The Codex of Roguelikes

[buffalo bill]

I have a friend who is completely blind (does not have eyeballs) and who wants to try to play RPGs somehow. I was thinking that traditional roguelikes could be good for them, given the unimportance of visuals etc. Anyone know if there are any good roguelikes that have strong support for visually impaired people? A quick google shows that DCSS seems to have a version for the blind, but I'd rather recommend something that is better (by my standards).

 

[Covenant]

Apparently Brogue-SPEAK is a thing. As far as roguelikes go, Brogue isn't a bad one by any means.

 

[PapaPetro]

I have a friend who is completely blind (does not have eyeballs) and who wants to try to play RPGs somehow. I was thinking that traditional roguelikes could be good for them, given the unimportance of visuals etc. Anyone know if there are any good roguelikes that have strong support for visually impaired people? A quick google shows that DCSS seems to have a version for the blind, but I'd rather recommend something that is better (by my standards).

This might be up their ally; it's a gamed called Entombed specifically for the blind/visually impaired.
http://www.blind-games.com/entombed.aspx

Here's an LP (audio only) where the player goes over the game and where to get it at the start of the vid:


I think it's a pretty cool idea if they could make more games just using sound only.
Like it would be awesome to just be able to play more roguelikes and other games with my eyes closed; even where you can figure out location based on audio cues.
I can imagine having fun in a sound-only multiplayer game; listening out for other players in audio hide & seek while I move around blind with my keyboard & mouse (maybe even ping the other players like calling out "Marco Polo"/sonar).

 

[Cryomancer]

Guys, I downloaded the Vulture for nethack and slash'em on steam. But the problem is, I create a char, play with him and ... The game doesn't load. Any way to fix it? The SDL version which I installed in Debian repository doesn't have the same problem.

edit : nevermind. Found the problem. Just permission.

 

[PapaPetro]

Any good ice mage guide? I'm dying a lot in this game.

And also played a bit with necromancer.

Don't know how you've been progressing but Ice Elementalist is a tough start these days; don't see it getting a lot of play watching live runs on Online Crawl.
Those early ice magic spells are good for crowd control (stopping/slowing mobs) but not great for damage so early game is rough unless you're sprinting down the dungeon.
Like most magic caster starts, you're gonna want to find & follow Sif Muna (or find the Ecumenical Temple which pretty much guaranteed to have her altar (use Shift-G to autotravel to a specific dungeon branch/level once discovered)) since she gifts you free spellbooks and you're gonna be spell starved early (...and what you get makes/breaks most runs).
Mid-game once you've gotten your spells setup, switch out Sif for another god like Vehumet who'll gift you MP for your kills; meanwhile build up your gear and cover your defensive holes with ego & randart gear along with consumables like teleport scrolls to prepare you for all the possible BS that can get thrown at you in End-game (like Torment and Rot).

Alternatively you could play as as an Djinni Ice Elementalist which is pretty fun; you cast spells from HP instead of MP and learn new spells randomly as you level your spellcasting skill, but you can't learn spells from books like a regular caster. I'd recommend trying it out, it's a

playstyle but your runs are more at the mercy of RNG depending on what spells you randomly get (then again, same with finding books).

I'd like to see what you can do with a high level ice mage Cryomancer; while a lot of low level enemies/undead are resistant to ice magic early on, a lot of end game demons et al are surprisingly not that resistant to it (excl. Cocytus). So make Hell freeze over and tell us how you did it

 

[Gamezor]

I have a friend who is completely blind (does not have eyeballs) and who wants to try to play RPGs somehow. I was thinking that traditional roguelikes could be good for them, given the unimportance of visuals etc. Anyone know if there are any good roguelikes that have strong support for visually impaired people? A quick google shows that DCSS seems to have a version for the blind, but I'd rather recommend something that is better (by my standards).

Some MUDS have pretty good screen reader support, like I believe Alter Aeon does. This reddit threat also has some good recommendations. https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/105rg7k/what_are_your_favourite_textbased_games/

I'm not blind but was looking for stuff to use my imagination more.

 

[Matador]

Any good ice mage guide? I'm dying a lot in this game.

And also played a bit with necromancer.

Don't know how you've been progressing but Ice Elementalist is a tough start these days; don't see it getting a lot of play watching live runs on Online Crawl.
Those early ice magic spells are good for crowd control (stopping/slowing mobs) but not great for damage so early game is rough unless you're sprinting down the dungeon.
Like most magic caster starts, you're gonna want to find & follow Sif Muna (or find the Ecumenical Temple which pretty much guaranteed to have her altar (use Shift-G to autotravel to a specific dungeon branch/level once discovered)) since she gifts you free spellbooks and you're gonna be spell starved early (...and what you get makes/breaks most runs).
Mid-game once you've gotten your spells setup, switch out Sif for another god like Vehumet who'll gift you MP for your kills; meanwhile build up your gear and cover your defensive holes with ego & randart gear along with consumables like teleport scrolls to prepare you for all the possible BS that can get thrown at you in End-game (like Torment and Rot).

