roguelikes, they were very niche, with most of the payout coming at higher levels as your understanding of the game grows. You just can't sell something like that, and I think this developer understands that.

Shiren was a pretty big commercial success in Japan.

 

[Daemongar]

As much as I liked ADOM and Roguelikes, they were very niche, with most of the payout coming at higher levels as your understanding of the game grows. You just can't sell something like that, and I think this developer understands that.

Shiren was a pretty big commercial success in Japan.

But Roguelikes have been around since the game they were based on, Diablo 1, and they still haven't caught on. They have yet to really catch on except with the poverty stricken college student crowd. The difficulty in mastering and beating them with permadeath is a badge of honor few have. Not many are willing to put up with the graphics, bad humor and keyboard layout designed in the 80's for dumb terminals.

I can't really judge a Japanese games, as their tastes are way off of America tastes. I assume the Japanese version has schoolgirls with giant knockers and even bigger cocks, so that's probably why people bought it.

 

[Gragt]

But Roguelikes have been around since the game they were based on, Diablo 1, and they still haven't caught on.

Isn't it the other way around, i.e., Diablo was based on roguelikes?

 

[TripJack]

wheres the torrent, just kidding i'm not going to waste time on this shit there's still plenty of real roguelikes i haven't played yet

don't know how they managed it but the graphics in this game are actually worse than ascii

 

[mediocrepoet]

The game's easier than I expected, playing on the rogue difficulty with permadeath on, but it's also my first roguelike. I suspect I'm not sure that it'll be as fun years down the road like some roguelikes, but I might start looking at others with tilesets or maybe something like ADOM.

You did not finish ADOM 3 times already? damn, Sir your magazine subscription should be made void

I meant I've finished it 7 times and loved it so much I started a wiki on the game. My taste is so refined I intuit what is crap and what great without ever playing it, watching videos or consulting the opinions of others just like the rest of our esteemed brethren.

Either way, roguelikes have always been a bit alien to me. It's only in the past few years that I started to really register that they're still being produced and worked on and that there's an interesting gameplay depth obscured by their austere presentation. Between that and trying to muddle out what could possibly be going on in ascii screenshots of various games - they really don't seem very inviting at first, even to someone like me who's been playing various other types of RPGs since the early 80s.

 

[non]

But Roguelikes have been around since the game they were based on, Diablo 1, ...

Haha what?

 

[TripJack]

lolol roguelikes more like diablolikes amirite

 

[7hm]

As much as I liked ADOM and Roguelikes, they were very niche, with most of the payout coming at higher levels as your understanding of the game grows. You just can't sell something like that, and I think this developer understands that.

Shiren was a pretty big commercial success in Japan.

I can't really judge a Japanese games, as their tastes are way off of America tastes. I assume the Japanese version has schoolgirls with giant knockers and even bigger cocks, so that's probably why people bought it.

The rest of your post is but as for this... Shiren is a really, really good roguelike. A good food subgame, difficult and interesting monsters, and real permadeath (though an involved meta game that does make it easier).

John Harris has some really good articles about it in his @play column.

 

[reaven]

I kinda regret buying this. Almost every free roguelike Ive played has been better (That covers pretty much all of them).