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Roguelikes

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So, these little bastards have taken over my bedtime recently. At the moment I'm playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (with tiles!) and Desktop Dungeons. Both are brutally hard (for me) despite being at the milder end of the rogue like spectrum. On the pad, I have zaga33.

Up and coming, I'm fighting the urge to get FTL. For all it is in space, it sounds just as vicious and random as any roguelike.

Does anyone else have a soft spot for these? The endless permanent deaths? The embarrassing mishaps?

Do you find the lack of story beyond "Go steal stuff" to be off-putting? For me playing DCSS, I find my self oddly getting a lot of "story" for want of a better word out of these games. Scattered around the dungeon will be unique beings, and as you become more familiar you learn to fear their names. You narrowly defeat a sorceress, but then remember that she usually travels with her brother, or you slash through a goblins slaves to kill the master and free them. Or you eat some rotten meat, become nauseous and a rat kills you. Nothing is worse than struggling to reach a new floor only to be cut down by the ghost of a more powerful former self. (if playing zaga33 replace all nouns with "squiggle". )

Here is my records since my last install. I've made it to orc 4 at work with around 10k. That's not good even though I always play the same character in hopes I'll improve some day.

JhwUT.png

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I'm pretty excited for FTL, but not so much because it's a roguelike. I've yet to really get into one of them, but the FTL demo did allow me a glimpse into why some people might.

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I need to give one of these games a try. I have a feeling my love for games like demon's souls will translate over. Can anyone reccomend one that's somewhat visually interesting to start out with?

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Dungeons of Dredmor. Shiren the Wanderer. Uhhh. There're a ton that have actual art, but that's all I can remember off the top of my head. The first one's on Steam, the second one's on various consoles and handhelds. Shiren's actually a good one to start with, too. It's not too difficult.

My first roguelike was Rogue but I had no idea what the fuck. Then Nethack, but I had no idea what the fuck. Finally, Powder was the first roguelike I actually figured out.

And then I moved on to Dwarf Fortress so I guess something went wrong (or right?).

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It always goes wrong in a roguelike, right?

You could try binding of Isaac as well sully. It's certainly visually interesting and horrifically disgusting at times!

If you can handle it play the tiled version of dcss.

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I finally ascended a Nethack character last year after almost a year of playing it. A wizard, and I love that little son of a bitch. Nearly lost him on d12 to an angry pack of orc priests, (reading unid'd scrolls can be a very bad idea) but in the end I got him down and out in about 17,500-ish turns. Haven't gone back since, but I know I will soon enough. Trying to make my way through ADOM right now which is a bitch and a half but I'll get it eventually.

FTL is a great game, but the developers are a pair of manchildren and refuse to add a save feature because they feel it "comprises their games ideal". No, you idiots, it's bad game design. Especially for a roguelike. That said, most games of FTL probably won't last more than an hour so it's still a good pickup whenever it comes out.

Tilesets are for babies.

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I wasn't aware nethack counted as a rougelike, i played the console versions on the ps2/xbox back in the day

Edit: Sorry im an idiot, i was thinking of that feaux online rpg .hack

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A rougelike. Now that's a genre worth playing.

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Nethack is pretty much the roguelike these days, considering their progenitors are less played. It's also great because some people have played it for a decade or more without ever winning. I keep meaning to try a Moria clone, but I haven't gotten around to it.

E: THE AI HAS GONE ROUGE

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Speaking as someone who has just gotten into roguelikes, Dungeons of Dredmor was a great introduction, and moving on from there, Brogue was an excellent second game. It's pretty, mouse-driven, and moderately simple (no character creation, for instance). It eased me into ASCII very well.

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Dungeons of Dredmor. Shiren the Wanderer. Uhhh. There're a ton that have actual art, but that's all I can remember off the top of my head. The first one's on Steam, the second one's on various consoles and handhelds. Shiren's actually a good one to start with, too. It's not too difficult.

