I love the idea of having a roguelike on the console. I was really disappointed with Dungeon Adventure. The engine has great potential, but I feel like he focused on all the engine design and none of the game play. The level generator loves to spit out tiny dead-end levels, etc.
Many of the early mechanics in my rogue are inspired by Crawl, but I have a lot of new features that will make the game play quite a bit different.
Skills, for one, are handled entirely different. Players earn points every time they level up, and pick up to 8 skill trees to focus throughout the game, each tree contains a number of subskills, most with multiple ranks. The cost of the skill doubles with each rank, so focusing on specific things can get expensive after a while, but quite powerful. Of course, you're a little more limited in your options with that route, so if you prefer you can spread your points out over a variety of skills. In addition, races use a DCSS style affinity system - so any race can learn any skill, but skills are more or less expensive depending on if your race is innately good with them.
It's ambitious, but i've got an excel table with almost 180 skills planned so far, many of them active abilities players can utilize. This should lead to some interesting hybrid combinations. For instance, the 'Hammer Mage'. Hammers are extremely slow weapons, but have a chance to knock opponents back. Skills in the Hammer tree can increase that chance. If you play a race that's large enough and has enough STR to reliably abuse knock-back, you could combo that with low-level spellcasting to riddle them with Magic Darts and such while they try to keep closing the distance. Naturally the large brutes best suited to abuse the hammer won't be an exceptional spellcaster, but if you stick with just the lower-level spells I suspect it would be a powerful class combo.
And many of the skills are extremely easy to implement, but present interesting tactical options, especially when combined with other abilities and such. For instance, "Razor's Edge" is a Throwing subskill that gives a high chance for thrown blades to inflict BLEEDING on struck enemies. (Those with blood, anyway) Easily implemented, with a lot of potential.
I'm borrowing from the branch and rune style, but with different branches. Also, the Chaos Fortress poses it's own interesting dynamic - Each of the rune-bearing branches actually provides the Fortress with some bonus. Claiming the rune from a branch slightly weakens the fortress. For instance, Clearing the Dwarven Mines reduces the quality of weapons and armor belonging to monsters in the Fortress. Clearing the Gnomish Workshops reduces the number of traps and mechanical beasties in the Fortress. This allows more thorough players to wage a war of attrition on the final dungeon, especially in dealing with weaknesses. Hate ranged attacks? Kill off those pesky crossbow-building gnomes. Want some allied help? Free the imprisoned warriors from the barracks branch and they'll appear on Fortress:1 to provide backup!
I'm hoping the new gameplay dynamics draw away from the 'Crawl clone' feeling, potentially giving veteran roguelike players a familiar environment with new tools and mechanics to abuse. :>
