Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Game Discussion => Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) => Topic started by: Rya.Reisender on August 07, 2009, 07:29:06 AM
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I have a very specific taste when it comes to roguelikes, I only really like very few of them, but some I really love a lot and I wondered if I can find more games that fulfill the follow criteria:
- they are easy to get into, that means you don't need to learn a hundred keys, preferably they only require moving and two buttons (confirm/attack and cancel/menu), but up to 6 keys is still fine; they can be hard to master, but I'd prefer if they aren't "too hard"
- they have 2D sprite graphics, even if the quality isn't really high, I neither can get used to ascii graphics (which usually also means they don't feature a well-designed menu) nor do I like 3D graphics too much
- length doesn't really matter, preferably they are longer and include a save feature, but shorter than one hour without a save feature is fine too
- either free to download or at least still available in some shop (I don't mind paying money but I hate ordering online directly from the creator, buying on amazon/similar is fine)
Some roguelikes I really loved so far are:
- Fatal Labyrinth
- Dragon Crystal
- Lufia 2 Ancient Cave (it's a minigame inside Lufia 2, but it's pretty awesome)
- Shiren the Wanderer
- Rogue Planets (yeah I got addicted to my own game, poor me)
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IVAN
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Azure Dreams GBC, PSX, and a Tao's Adventure DS game
Izuna series on DS
Baroque PS2/Wii
Taloon's Great Adventure PSX
Chocobo Dungeon Wii
Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon PSX
Nightmare of Druaga PS2
Fushigi Dungeon: Torneko no Daibouken (fan trans) SNES
Pokemon Mysterious Dungeons series on DS with one version on GBA
Shiren the Wanderer III coming in 2010 in the USA on Wii
The maybe pile:
TileRogue
LambdaRogue
Scallywag: In the Lair of the Medusa
Mines of Morgoth
Triangle Wizard
Upcoming 100 Rogues on iPhone
(All of the above may or may not contain some degree of 3D and/or unusual stylings versus 2D tile....really comes down to your own preferences....)
Enjoy and feel free to comment so I can see if anything else jars my head loose.
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Thanks for the suggestions.
Hm... too bad most don't work for me, as I either know them, or they are for handhelds (screen too small for my taste) or they aren't released in Europe. :-/
Azure Dreams -> It was nice but I hated the monster catching aspect in it and it seemed to require a hella lot grinding.
Baroque -> Interested me at first, but I saw it's actually fully 3D and doesn't even look step based? Also I read it's hella hard, though I guess any non-roguelike-fan would call any roguelike hard.
Chocobo's Dungeon -> I like that one a lot, but it lacks in the design category a lot (I mean really all the floors look basically the same) and Shiren is much better with almost similar gameplay anyway.
I still need to checkout the maybe pile, though. Some of them look rather too unusual.
IVAN looks like what I'm looking for even though from the screenshots don't tell me how easy it is to play.
On some other forum Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup Tile Edition was suggested to me, though I think that's probably too hard to get into (I read it's the hardest roguelike of all!?).
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Hmm...
-IVAN is good stuff, you'll definitely die lots and lots of different things to do, but it is all in good fun.
-Crawl Stone Soup Tiles is utterly fantastic, I'd say that while the game is pretty hard...it also has just about the best user interface and whatnot to allow people to figure and enjoy things. Plenty of harder Roguelikes than Crawl to boot---afterall, Crawl at least has abundant spoilers and wiki's abound.
Other maybe's...even maybier than before:
3069
Plague
Elona
Nazghul
MageGuild
Spelunky
POWDER
ChessRogue
Lords of DarkHall
In general, most of the PC Roguelikes are big into lots of keys to reckon with and such versus their graphical console/handheld bretheren---so it is tough hunting outright.
