Development Info Caverns of Xaskazien II rises up to 1.02.87

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Caverns of Xaskazien II; Jeff Sinasac

Caverns of Xaskazien II has been updated to 1.02.87 if you're looking for a new rogue-like to play. Some of the features of this one are all NPCs can get murdered by mobs, gobs of traps to kill you, lots of loot and spells, it's graphical, 38 classes, 13 races, and so much more. The update per this threadhttps://forums.roguetemple.com/index.php?topic=6508.0 has some of the following changes:

MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS:

• Reinstated Classes: Warrior, Purifier.
• New Perks: Battle Cry, Precision Strike, Look for an Opening, Frenzy, Tank, Duck Blow, Hands on Learner, Sense Impurities, Am What I Am, The Best Cleanser, Decontaminate, Exotic Blood, Protective Coating, Reverse Mutation.
• New findable map types: Water Stained Map, Tattered Map.
• Changed old Gnomish Explosives to Goblin Explosives.
• New Mundane Items: Gnomish Explosives, Bread, Gingerbread, Gnomish Tickets, Jewelweed, Flax Seed, Echinacea, Primrose, Gingko, Wolfsbane, Blood Lacquer.
• New Spell: Freeze Water.

While this game is free, the author also did Stop the Saturnians on Steam.

For those looking to see what the game is like, here's a mostly current Let's Play from RogueLove:

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You know, it's almost like roguelikes are proof that features are inversely proportional to graphics. Roguelikes throw a gazillion features at you and you have to imagine what a lot of things look like. With a lot of the AAA games with the fancy 3D graphics, you have to imagine there's more to them.​

 

[rusty_shackleford]

In conjunction with its predecessor, Caverns of Xaskazien II has been in development since 1995

No idea how I missed this. Thanks, SP.

 

[Arthandas]

- A rich, graphical game, with loads of animation and dynamic, coloured per pixel lighting.

W

- An exclusive orchestral soundtrack created for the game by professional film scorer, Dave Coleman.

T

- A full sound environment with close to 1000 unique sound effects, volume keyed to the source’s distance from your character.

F

 

[thesheeep]

- A rich, graphical game, with loads of animation and dynamic, coloured per pixel lighting.

W

- An exclusive orchestral soundtrack created for the game by professional film scorer, Dave Coleman.

T

- A full sound environment with close to 1000 unique sound effects, volume keyed to the source’s distance from your character.

F

27 years of on-and-off development invested in all the right places

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Apparently the dev is also an actor?
This all seems very strange.

 

[covr]

Version 1.02.87? Nah, I will wait for final enhanced edition before trying this.

 

[Arthandas]

The UI looks like vomit and those rapidly blinking eyes in the darkness make my head hurt, I can't even look at this fucking game

 

[Sin2x]

Looks pretty nice if a bit messy. I highly recommend Zorbus if you are into that kinda stuff (much less messy too): http://www.zorbus.net/

 

[Nazrim Eldrak]

Reminds me a bit of "Tales of Maj'Eyal".

 

[Late Bloomer]

I dunno... it looks cozy to me. I rather like the presentation. Not quite sure how I missed this. It's free. I'll take it for a spin.

 

[luj1]

it's almost like roguelikes are proof that features are inversely proportional to graphics.

any RPG is proof that gameplay is proportional to graphics

 

[negator2vc]

Look nice but quite messy.
As other people already said Zorbus is an example of similar ideas and visual style but far less messy.

 

[CryptRat]

This game is my favourite roguelike (I even made an LP of it).

The other games mentioned in the thread (Zorbus, ToME) play a lot like each other when confronted with Caverns of Xaskazien II, in this context Caverns of Xaskazien II is very not traditional. Combat is less of a focus and doesn't work the same, there's not the same kind of positioning since you can't damage enemies from a distance, not saying that last point is notably a good thing but combat is good for other reasons and it is not the main reason why you would play this game rather than another roguelike.

The game is a collection of everything I want to see in a game based on permadeath. It's the ultimate PnP-simulation based on this premise (permadeath).

All skills especially are extremely well thought in a vacuum, the character system is by far the best I've ever seen in such a game, with plenty of things (warriors create random pieces of equipment when entering a new level, some perks give more chance to get an entrance to a type of extra level you want to see ...) which would not work in a traditional RPG but are pretty great in a roguelike. Note that with the addition of perks, which were not there 5 years ago, classes are now all very unique. Perk aside the character system is very open (but not retarded open, the cost of magic skills is prohibitive to warriors etc.) and provides a lot of options.

Exploration is fantastic, there are tons of traps and other magic pools which acknowledges your stat, skill (mining, history ...), affinity with the different gods (including your own which grants powerful miracles) ..., your character sheet will change a lot of what you're gonna do, there are tons of non-combat skills unlocking alternative ways to gain XPs, open different containers and safely reach different places (although probably not to the point where you could do a pacifist run except as some very high level challenge). With rogue-type classes especially you'll generally spend most of your skill points on non-combat skills. You spend your time making choices with headache inducing benefit/risk and resource management, many of those not simply being about choosing a way to smash or avoid monsters.

Reaching a handcrafted level is something, they are really well made (in between there are thematic, random ones like mines, and mundane levels often don't feel particularly samey for many reasons, the two most obvious ones being the insane amount of content at this point and that the generation is very far from just throwing a random mess), many spells are game changing, granted you find them (some classes start with game changing spells), plenty of items are too, itemization is overall excellent.

The game is fair and winnable, you can't get pissed-off by instant death and invisible traps when skills interacting with them exist, you accept the risk.

Truly a masterpiece in my book.

 

[jebsmoker]

posting here so that i can watch the thread for easy access. this looks great