Alternatively you could play as as an Djinni Ice Elementalist which is pretty fun; you cast spells from HP instead of MP and learn new spells randomly as you level your spellcasting skill, but you can't learn spells from books like a regular caster. I'd recommend trying it out, it's a

playstyle but your runs are more at the mercy of RNG depending on what spells you randomly get (then again, same with finding books).

I'd like to see what you can do with a high level ice mage Cryomancer; while a lot of low level enemies/undead are resistant to ice magic early on, a lot of end game demons et al are surprisingly not that resistant to it (excl. Cocytus). So make Hell freeze over and tell us how you did it

I would not advice a beginner to change gods. I beaten DCSS more than 10 times over several patches in the past (including Nagas, and being a Wu Jian Bro) and I would not do it myself.

The best advice I would give is to have a backup damage source for ice. In general any element will have monsters with resistances that will create nasty situations when combined with other enemies. Undeads are resistant to Ice in general.

Maybe he can make his character a bit hybrid with physical damage or explore spells from other elements, that could depend on what items he find in the dungeon early.

Being a one trick pony can work nice for a while in DCSS (stealth build, poison projectiles,etc), but eventually you need more tactical flexibility for the diverse bullshit thrown at you.

 

[PapaPetro]

Any good ice mage guide? I'm dying a lot in this game.

And also played a bit with necromancer.

Don't know how you've been progressing but Ice Elementalist is a tough start these days; don't see it getting a lot of play watching live runs on Online Crawl.
Those early ice magic spells are good for crowd control (stopping/slowing mobs) but not great for damage so early game is rough unless you're sprinting down the dungeon.
Like most magic caster starts, you're gonna want to find & follow Sif Muna (or find the Ecumenical Temple which pretty much guaranteed to have her altar (use Shift-G to autotravel to a specific dungeon branch/level once discovered)) since she gifts you free spellbooks and you're gonna be spell starved early (...and what you get makes/breaks most runs).
Mid-game once you've gotten your spells setup, switch out Sif for another god like Vehumet who'll gift you MP for your kills; meanwhile build up your gear and cover your defensive holes with ego & randart gear along with consumables like teleport scrolls to prepare you for all the possible BS that can get thrown at you in End-game (like Torment and Rot).

Alternatively you could play as as an Djinni Ice Elementalist which is pretty fun; you cast spells from HP instead of MP and learn new spells randomly as you level your spellcasting skill, but you can't learn spells from books like a regular caster. I'd recommend trying it out, it's a

playstyle but your runs are more at the mercy of RNG depending on what spells you randomly get (then again, same with finding books).

I'd like to see what you can do with a high level ice mage Cryomancer; while a lot of low level enemies/undead are resistant to ice magic early on, a lot of end game demons et al are surprisingly not that resistant to it (excl. Cocytus). So make Hell freeze over and tell us how you did it

I would not advice a beginner to change gods. I beaten DCSS more than 10 times over several patches in the past (including Nagas, and being a Wu Jian Bro) and I would not do it myself.

The best advice I would give is to have a backup damage source for ice. In general any element will have monsters with resistances that will create nasty situations when combined with other enemies. Undeads are resistant to Ice in general.

Maybe he can make his character a bit hybrid with physical damage or explore spells from other elements, that could depend on what items he find in the dungeon early.

Being a one trick pony can work nice for a while in DCSS (stealth build, poison projectiles,etc), but eventually you need more tactical flexibility for the diverse bullshit thrown at you.

Necromancy might synergize well with cryomancy.
Works for liches.
Lot of undead races to start too.

 

[xuerebx]

I'm having LOADS of fun with Desktop Dungeons (the original, not Rewind version). I didn't think it would be this addictive!

I'm not even sure it's a roguelike but it shares many similarities with the genre. Instead of controlling just the PC you run a kingdom, and you select a character (race + profession) before each run and if you die you start over. Combat damage is not down to a dice roll, you know how much damage you'll deal and how much damage you'll get each turn you initiate combat, so you need to strategise who to attack first, whether to use magic/skills etc. It becomes a puzzle of sorts.

I think €14 is a bit steep though (I think I got it for free when Rewind released).

 

[Dadd]

What will it take to get Kevin to fire ERK

 

[xuerebx]

Have no idea if it's good or not - but it's entirely free:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2373630/Moonring/

 

[Hobo Elf]

A free game by the co-creator of the XBox's Fable series.