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I think you miss a lot if you restrict to non-ASCII only... it's just a matter of getting used to it, after which you will play each new ASCII roguelike with less hesitation than a new game with poor graphics. I started my roguelike experiences with tiles, then moved on to ADOM, which was very good, but had only ASCII graphics.. its ASCII was unappealing for me at first, but now it is a normal thing, and when playing e.g. DCSS, I prefer the ASCII version.
Although most ASCII games, like ADOM, are likely to be hard to get into (still, they have lots in common, so in this factor learning one makes learning others easy too)... but e.g. DoomRL should be OK.
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Another few I forgot that might work well:
Meritous
Kamyran's Eye 1 and 2
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Tried out Crawl Stone Soup Tiles. It's quite okay, but I didn't like the controls too much, yeah I know you can play it completely with mouse, but having to pick up all the items and using a different action for bodies to get food (which required the usage of a keyboard after all) got annoying pretty fast. I started to skip all the items and just went forward and then I died on some overpowered girl monster, oh well. Crawl really puts too many things into one game for my taste, but I can see someone thinking it's the best roguelike if he's more into hardcore roguelikes.
But it's not directly what I was looking for.
I'm more the person that likes to 'bash through' the levels and instinctively do the correct decisions and not think after every step, and using 50% of the playing time for browsing item menus.
If you played any of the games I mentioned which I love I think you'll understand what I mean (or you can just watch youtube videos of them).
I'm not really looking for big lists of good roguelikes, but rather for one or two games that really fit into this pattern. I'm not even sure if there are any that I missed.
Oh but Spelunky is fun indeed.
Also it's not like I directly dislike ascii graphics, but if I want to see what items are lieing around and what monsters are there. I don't want to spend hours just to memorize that ( is a weak monster while ) is a stronger one. And it's generally harder to play "instinctive" without more detailed graphics. Plus all the ones with ascii graphics I know require lots more than just 2 buttons and are the opposite of "intuitive" and "context-sensitive controls".
Edit: Tried Crawl again... this Jessica kills me every single time... lame.
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Those last 3 I mentioned might especially work as they are very streamlined in terms of things you have to keep up with and whatnot as well as keypresses needed to do stuff. ChessRogue is well....Chess-based so that makes it about skills rather than having to worry about loot and such.
One other that you MIGHT like, as it is kinda a Roguelike meets Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past is Dicin' Knight...fan translated. Or stretching even further back, Ragnarok/Valhalla.
Like I said though, it is kinda a narrow bit you are after even as just graphical Roguelikes are a distinct minority amidst the myriad ASCII ones...I own or have played all the original ones you listed for many an hour as applicable(well, save Rogueplanet as it is on my todo list someplace), same as I can't handle ASCII ones outside of the way Triangle Wizard uses it for some reason.
Hopefully one or more of these strikes a fancy somehow or another though.
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Tried Ivan but requires too many keys for my taste. I mean I even need a special key just for talking to people, neither clicking nor walking against them works. There is no menu system at all. Not really what I'm looking for either.
There were quite many games mentioned here, but do I really have to check them all out just to see they don't fit into the criterias I mentioned? :-/
I also ordered Baroque even though it doesn't seem like something I was looking for either (I prefer step-based), but it did only cost 10€ so I'll give it a chance.
I looked at Meritious but it's only for Wii and I think I'd need internet connection on my Wii to get it.
Crawl Stone Soup is still my favorite so far, but it has often monsters that I can't seem to kill that it's really frustrating. I hardly ever get to Floor 2. What are you supposed to do in the game if an overpowered monster appears? Running away doesn't seem to work usually. Also sometimes monsters just instant kill me. It's almost what I look for, though. Remove the body chopping and other unnecessary actions (all except moving, pickup and using) and remove the overpowered monsters (at least on lower floors) and then it would be exactly what I'm looking for.
Alright on to the next games from the list...
