The Codex of Roguelikes

[Stabwound]

I'm not familiar with Binding of Isaac. Youtube videos make it look like a cross between Smash TV and Legend of Zelda. I don't see the roguelike at all.

Diablo is more of a roguelike than either of those two, especially played in hardcore mode. It's basically an action Angband, and it actually started out based on that game. Especially considering how people consider Triangle Wizard to be a roguelike.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

^There's randomized items, randomized rooms, permadeath and a few stats. What's it lacking for you to see the roguelike? Turn-based combat?

...hey, didn't take one page for this to devolve into "first we need to define what is a roguelike", neat.

here's the IVAN easter egg mentioned before, btw.

edit: might as well post this. AGTP recently completed the translation for Cave Noire, a lite roguelike for the old Gameboy. Could be interesting, if only as a novelty.

This was a small project that was supposed to take a week at most, and ended up taking more than a month! But it´s done, thanks to EsperKnight and a host of folks each helping out with tiny bits of text. Cave Noire is loosely a roguelike; you have a limited inventory, a limited set of items, and enemies that hit very hard. It´s almost more of a puzzle game, about learning to dodge enemies rather than grinding levels and plowing through them. It´s completely translated, too; hope you enjoy it!

 

[theHiddenHand]

Tanks for the list gonna have to check some of these games out, haven't played any rogue likes in decades..

 

[theHiddenHand]

Faster Than Light, Spaceship Simulation Roguelike (http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8133); just seen this and am starting to drool already.

 

[SCO]

Holy shit

http://te4.org/blogs/darkgod/2012/05/news/nearly-left-tome-dev-forever

 

[Stabwound]

Does anyone know of any roguelikes that have a class that is based on possessing corpses? I believe there is *band or two that does this but I can't remember off hand, other than the original TOME.

It's something I've always wanted to play, even though it's probably very imbalanced in most games.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

Holy shit

http://te4.org/blogs/darkgod/2012/05/news/nearly-left-tome-dev-forever

Wow, that's quite a crash. Makes me wonder about the details more. I was in a small pick up truck that rolled at low speeds (30, 40 mph), and it took a beating, but wasn't totally owned like his car. I also had a friend that rolled a Volvo station wagon at 70 mph without nearly as much damage. Wonder if he rolled and hit something.

Does anyone know of any roguelikes that have a class that is based on possessing corpses? I believe there is *band or two that does this but I can't remember off hand, other than the original TOME.

It's something I've always wanted to play, even though it's probably very imbalanced in most games.

Never seen anything like that, but I'll agree that it sounds like it would be a fun mechanic. Reminds me of the whole "enslaving nations with necromancy" thing, which aside from I think being a silly half Codex meme, could actually be pretty fun as an RPM/sim/management game.

 

[JudasIscariot]

Does anyone know of any roguelikes that have a class that is based on possessing corpses? I believe there is *band or two that does this but I can't remember off hand, other than the original TOME.

It's something I've always wanted to play, even though it's probably very imbalanced in most games.

Whatever that is, I want to play it based on your description alone...

 

[JudasIscariot]

Just wanted to give you DCSS players a heads up that in the 0.11 build there are some small changes mainly some graphics changes to various weapons and armors and, apparently, Nagas don't get to use their constriction ability until level 13. I haven't read the whole changelog yet but I am sure there are other changes involved.

 

[Shannow]

So there's some news on Incursion.

The good:
He's still working on his new engine/full game.

The bad:
He doesn't expect it to be out in 2012 or 2013...

 

[Stabwound]

Best vaporware ever.

 

[Alex]

Does anyone know of any roguelikes that have a class that is based on possessing corpses? I believe there is *band or two that does this but I can't remember off hand, other than the original TOME.

It's something I've always wanted to play, even though it's probably very imbalanced in most games.

I don't know about corpses, but Caves of Qud has a possession mutation that allows you to control an enemy's body instead of your own. The system is pretty fun, because allies of the possessed enemy don't become hostile unless you attack them. So you can do funny things, like picking up a grenade, walking into an enemy lair and set it off with impunity.

 

[Teepo]

Caves of Qud also has auto explore which is not really needed. But it has it.

CoQ feels like a single player RPG sometimes. It has a pretty groovy over world. Sadly I took a break from playing it so now I forgot all the hotkeys. I remember I got good as fuck at that game, basically only playing mutant with burning hands. Burning hands, phasing through walls. Good stuff.

 

[Stabwound]

I got back into ToME 4 tonight, and damn, it's a pretty fun game. Easily in the top 5 most fun roguelikes, the character system is pretty fun and I happen to enjoy the unlocks, etc. By unlocks, I mean that you start with few character creation choices, and as you finish challenges in the game you open the possiblity to start as different races and classes. It's pretty fun, but there is also a cheat to unlock them all if you feel like it. The character system is pretty unique as far as roguelikes go. It uses a pretty in-depth skill tree, and you can get lucky and find trainers which will let you invest in trees from other classes, if you're lucky.

The skills use a cooldown bar, the type Dragon Age and MMORPGs use. That probably gives a bad impression, but it actually is implemented very well and the system works well for roguelikes. Instead of "herp derp spam every skill non stop when it refreshes" it works a lot better in a turn-based system. Example, you might have your damage-absorbing energy shield spell available, but you don't want to spam it right away; you might want to hold onto it in case you get into some deep shit. It makes for one of the most tactical combat systems once you get deeply into it.

The only downsides are that it's more like an RPG with roguelike mechanics, so if you die you have to do the same quests over and over again. They recently added randomized rare monsters which can be total death machines, too, which sucks if you play it on permadeath mode. Like most roguelikes, it's pretty unforgiving if you don't know what to expect.

