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Author Topic: Roguelikes  (Read 5608 times)

PerturbedPug

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Roguelikes
« on: May 05, 2013, 10:07:18 PM »

Hey guys,
I've recently started playing a lot of roguelikes, but I don't really like nearly every one of them having a fantasy theme. Does anyone know of any that have another theme such as sci-fi, steampunk, etc.?
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Axiege

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Re: Roguelikes
« Reply #1 on: May 05, 2013, 10:23:36 PM »

I'm sure you've heard of FTL... Other than that, this genre is super saturated with the fantasy theme I agree. The Binding of Isaac is another one that's really good, but I'm not quite sure that one counts. I would describe its theme as a child's nightmare... but at least it's not fantasy ;D

FloW

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Re: Roguelikes
« Reply #2 on: May 06, 2013, 02:04:29 AM »

Never tried it, but "Sword of the Stars: The Pit" is sci-fi.
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PerturbedPug

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Re: Roguelikes
« Reply #3 on: May 06, 2013, 07:21:26 AM »

Yeah, I played The Pit demo yesterday and I quite like it. I might actually buy it.
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mendonca

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Re: Roguelikes
« Reply #4 on: May 06, 2013, 08:01:03 AM »

http://www.steammarines.com/

Steam Marines is, by and large, Space Hulk (but not really, that's just a handy shorthand to explain the premise). The game looks and plays beautifully, has you controlling four individually specialised steampunk space marines, and is a lot of fun.

http://playcargocommander.com/

Another real good looker, cargo commander is not so much your classic ASCII roguelike, but it looks great, there are some neat game design decisions and again is a lot of fun. It's a platform game, with procedural levels, by the way.

https://code.google.com/p/rlprospector/

Prospector is nuts, and would be perhaps a bit like Star Trek the roguelike. Discover planets, send down away teams, get eaten by aliens.

http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=PRIME

PRIME is also completely nuts, but a lot of fun. It's a bit like Nethack, but fun, and in space. You can be a predator, if you want.

http://www.cataclysmdda.com/

Switching more towards the modern day, Cataclysm is a post-apocalypse simulator type of roguelike. The apocalypse may have been caused by zombies, or possibly giant killer animals, or warp creatures. It's not clear (to me) and it doesn't really matter, but there is a hell of a lot to go at in this game. And you will quickly and repeatedly die.

http://infraarcana.wikispaces.com/

Infra Arcana is a bit more towards fantasy, but more Lovecraftian mid-20th century type of thing with unimaginable creatures and indescribable utterings etc. Has guns as well as insanity and other stuff. Not played it too much, but comes highly recommended.
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PerturbedPug

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Re: Roguelikes
« Reply #5 on: May 06, 2013, 09:43:47 AM »

Actually, it's kinda funny cause I was talking to the dev of Prospector yesterday about the state of development and he assured me that he was still working on it. Anyway thanks for the list, I'll check them out when I get home.
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lStealtherl

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Re: Roguelikes
« Reply #6 on: May 06, 2013, 12:07:43 PM »

http://www.unrealworld.fi/

It has gone free! It's a true survival roguelike. You spend your time thinking how to best allocate time to certain tasks. What needs do you prioritize, hunting for (big) animals which might take days or fishing, depending on your luck. It's also satisfying if you manage to catch a big fish. If you're truly in dire situation, you might kill a lone wanderer and eat him, and keep his equipment, hoping for better future deeds. Once you've found a decent hunting ground and fishing spots, you might want to build a cottage to store food, and for safe sleeps. In any case, every day you fight to survive. Winter is coming.
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icepick37

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Re: Roguelikes
« Reply #7 on: May 06, 2013, 12:40:20 PM »

Had to rectify the situation of no one bringing up DoomRL.  :)

http://doom.chaosforge.org/
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sirboomalot

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Re: Roguelikes
« Reply #8 on: May 06, 2013, 12:55:12 PM »

You might like a post-apocalyptic roguelike called Caves of Qud.


http://forums.freeholdentertainment.com/content.php
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LazyWizard

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Re: Roguelikes
« Reply #9 on: May 06, 2013, 06:00:58 PM »

http://www.unrealworld.fi/

I'll second a vote for Unreal World, it's my favorite roguelike by far. I actually bought it a few years ago but lost the registration key in a hard drive crash, so I'm especially glad it's now freeware. :)

Lengthy screed for anyone who's interested:
Spoiler
It's a classless hardcore survival simulation set in Iron Age Finland, and your chances of survival are heavily dependent on player skill rather than luck - the point you're most likely to curse the RNG is while picking stats at character creation, not during actual gameplay. You can customize the game start to get the difficulty level you want: a fisherman using multiple nets (a ridiculously reliable and nutritious food source that takes zero effort) starting on the relatively peaceful west coast will have a much easier game than a trapper (food supply subject to player knowledge of proper trap placement/migration routes/distance to nearest settlement/the whims of fate) in the raider-heavy eastern reaches. It leans strongly towards realism, with the only exception being the various ritual chants you can learn which grant a small enough bonus you can just ascribe the success to a morale boost/placebo effect.

It's also a wide-open sandbox; there's no goal other to survive, and you're free to do whatever you want:
  • Will you get your food via farming, foraging, hunting, milking/slaughtering domesticated animals, trading, trapping, fishing (which comes in three distinct flavors - clubbing/spearing slow fish in the shallows, using a fishing rod, or casting nets that you can come back to later), or even raiding/cannibalism?
  • In your free time, will you whittle wood into valuable trade goods, go hunting big game, build a cellar and smokehouse and stock up on preserved food, build traps everywhere 'just in case', or build a raft and find an isolated island to make your base on and use said raft to float hundreds of logs back to base to build a massive cabin with?
  • When winter approaches, will you hunt down a bear and make amazingly warm and protective fur clothes from it, build a portable but indefensible fur-covered kota, undertake the frustrating and laborious process of building a sturdy log cabin, or stock up on trade goods and leech off of a nearby village while 'borrowing' their sauna for warm shelter?
  • For defense, will you surround yourself with trained dogs, hire a companion to assist you, lay traps around your base, or simply train your combat skills and single-handedly slaughter anyone who attacks?