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Meritous is a free PC game, not a Wii one....main key is the Spacebar.
http://www.asceai.net/meritous/
Sorry about having a substantialish list. :-[ I've tried my best to keep in mind your criteria, to the tune that all of them SHOULD have at least one or more of the elements you are looking for lest my memory fail me. Since finding perfect fits beyond what many of the ones in your original post seems nigh impossible, my hope is to remember some that'll be "close enough" to work well. In terms of cheap, Druaga on PS2 should be as cheap or moreso than Baroque, and is step based.
You can find gameplay video out there on youtube for gameplay on POWDER, Kamyran's Eye 2 and Mines of Morgoth if that helps since many Roguelikes don't have much of a presence along those lines.
In terms of Crawl: The early floors are among the hardest due to some luck involved respective to your starting class and whatnot. With your general style, I might recommend a Troll Monk or Berserker so as to fight very well with Unarmed combat and not have to juggle the complexities of all the weaponry around---Ghouls and Vampires can also work somewhat in this manner. For the early floors, it works best to fully explore each floor in turn for exp and item discoveries, then if you see something you've learned to be troublesome, you can either try to flee to another floor and take a different set of stairs or expend/try your wands/spells/ranged weapons to weaken/kill/disable the offender before taking the fight up close and personal. Those that worship Trog can get through many situations that are otherwise dire through just application of Berserk Rage in melee situations.
Lots of different classes though, some highly non-standard like Healers, so experiment merrily away as you think to and it is likely some things will eventually click somehow or another.
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I'll give Meritous a try.
Yeah don't worry. I know my criteria are very strict but that's exactly the point. I mean I only want ONE game that I can enjoy and play forever and not 100 games that are "okay". I don't really have hopes to find one actually. I mean the whole reason why I made Rogue Planets was because I didn't think there was a roguelike like that I really wanted to play such a roguelike.
I wish they made a sequel to Fatal Labyrinth.
Oh and yeah Druaga is pretty awesome, but was never released in Europe and since we have Pal format the US version won't work on my PS2. I played the Druaga mini-games in various Namco games (Tales of Destiny and Baten Kaitos) and they were really fun.
Also money is not actually a large issue. I mean for a sequel of Fatal Labyrinth I had no problem to pay 50€ but for a game like Barogue which already reminds me of Dark Cloud 2 which I found pretty boring I wouldn't pay much more than 10€.
Also is Lufia Ancient Cave the only roguelike with a party and battle system?
In Crawl I lately only used the mummy as it apparently doesn't need to bother to take up any items other than scrolls (no food or potions usuable). When I took Vampire my starting location was different and the first monster did one-hit kill me. How do you go for unarmed battle? Just unequip all weapons? Is it plausible? I never really found a weapon/armor ingame that's stronger than the starting weapon/armor so I stopped bothering picking them up. How do you activate berserk rage again? I know I read it in the tutorial but I forgot.
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Give Ragnarok a shot. It's graphical, all of the commands are available as either keypresses or mouse buttons on the interface, and it is, of course, free to download.
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I'll give Meritous a try.
Yeah don't worry. I know my criteria are very strict but that's exactly the point. I mean I only want ONE game that I can enjoy and play forever and not 100 games that are "okay". I don't really have hopes to find one actually. I mean the whole reason why I made Rogue Planets was because I didn't think there was a roguelike like that I really wanted to play such a roguelike.
I wish they made a sequel to Fatal Labyrinth.
Oh and yeah Druaga is pretty awesome, but was never released in Europe and since we have Pal format the US version won't work on my PS2. I played the Druaga mini-games in various Namco games (Tales of Destiny and Baten Kaitos) and they were really fun.
Also money is not actually a large issue. I mean for a sequel of Fatal Labyrinth I had no problem to pay 50€ but for a game like Barogue which already reminds me of Dark Cloud 2 which I found pretty boring I wouldn't pay much more than 10€.
Also is Lufia Ancient Cave the only roguelike with a party and battle system?