All in all, I'd totally recommend it.

 

[Fowyr]

Avanor. Very enjoyable ADOM-lite. His site is long dead, though.

 

[colonp]

Brogue
[Prettiest ASCII] - and one of the easiest to play - very streamlined. Trapped treasure rooms (think Zelda/Indiana Jones). Build based on which items you find and keep, and how you use them - no real stat/feat system.

Brogue's too well made to not have a write up

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

Added FTL. I think it may be the only RL with a codex review.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

No one has mentioned Hack, Slash, Loot yet.

It's pretty generic as far as Rogue-like's go. Most roguelikes have some sort of unique twist which justifies their existence, but HSL is as barebones as you can get.

It does have things like a variety of classes and quests, but in my experience playing the game usually comes down to luck in the cruelest way possible and things like personal skill and strategy amount to zip (for example, there is no way to regenerate health, so if you don't get a health regen item before the end of the first level you are better off just starting over as the game is unbeatable with out one).

Although the developer recently released a patch which over hauled the game. I haven't played it since then, but maybe it got better.

 

[Stabwound]

Hack, Slash, Loot to me was just shit. No way is the game worth $10 when there are roguelikes 10x better and more in depth that are free. Maybe it would be worthwhile as a cellphone game or something.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Has anyone played 100Rogues? I've heard good things about it, but I think its an iOS only game (so I will probably never play it unfortunately).

Reminds me of the whole "enslaving nations with necromancy" thing, which aside from I think being a silly half Codex meme, could actually be pretty fun as an RPM/sim/management game.

Check out Master of Magic (on GOG). I played it for the first time in 2006 (it came out 1994) and really enjoyed it. Civilization clone, but well executed and surprisingly deep. The twist is that you are a wizard leading a people (which you choose from a pretty wide variety of fantasy races) seeking world domination. You build a wizard by putting points in different magical disciplines, including necromancy IIRC. Instead of tech, you research spells, of which there are many and which can have a pretty broad variety of effects on all aspects of play. Also combat sends you to a screen where you control your individual units rather than simply rolling to see who wins.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

Oh yeah, I remember hearing about that, I've actually got the install files somewhere on my machine, just haven't had a chance/motivation to fire it up. Thanks for the recommendation.

I played 100Rogues a bit on a friend's iPad, can't say I can really recommend it. Progression is really slow and not very satisfying, as the skills you can choose from are very limited and from what I can tell, not terribly fun to use. Enemy and level design is fairly simplistic and to get all the playable characters you have to buy them as DLC. It does look nice, and promises "a new experience every time", but I probably tried about 10 runs before growing bored as it was very samey in terms of enemies and stuff. Also, not very much in the way of item upgrades from what I recall. Basically, it just didn't have anything to "hook" me.

 

[JudasIscariot]

Just found out about this roguelike:

Steam Marines

Basically, the premise is that you have a squad of 4 Steam Marines fighting for their lives on a steampunk spaceship. You can use squad tactics such as covering each other, destroying walls etc. etc. It's a completely graphical roguelike in development that has an alpha demo available for download.

My gripes with it so far (yes, I know it's an alpha...)

Movement is restricted to four directions. No diagonal movement allowed at this time. This means if you have one guy behind another and want to make a wall, you'll have to use 2 movement points out of the 4 per marine to do so. Meanwhile, the enemy is busy decimating your squad.

Tiny, cramped corridors which force you to use the wall destroying mechanic, which happens to have a failure rate!, instead of giving you more room to decide for yourself about positioning and anything else.

Balance problems that go beyond your average RL. Sure, it's a roguelike and all, but most of them have some sort of progression where you fight enemies that are somewhat dangerous but only f you don't use proper tactics. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup demonstrates a proper, at least for me, progression mechanic: you start off fighting some goblins, hobgoblins, and bat on the first 2 levels or so and then progress to more dangerous enemies, barring any randomly generated elites :D. Steam Marines, however, has your squad going up against robots that can robots that deal anywhere from 25-40 damage in a single hit and they almost never miss AND your squad only has one member that can do equal amounts of damage but you have to use him carefully since he can accidentally kill your squaddies if they are in the way. The other three guys don't really make a dent. I haven't even been able to make it past the first level due to horribly imbalanced, in my opinion based on a few sessions with the game, enemy damage output.

Try if for yourselves here:

http://www.steammarines.com/

 

[Fowyr]

This thread needs more Xenocide.
http://xeno.chaosforge.org/
Awesome, but sadly unfinished roguelike.

 

[Destroid]

JudasIscariot steam marines honestly doesn't seem to have much in common with roguelikes aside from procedural generation (and maybe permadeath? I've only watched some videos). It looks more like a turn based tactics game like x-com battles.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

JudasIscariot steam marines honestly doesn't seem to have much in common with roguelikes aside from procedural generation (and maybe permadeath? I've only watched some videos). It looks more like a turn based tactics game like x-com battles.

Destroid, are you arguing that its not a roguelike because you are controlling a squad? Or are you seeing something else? At risk of being the asshole who starts a "the one true definition of the roguelike" discussion, to me one of the most important (and by "most important" I mean "my favorite") characteristics is the continuous and pervasive turn system, in which every action by every entity in the game takes a certain portion of a turn, NPCs/monsters act continuously regardless of the player's presence, and no distinction is made between combat and non-combat actions. I've only watched a few videos myself, so I can't really tell how the turns operate in Steam Marines, but if that turn system is absent I would agree with you.