Can't believe I'm saying this, but.. This is a game that clearly could've been sold for real money. But, hey, I'm not gonna argue against free games, especially if they are good. And this one is not bad so far.

 

[Covenant]

I gave it a quick go - seems very promising, but it needs time to iron out bugs and other issues. Going to be interesting to watch it as it gets more polished, and it already looks to set to beat out plenty of non-free competitors.

 

[index.php]

Brogue: Community Edition 1.13

Adventurers,
An update for Brogue CE is now available!
Download for Windows, Mac, and Linux
Thanks to great work by flend and zenzombie, we now have support for multiple game variants in CE, and have added Rapid Brogue! Select it in Play > Change Variant in the main menu.
Thanks to other contributors andkem, brturn, nathanf, nstoddard, and omar-polo.

• Rapid Brogue is now part of Brogue CE!
• Re-designed the main menu.
• Lumenstones are worth 500 gold on death, instead of 0.
• The rapier lunge attack works against invisible enemies when you are telepathic.
• Levers are now indestructible via shattering and tunneling, which would leave some vaults impossible to open.
• Autoexplore no longer walks through dangerous gases when wearing unidentified respiration armor.
• Items falling from the previous level will now trigger any traps they land on.
• Items and monsters falling from the previous level will no longer fall into reward rooms.
• Fixed an issue where unidentified rings could have higher bonuses than they would have once identified.
• Fixed an issue where unidentified positive rings would be 1 enchant lower than they should.
• Update rapier description to use 'triple damage' instead of 'treble damage'.
• Added a -vn command-line option to play a replay headlessly.
• Fix the default enchantment value being ignored in wizard mode.
• Fixed the dungeon version number in the seed catalog.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Have no idea if it's good or not - but it's entirely free:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2373630/Moonring/

Looks real good for free, as the old Joni Mitchell song goes. I added it to my library.

 

[std::namespace]

Brogue: Community Edition 1.13

Adventurers,
An update for Brogue CE is now available!
Download for Windows, Mac, and Linux
Thanks to great work by flend and zenzombie, we now have support for multiple game variants in CE, and have added Rapid Brogue! Select it in Play > Change Variant in the main menu.
Thanks to other contributors andkem, brturn, nathanf, nstoddard, and omar-polo.

• Rapid Brogue is now part of Brogue CE!
• Re-designed the main menu.
• Lumenstones are worth 500 gold on death, instead of 0.
• The rapier lunge attack works against invisible enemies when you are telepathic.
• Levers are now indestructible via shattering and tunneling, which would leave some vaults impossible to open.
• Autoexplore no longer walks through dangerous gases when wearing unidentified respiration armor.
• Items falling from the previous level will now trigger any traps they land on.
• Items and monsters falling from the previous level will no longer fall into reward rooms.
• Fixed an issue where unidentified rings could have higher bonuses than they would have once identified.
• Fixed an issue where unidentified positive rings would be 1 enchant lower than they should.
• Update rapier description to use 'triple damage' instead of 'treble damage'.
• Added a -vn command-line option to play a replay headlessly.
• Fix the default enchantment value being ignored in wizard mode.
• Fixed the dungeon version number in the seed catalog.

Brogue always needs a bump, everyone should overcome the first impressions and expectations and try it. It is surprisingly entertaining and good. I expected banal boring and got a tense clean buildfag game.
Almost got out of the dungeon once, got caught on level 3 and savescummed..... to get the win.....

 

[std::namespace]

Have you tried Approaching Infinity?

This game is fucking moronic retarded.
Wanna know how I died?
There are real time effects in the game. There is a real time monster in this turn based fucking game!
You walk into its sight, it 'confuses' you, you are forced to automatically end turns trying to mash buttons for your special abilities like teleport or block (cause you are not helpless, the game is just running with max speed of your cpu) and then you die...
Holy fucking shit, I dont think I have seen something as idiotic as this in my life...

Otherwise its trivial, unbalanced, unfinished.

 

[sser]

Nothing in the game is in real-time. Confusion effects work the same there as they do in other roguelikes. Blowing holes in the side of ship hulls and opening vacuums or getting grabbed by tentacle monsters all have the "look" of real-time due to effects lasting multiple turns but it's still operating in turn-based rules. The main lesson learned there is to avoid taking your captain on away missions (on rare occasions it'll force it). I usually have 1 crewmember specializing in those.

There's been a few times I've tried making a soldier-esque captain, but it's just not worth it as you basically multiply the dangers of getting a game over (space battles + crew battles). Plus, for larping purposes I like to make the captain more of a diplomatic archetype. For example, I can navigate space battles via truces or punch out call distress signals to get allies to swarm the area. My ship is kitted with short-range missile barrage and a long-range mega missile in case peace ceases to be an option.