In Crawl I lately only used the mummy as it apparently doesn't need to bother to take up any items other than scrolls (no food or potions usuable). When I took Vampire my starting location was different and the first monster did one-hit kill me. How do you go for unarmed battle? Just unequip all weapons? Is it plausible? I never really found a weapon/armor ingame that's stronger than the starting weapon/armor so I stopped bothering picking them up. How do you activate berserk rage again? I know I read it in the tutorial but I forgot.
What you mentioned about Lufia reminded me: While I think there are others with similar megadungeons, one that is kinda similar that DOES come to mind is Evolution Worlds which is on the Gamecube and kinda the Dreamcast. party based, has a big random area, special attacks not unlike the IK stuff in Lufia games...MIGHT to the trick.
I do agree that Dragon Crystal and Fatal Labyrinth have a good thing going that would merit more tinkering. One of my eventual secret projects is actually to do some bug fixing/fine tuning and possibly an "unofficial" sequel to Fatal Labyrinth.
In Crawl, yep, unequip weapons for hand to hand combat...Troll Monks don't even begin with weapons so you just bash as you go and don't even need a knife to eat. IIRC, Berserk is "a" for abilities then whatever letter it mentions...been awhile since Crawl for me even though I've been meaning to get back since the brave new world of 0.5.x arrived.
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Hm Ragnarok is kinda old and doesn't run on Vista at all.
I tried Meritous and it's really fun. Best one so far.
Oh yeah I actually own Evolution Worlds. The problem with that game was that I didn't figure out how to save inside dungeons. Completely exploring a dungeon took like 6 hours and I didn't have enough motivation to play that long in one go. I'm not even sure if it's possible to quick save there, I couldn't find something in the manual.
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Maybe you could try playing Ragnarok via DosBox? (I've tried it myself and it works, at least on XP)
I think Meritous has not much common with roguelikes... although it's a nice game (to play once, I don't think it's replayable).
It's hard to suggest something to someone who has quite radically different views (I have said what I think about ASCII, and about games which need a hundred keys, they usually do it for a reason - they are richer, which I like; and even if there are some parts of the interface which are genuinely unreasonably bad, learning this interface is only a tiny fraction of skill required to win the game... not sure what you mean about not buying from the creator).
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All right, glad Meritous managed to do the trick so far!...I'd still recommend hitting up the other mentioned ones as the fancy strikes ya over time though.
I can probably relate on hesitance to order direct from creators. It is not uncommon for people to be more comfortable with working through third party merchants that have a bit more "vouch clout" in terms of refunds/identity rather than ordering direct----call it a professional touch. Mainly though, that's moreso been what is generally conditioned as the norm in retail sales online, especially game sales, with only now that digital distrobution retail is starting to come about. Granted, none of this stopped me from buying a Lifetime license to UnReal World, but still---we've established I'm weird.
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Regarding direct ordering: I support the free (as in free speech) culture movement in art, which means that I don't treat copies of pieces of art (like music, computer games, books, etc) as physical objects with physical value, and thus I don't feel morally obliged to pay for experiencing a piece of art. I feel gratitude towards authors who create masterpieces, and thus I am very happy to pay (donate to) them, but not towards distributors, whom I dislike for some reasons. They say that in case of music records only a small portion of revenue is given to artists, so I don't buy them; I don't know what is the case of computer games, I prefer to not buy them at all (seeing that there are so many free great roguelikes around), but donations to authors themselves are OK for me. That's also linked to the reason why I play roguelikes and other indies (which care about gameplay) rather than commercial games (which in my feeling sometimes care rather about whether the game sells well).
Thinking about it, I have a new suggestion: DROD (Deadly Rooms of Death, Architect Edition). This is not a roguelike, but a puzzle game... or maybe a puzzle/roguelike hybrid would be a better description. The roguelike feature it lacks is randomness, and everything what follows, but from Rya.Reisender's other posts I conclude it should not be a problem :) Graphics are good and getting into is very easy. (In accordance with my views above, I bought the sequel after having really great time with the first part.)