Pleased to read that - I've never played one before and just started Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer (DS version) last night.

The iOS game 100 Rogues might also be a good starting point I suspect.

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The iOS game 100 Rogues might also be a good starting point I suspect.

I found that terrible imbalanced - I plougehed through it with the tourist, but the Mage/ fairy las unable to take the first booss under my tutelage.. Zaga33 however screams Zaga at you when you start up a game.

Zaga.

Ftl won't have a save? It's so easy to do. There is one slot, either play it or die.

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I love Roguelikes, and Binding of Isaac restarted my constantly cycling attention span for them. There's something about only being able to learn a game's mechanics and depending on your in-the-moment decisions to survive. There's also something about losing hours upon hours of progress because of something stupid you did.

Dredmor is pretty fun, and I enjoy all the weird gaming references throughout. It's also moddable, and recently integrated with the Steam Workshop to distribute said mods.

If you're looking for a challenge, there are a couple I've found particularly difficult: Cardinal Quest, and Hack, Slash, Loot. Hack, Slash, Loot might also count towards being visually interesting, as everything is made of incredibly minimal pixel art.

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I started playing Dungeons of Dredmor. A bit much grinding, although with the small maps it's more or less ok and too much inventory management :( because you will fill it up quickly.

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Hack, Slash, Loot is hard because it's so entirely random, though. I've never felt like I died because it was my fault. I'm always as careful as I can possibly be - literally, I think, because the game isn't a very deep one - and yet inevitably I hit a wall that is missing my attacks ten times in a row while the enemy hits me every time, despite me having over a 60% chance of hitting. Sure, all roguelikes have randomness, but I feel like HSL suffers from it much more than others! Maybe that's just me, though.

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Desktop Dungeons and Dungeons of Dredmor are the only ones I play these days, but 10 years ago or so I was super into Nethack.

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There's also Elona, which is ridiculous because it does everything. I've yet to actually play it, though I keep meaning to.

http://www.rockpaper...like-elonaplus/

I'm having trouble finding a download link! I know it exists, and I'm pretty sure it's got an English translation, despite the game being Japanese. But I'm not 100%. U:

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I never got into Nethack or Angband much, but I just realized that one of the games I did play a lot was basically very similar to, if not actually a roguelike. Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol. It had like 16 or so levels, but I only got down to 13 when I stopped playing (after something like 200 hours). Later I tried it's sequel Demise: Rise of the Ku'tan, but although it seemed to have improved over the original, I didn't play it much. They played more like Legend of Grimrock (whatever that genre is called) than a roguelike, and there wasn't a permadeath, but your characters could lose levels from powerful monster attacks (which took a long time to get back!).

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Hack, Slash, Loot is hard because it's so entirely random, though. I've never felt like I died because it was my fault. I'm always as careful as I can possibly be - literally, I think, because the game isn't a very deep one - and yet inevitably I hit a wall that is missing my attacks ten times in a row while the enemy hits me every time, despite me having over a 60% chance of hitting. Sure, all roguelikes have randomness, but I feel like HSL suffers from it much more than others! Maybe that's just me, though.

From what I can tell, the character/class you choose at the beginning of each particular quest may have a big impact on that. I've gotten to the end boss of one scenario with a particular character that will very quickly die on any other scenario. It also seems to be sort of an intentional thing, too, because you'll unlock more characters as you hit death count milestones.

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Yeah that is probably true, although I very rarely do well with anything other than the base archer class. ):

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FTL has added a save on quit function, making it an absolute must have for anyone getting into the genre, once it launches.

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Yeah I'm literally counting the days. Or I would be if I knew of an exact release date.

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I thought I would love FTL, but I had to try it on that streaming system so it really just turned me off.

Is there a better demo somewhere I can install on my pc? I figured I should give it another shot.

edit: nevermind I remembered something called google exists. lol. I'll just have to wait.

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They're saying September for a current FTL release date, but we'll see.

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