sclpls Posted August 29, 2014 If there's one offshoot of recent roguelike-influenced design I'm particularly impressed with, it is the roguelike games that strip away nearly all of the RPG mechanics of the genre, and replace it with... nothing at all. It turns out when you get rid of all those complex systems, the basic mechanics still manage to generate fiendishly difficult and surprising encounters. At such an elemental level the games take on an almost puzzle-like quality without of course any authored puzzle being designed in the first place. Michael Brogue's output here is relevant, in particular 868-HACK and Zaga33. Also Hoplite. Last night I picked up the Nightmare Cooperative for iOS (it is also available on PC), and it might be the best example of this type of game yet. You control multiple heroes, but whenever you move in a direction, all the heroes move in that direction, you don't get to move them one at a time. Naturally the levels have randomly generated walls, acid and lava pools, etc. Also when you open up treasure chests you also spawn enemies. So that turns the whole thing into this intricate dance around a field of landmines. Also, the name for this game is perfect. I think people should check it out! Some references: http://www.smestorp.com/ http://www.magmafortress.com/p/hoplite.html http://luckyframe.co.uk/nightmare/ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