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Regarding direct ordering: I support the free (as in free speech) culture movement in art, which means that I don't treat copies of pieces of art (like music, computer games, books, etc) as physical objects with physical value, and thus I don't feel morally obliged to pay for experiencing a piece of art. I feel gratitude towards authors who create masterpieces, and thus I am very happy to pay (donate to) them, but not towards distributors, whom I dislike for some reasons. They say that in case of music records only a small portion of revenue is given to artists, so I don't buy them; I don't know what is the case of computer games, I prefer to not buy them at all (seeing that there are so many free great roguelikes around), but donations to authors themselves are OK for me. That's also linked to the reason why I play roguelikes and other indies (which care about gameplay) rather than commercial games (which in my feeling sometimes care rather about whether the game sells well).
Thinking about it, I have a new suggestion: DROD (Deadly Rooms of Death, Architect Edition). This is not a roguelike, but a puzzle game... or maybe a puzzle/roguelike hybrid would be a better description. The roguelike feature it lacks is randomness, and everything what follows, but from Rya.Reisender's other posts I conclude it should not be a problem :) Graphics are good and getting into is very easy. (In accordance with my views above, I bought the sequel after having really great time with the first part.)
Yours is a common mindset Z, one that I can only hope people within the various spheres of influence also come to have as it would make many a thing MUCH simpler. 8)
Otherwise, to piggyback on your alternative suggestion---perhaps DROG RPG: Tendry's Tale would be the ideal candidate?
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With the direct ordering it's more a matter of trust. If they just send me the game for free and then I can decide whether to donate or not then that's fine for me (though honestly I'd never donate if I didn't have to, I mean I hate paying online). The problem with ordering directly is that I just don't trust people. I'm not going to give out any personal data to someone I don't really know. Only because he made a good game doesn't make him trustworthy.
On Amazon it's a bit different. First of all Amazon offers the option to pay by bill, that means I first get the game and then pay for it. Also if something went wrong I could just send the game back without paying for it ever. And I don't need to give out any personal data except my address.
And even if I paid via bank account, there's still the rating system. If I see 12000 people bought from a distributor and 100% were satisfied I automatically gain some trust in it.
Even though it seems like the developer is being cheated that's not really the case. The distribution of the money usually depends on the expenses of each participant.
Developer -> Paying the programmers
Publisher -> Paying for the QA testing, holding the main risk of a product to fail, responsible for advertisement
Store -> Paying for the workers (info service / cashier), also offering all kinds of services (maintaining website, giving back the product, repairing, ...)
Putting all of these things in the hand of the developer isn't very 'safe'.
Also um, I'm looking for a roguelike to have roguelike features. I mean especially the fast-paced dialogue-free gaming (which causes you to not quit forever when you die) and the random generated dungeons (also increasing replay value) are important here. If it wasn't for them I would just go and play some JRPG (which I usually do). Though I might look into DROD anyway.
I beat Meritous, really cool game.
I tried Crawl again and get a lot further with Troll Monk than with the other classes. I can usually get to Floor 5-7 now but then there is some Wizard monster that always kills me before I can even reach it (it does like 12 HP ranged damage each turn). Any idea what to do about them?
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Well, as a Monk you could also take on a religion like Trog for some abilities...but otherwise those times are good ones to use Wands and any useful long distance weapons you might have come across like Boulders. Another big thing with magic users is that if they can't see you, they won't be able to cast and will close in----so if you can hide around a corner far enough you can rush them and stand a much better chance in straight melee of winning before they can get off enough point blank spells.
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How many steps do I need to be around the corner so they can't see me? Two?
Also I couldn't figure out how to join a religion. I found that temple with all those religious stones and could pray there, then it prompted me if I want to convert to that religion, but I can't press "y" only "n" works.