It does have one of the nastiest failure spirals I've ever seen in a game, though, where the amount you need to eat to remain satiated goes up the closer to starvation you are - a character with maxed nutrition can survive an entire winter with the dried meat from one or two large game animals, whereas a starving character needs to eat several pounds of food per day until they recover. In other words, if you don't find a food source within the first few days of a new game, you're pretty much screwed. ;)
[close]
« Last Edit: May 06, 2013, 07:20:22 PM by LazyWizard »
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lStealtherl

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Re: Roguelikes
« Reply #10 on: May 07, 2013, 12:58:41 AM »

You summed it up way better than I ever could think of LazyWizard :D

I watched Let's play videos before playing, and even with those references I couldn't get a good start (unfinished cottage scenario, spring). With limited food items, I was starving already in the next week. Surprisingly I started with a net (can't check up what tribe I picked, I'd start play if I opened it), but I spawned at a bad location with no river. I had planned not to rely on trade, but I had no other choice. With the specific axes, I could effectively carve bowls/torches at a decent rate. Days went by and I just barely stayed on starving hunger, trading for <1lb smoked meats. This couldn't go on so I traded one of my cloth and rest of carved items for flour bag I have been eyeing on. I'd thought they would yield lots of bread, but they didn't satisfy my hunger at all...

However, with easy producing breads I got a breather, no longer stucked carving items, I managed to regain my strengh. Far from cottage, I've managed to track a reindeer group. With the axes I brought with me (boy they were heavy), I began to set traps around a pond. Days went and I took breaks whenever I saw squirrels. My flour bag was already emptied, and I still haven't managed to catch a big animal. I saw a lone warrior passing by, it was all or nothing...
« Last Edit: May 07, 2013, 01:00:54 AM by lStealtherl »
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LazyWizard

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Re: Roguelikes
« Reply #11 on: May 07, 2013, 01:55:20 AM »

Yeah, Unreal World has a steep learning curve, and the tutorials you find are often extremely out of date. For instance, the trade price of torches was nerfed the very next patch after they were introduced, which might explain your troubles. ;) Also, the cottage start is a trap! Building a wall takes long enough that even with the proper axes, high carpentry skill and maxed nutrition you'll drop at least a nutrition level per tile you build. A starting character doesn't stand a chance of completing it, get a solid food supply first!

I would recommend using fishing nets as your primary source of food while you learn the ropes. Fish are both the most nutritious and easiest to obtain food in the game by a solid margin, and a single salmon, pike or lavaret is large enough to feed you for days. With just two nets and 60+ fishing skill you will easily be self sufficient, and checking nets only takes up a few minutes every day or two. This leaves you plenty of time to experiment with trapping, hunting and craftsmanship without the risk of starvation. Use some of that time to collect 10 stones and build a cellar, as that nearly doubles the time it takes for food to spoil. :)

I would also suggest starting in an area in the southwest of the map. That's where the trader culture is, it's far away from Njerpez (eastern raider culture) territory, and there are plenty of small islands to hide out on (less chance of wandering raiders spoiling your fun).

Finally, always take the tutorial quest (Living in the Wild), even if you know what you're doing! Not only does it explain how the game works, it also grants some decent bonuses along the way (including some basic equipment, a few very helpful skill increases, and enough seeds to last a lifetime!).
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Pelly

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Re: Roguelikes
« Reply #12 on: May 07, 2013, 02:00:13 AM »

Well you know what game I am going to be playing when I get home today, this will not end well, Finland will be littered with my corpses by the end of the day :P (Looks really good and I will be playing quite a lot of it for a while and its free!!)
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mendonca

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Re: Roguelikes
« Reply #13 on: May 07, 2013, 02:09:26 AM »

I'd second the recommendation on nets.

I'd also suggest going with an extraordinary fishing skill (90% +) and you pretty much should not be dying of starvation (more likely hubris).

Get the fishing skill by picking an appropriate starting culture (can't remember now the best ones, but I'm reasonably sure I have seen this with Reemilais and Seal Tribe) and also going for a super easy start, so you can trade away less important skills for a couple of bumps in fishing. Just remember to pick up your nets about 24 hours after you set them - wait 48 and you might have only caught dead fish.

If you are lucky, you can pick up a bunch of lavarets at about 3lb each from one net - it could (in the best case) be enough to feed you for a week from one catch. More typical would be getting enough food for a couple of days from one net, with the occasional empty catch.

Being extra small, stealthy and agile will apparently help you with stealth - so that Kaumolais who looks pretty much unbeatable on paper will be an absolute brute one on one versus an equally equipped Njerp, but will suffer when trying to blunder up to a sleeping reindeer (even with high stealth). I have heard stories of stealthy small characters hitting sleeping creatures on the head with a club. I have never had such luck.

The Northern Tribes tend to be on the small side, but they will also suffer with strength.

Pelhamds:

It is free, but do consider donating if you are able. The game is awesome and Sami deserves all the help he can get :)
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Pelly

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Re: Roguelikes
« Reply #14 on: May 07, 2013, 02:13:19 AM »

I'll throw my moneys at him If i find the game fun (IDK atm, but I would anyway probably about £5-10)
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