 

[Eisen]

Not that you guys mind it, but it seems that Dungeons of Dredmor is getting a fourth expansion?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/98800/discussions/0/3878219197528634995/

I couldn't find it in the website tho.

 

[std::namespace]

Nothing in the game is in real-time.

game has literally tool tips calling it realtime

Confusion effects work the same there as they do in other roguelikes.

absolutely fucking not, not a single fucking one of them and i played all the major rl
NONE will end your turn for you on an effect where you can still do shit

"look" of real-time due to effects lasting multiple turns but it's still operating in turn-based rules.

the "look" of realtime is literally how diablo1 got made, is diablo1 not realtime?
it ends your fucking turns automatically
except you are not helpless or how do you think i managed to cast cleans in the screenshot? it did not stop the time

The main lesson learned there

the lesson learned there is that the game is fucking garbage

its literally a hamster wheel trash
if you dive into deeper systems, the only difference are the numbers on items g oing up
its a non ironic copy of that southpark bit about chasing the golden dragon

 

[Theodora]

Awesome, nice find xuerebx ^^ did a little digging and someone claims to have messaged the creator: "I asked him why he decided to release it for free and his answer was basically "because times are tough for a lot of people"." Very sweet.

Brogue always needs a bump, everyone should overcome the first impressions and expectations and try it. It is surprisingly entertaining and good. I expected banal boring and got a tense clean buildfag game.
Almost got out of the dungeon once, got caught on level 3 and savescummed..... to get the win.....

Tbh it gets plenty of praise to counter its unassuming appearance anytime anyone online asks about free or beginner-friendly roguelikes. And like, deservedly so, but it's only really going to be the most extreme of antisocial sorts that don't hear a challenging word or two in response to it being too 'boring' or 'old' in its design.

Not that you guys mind it, but it seems that Dungeons of Dredmor is getting a fourth expansion?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/98800/discussions/0/3878219197528634995/

I couldn't find it in the website tho.

Would be absolutely cray cray if this turned out to be true; but roguelike developers are nothing if not prone to long bouts of silence while they work away at something.

 

[unseeingeye]

Necromancy might synergize well with cryomancy.
Works for liches.
Lot of undead races to start too.

It looks like you abandoned your account; if by some chance you happen to see this, please message me.

 

[sser]

Nothing in the game is in real-time.

game has literally tool tips calling it realtime

Confusion effects work the same there as they do in other roguelikes.

absolutely fucking not, not a single fucking one of them and i played all the major rl
NONE will end your turn for you on an effect where you can still do shit

"look" of real-time due to effects lasting multiple turns but it's still operating in turn-based rules.

the "look" of realtime is literally how diablo1 got made, is diablo1 not realtime?
it ends your fucking turns automatically
except you are not helpless or how do you think i managed to cast cleans in the screenshot? it did not stop the time

The game operates in turns. Said turns are based upon speed-ratings. If you have 3 speed and something you're facing has 2, then you'll take 1.5x more actions. It's that simple.

^ You were rocking generic starter armor, a crappy melee weapon that's almost worthless, and packing negative speed maluses thanks to heavy, long-range gear all while you were facing down a fast-moving melee swarm. You got merked because of this. There's nothing else to it.


Here's my gear for comparison:

I'm slow as fuck so I'm quite familiar with chilling while people take additional actions. I almost never get the first shot off, obviously, and in fact there are instances where I just sit there while faster enemies swarm. My tactic is heavy demolition with the melee being an automatic 1-counter-attack per turn to stave off melee attackers. The away-captain prioritizes HP level ups and I prioritize HP in the suits (800+ when paired in this example). I never take the captain on ship-missions if I can help it because you're susceptible to facewalk into bad dangers. If I do ever take them and there's evident danger, I blow the shit out of the walls to see through them. Later, I comb back through with a techie crewmember who fixes shit up so I can boost the ship's value for towing/resell.

 

[std::namespace]

The game operates in turns. Said turns are based upon speed-ratings. If you have 3 speed and something you're facing has 2, then you'll take 1.5x more actions. It's that simple.

What part of automatically ended turns did you not understand? Shit is dumber than posting pics of fucking autoscaled loot...
I got killed because the game is designed by a child. I had a completely broken instant Teleport ability too.
Your gear is completely worthless from a gameplay perspective because anyone can buy a hauler, call it cucknigger and keep diving for ever increasing level scaled profits... which pay for the level scaled loot in this level scaled Oblivion simulator

Buy anything you want And then you can come back to level 4 and do the """quests"""
Terrible game that also has trash tier crafting.
Avoid avoid avoid

 

[sser]

I give up. I guess the game went real-time on you in a small combat space. Makes perfect sense.