Do wands work good against Wizards? I usually have only around 2 when I first encounter them and sometimes I didn't even get to identify them. Also I never found one that's actually very useful, except maybe Slow Wand. But I mean each time I use a wand the wizard will counter with a spell so I'll just take even more damage. Same for throwing! Throwing does pretty miserable damage (I tried darts and rocks), I think it's probably better to get close to them instead! Also is there some way to throw items fast without having to select them each time?
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IIRC, 2 steps usually does the trick around a corner.
Odd on that religion front, though some races and such can't follow certain religions on account of incompatibility...so perhaps that was the case...
Wands can work great against anybody, depending on what they do. Outside of using a scroll of identify, you might try a test zap on some weak enemy like a rat to find out the effects it has. As a melee person, sometimes they outright save you versus bad situatons not unlike the Staves in Shiren..
I think you can use f or t for more streamlined throwing...can't recall.
Honestly, as it HAS been awhile for me, you'd be best served asking some of the currently hyper-active Crawlers out there here(or just reading their tales and learning):
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.misc/topics?lnk
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DrashRL complies with all your specification, you may like it! http://slashie.net/page.php?14 (http://slashie.net/page.php?14)
* Easy to get into, no classes, no races, very simple command set...
* 2D Sprite graphics, uses both a ripped Ultima tileset (in VGA, EGA and CGA modes) as well as the David Gervais tileset. It can also display ASCII output
* Has a save feature
* Free to download.
CastlevaniaRL fits too... but it is not *as simple*... be sure to check the other games at http://slashie.net :)
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Those two look interesting, I already started them up to test a bit. In Castlevania I can't get far, I don't know a way how to recover (walking doesn't help?) and monsters seem to keep coming non-stop.
Drash is even harder. I'm basically put on the first floor 50 monsters around me and they seem to be kicking me around while being able to move more than I am, what the...?
Also why do roguelikes always have to make such an extensive use of keys? Why not use one key for all actions? I mean when I am on an item and press 'the key' I obviously want to pick the item up, why do I need to memorize a key for picking up, I don't get it. x-x
That's why I mentioned Fatal Labyrinth to begin with. In it you can detect hidden walls and pickup items for example both with the same key. It's directly context-sensitive. Fighting monsters works just by walking again them, no extra key needed (well that works in most roguelikes, a miracle!) and instead of having separate keys for using/throwing/dropping one key just opens a menu where you select an item and then select Use/Throw/Drop/Equip.
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Suppose you see a menu where each option has a hot key associated. Do you navigate to your desired option using mouse or arrow keys, or press a hot key? Maybe WIMP interface is more straightforward, but pressing a hot key is faster and easier in the long run. Generally, the more of the keyboard is used (that is, the more keys), the easier is it to perform things for a player who has mastered the power of the keyboard in general and the keyboard layout of the particular game. Leaving a keypress or a keypress combination meaningless is a kind of loss (unless the set of actions in the game is already "saturated" by assigned keys). Roguelike designers often don't implement WIMP interfaces at all, seeing how much more cumbersome they are.
In traditional roguelike interface, I just have to press 2 keys to perform an action like dropping an item. How many keypresses, clicks, and mouse movements are required in the interface you suggest? I have played POWDER which uses something like that, and it was much more cumbersome.
Regarding pick-up versus search: it's not that obvious that when you are standing on a item, you want to pick it up, and otherwise you want to search. What if you want to search in a room filled with junk? IMO it's also more logical to have separate keys for such different actions. Maybe Fatal Labyrinth was designed in such a way that it is obvious in its case, but most roguelikes are not. Thus, they do need a separate key for searching. It would be possible to wire the pickup key so that is performs search when there is nothing to pick up, but why do that if there is a search key anyway? Besides, many traditional roguelikes (e.g. Crawl) have auto-pickup feature, which means that you don't even need to press a key to pick up.
On the other hand, what should happen if the user presses a movement key, and he obviously can't move in the desired location? Doing nothing would be a loss of keyboard power. Thus, doors are opened, and monsters are attacked.
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On the other hand, what should happen if the user presses a movement key, and he obviously can't move in the desired location? Doing nothing would be a loss of keyboard power. Thus, doors are opened, and monsters are attacked.
Yeah and exactly this is good design.
You have a point that hotkeys are helpful, but they shouldn't be the only possible option. I'm the type that doesn't use hotkeys usually. Even when I'm programming I rather use the main menu with the mouse to do things like "open" "save" "program options" instead of memorizing the hotkey for them. On the other hand copy/cut/paste is nice to use with hotkeys. A normal windows application always offers both. You can select everything via the main menu, but each entry also has a hotkey. That's good design. If you know the hotkey you can use it, if you can't remember it you can easily browse the menu for the action you want and it doesn't take significantly more time than using the hotkey.
Auto-pickup in Crawl is really nice, but it already gets disturbed by the fact that you have to cut the corpses before you get their meat. I wish you'd just get it automatically into your inventory after a kill. Not to mention that rotten meat could be dropped automatically. Also auto-pickup doesn't work for equipment. I guess there's some config with which you could change it, but it probably would be just "all / none" and not "only those that are better than your current equip". Even if there was, I would still complain that the config isn't very obvious, there no menu for it either, you have to read through a mere text file until you find it.
Either way, Crawl does pretty good already. It could still need a few improvements so that everything could be done with mouse (instead of Shift+Click for drop it should just be possible to drag an item on the ground). And without the cutting and praying it already gets pretty close to what I'm looking for. Could still be a bit easier. I often have the feeling that I did nothing wrong and still died because some adsurdly huge mob was around me with no way to escape or some monster that isn't usually pretty strong suddenly causes some instant death on me.
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Roguelike developers often work of their own motivation and they don't add features they don't like, as long as there are still features they do like to add (i.e. forever). Originally, NetHack, Angband, ADOM, and Crawl all had traditional roguelike keyboard interfaces and ASCII graphics as an only option. Crawl was lucky enough to get someone who wanted to add graphics to it, although they did not bother to add a proper menu interface; still, people like me prefer playing the traditional version. Not sure about NetHack and Angband (I don't play these). ADOM remains a traditional roguelike (not surprisingly, since it is closed source) and has its fans. Less popular roguelikes also remain traditional, even if open source, since less people care about them.
Maybe adding newbie friendly interfaces would increase the number of players. That probably was what authors of old commercial roguelikes thought: Valhalla (aka Ragnarok) and JauntTrooper (aka Mission Thunderbolt). Both are IMO great roguelikes (for their times), and included nice graphics, both menu and hotkey control (although I always wondered, why the hotkey to select scrolls in Valhalla is "?"?... after playing traditional roguelikes this became obvious), and permadeath only as an option (although recommended for hardcore players). Yet both of them AFAIK did not achieve commercial success. And since they were commercial, they did not achieve success among roguelike fans either. Probably because they usually prefer playing for free.
Enjoying roguelikes (as gameplay style), free games, ASCII games, permadeath games, and hotkey-driven games are all uncommon tastes in people, I think. But it seems that the rare those who enjoy roguelikes are usually also in other groups with uncommon tastes I mentioned... This would explain why roguelikes fail commercially. Maybe the times have changed since times of Valhalla and Thunderbolt, I don't know...
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You can't really blame userfriendly controls for the fact, that they didn't become popular, though.
Also I think developers should also listen to the players and not only do what they like themselves. You claim they are never 'done' with their roguelike, but I can't really imagine that. I mean there must be some point where you think you're done with your game and want to make a new one.
In Rogue Planets I was done with the game with version 1.0 and released it. Then I got some feedback from players that liked it and added their suggestions in version 1.1 and 1.2 which made controls / playing for them easier, without changing the core gameplay.
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Heh, don't get me started on what happened with the Jaunt Trooper series Z...my giant topic and far flung plans still remain there for all to see on the board. :P
That said, the Fushigi Dungeon franchise as a whole achieving some substantial success in the grand scheme of things otherwise is probably something Western Roguelike devs should bear in mind---though I've yet to discern why Fatal Labyrinth was left in the lurch following Dragon Crystal on MS/GG. As times change, some things stay the same though. I KNOW that Scallywag: In the Lair of the Medusa has not sold well (Though I have my plan to change this at least somewhat....plus the whole thing where the company seems to have imploded into some state of disarray or some such from what I've pieced together over on Shrapnel) and I have no concrete ideas really on the sales of Mines of Morgoth at this junction---really should send noodles an email to see how things are going since my last PM awhile back seems to have been overlooked.
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You can't really blame userfriendly controls for the fact, that they didn't become popular, though.
I don't blame the fact, I only wonder that maybe providing userfriendly controls was a bit of a wasted effort.
Also I think developers should also listen to the players and not only do what they like themselves. You claim they are never 'done' with their roguelike, but I can't really imagine that. I mean there must be some point where you think you're done with your game and want to make a new one.
Developers of free games usually do what they want, not what they "should". Or maybe they "should" do their real job, raise their children, or whatever their life requires, not develop their games. If you feel that you want to make RoguePlanets complete and user friendly, that is great for RoguePlanets. But unfortunately lots of RL drop or slow down the development, especially the ones with big plans. Things such as user friendliness may be below the required level of motivation.
ADOM is somewhat unfinished (there are bugs and imbalances there), but Thomas Biskup has decided he prefers to make a new game. Linley Henzell, the original developer of Crawl, has lost interest in its development AFAIK (although it was maybe quite complete, not counting missing tiles and menus), but luckily the Stone Soup team appeared, who manages to continuously improve it. IVAN is a great game, although incomplete (version 0.50 is displayed) - the developers had some plans which have not been executed yet; however, they lost their interest (or maybe their free time), and unless they change their minds, or a new team emerges, IVAN will remain incomplete.
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Those are good excuses and all, but they only confirm me with saying that it's bad design.
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I'm looking for basically the same thing as the Topic Creator, except I want ASCII graphics! haha.
So yeah, I'm looking for something similiar to games like DoomRL, POWDER, Berserk! etc. I just need something a little more indepth.
Thanks for any help
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Crawl Stone Soup is my only recommendation at the moment. It has completely stopped my develoment activities. Ok it has a hugh learning curve in the sense of its difficulty.
Its funny now, I read many posts about people saying I cant get past the first few levels. I remember that that was me once, but now if I die early it is always completely my fault. With crawl there ishardly ever an inescapable death, there will almost always be a way to avoid death. It just takes 500+ games before you realise that and have the experience to recognise nearly every situation that will lead to your death.
Also I recomend to play Minotaur Berzerkers for beginners.
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Second on Crawl Stone Soup!!!!
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For me it completely depends on the class I choose how deep I get. The classes that don't have much HP/ATK/DEF always die on floor 1 or 2 for me.
But yeah Crawl Stone Soup is just really really good, but more aimed for the hardcore roguelike gamers. The difficulty is similar to Shiren's.
I got Baroque now and I like it a lot. That game is really close to Fatal Labyrinth gameplay-wise. I just didn't figure out how the identifying works. It seems that even if I have identified an item already, the next one of the same type I find is unidentified again. But sometimes the items I pick up are already identified. Maybe it's random? Also Baroque's soundtrack is really cool.
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Did you ever try the Scallywag: In the Lair of the Medusa demo? It is also a realtime "lite" one same as Baroque and Dicin' Knight.
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Another I think I forgot that is designed for micro-games outright:
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Digital_Eel/WW/WW_page.html
Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space Not quite a "Roguelike" same as Flatspace 1 and 2 also just have some key elements, but seems to be well beloved on their forum, not expensive, and shouldn't have too robust a key layout.
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Just remembered this: http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=842
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Cool, not one I'd come across before! Thanks. 8)