glorg

[radad]

I came across glorg recently as was interested what this community thought about it as a roguelike.

It really boils down the genre to the ultimate in simplicity. It does keeps the essentials of the roguelike/rpg. The battle system though is reduced to timing rather than tactics.

I was wondering though is this too simple? Is this simply a caricuture or does it represent a real roguelike.

I actually found it fun to play but I find a lot of roguelikes too complicated to get into. It does highlight the repetitive nature I find in most roguelikes that ultimately ends in frustration for me. I like the idea of them but I feel there should be something more to them.

[Ancient]

Glorg is a roguelike? Don't make me laugh. It is a twitch game. You cannot even choose not to use a medikit when low on health because your XP bar is almost filled and after winning next fight you will get healed for free.

There is no exploration system. I mean it. Click to explore this room and maybe get an encounter and/or treasure or maybe not. This linearity kills with boredom. No tactics, no choice, no meaningful character development ... Sure, it has stats and levels. But this alone does not make a roguelike. If fights were made turn based and with choices (charge attack, block, flee) you could have a point. Glorg is so mediocre I am happy its not a RL. Not even the essentials are included ... but at least there is permafailure.


So you have trouble getting into roguelikes, huh? Try DiabloRL. It is repetitive and perhaps will not scare you right away. DoomRL is much better (and harder) but no two games feel the same.

[Fenrir]

In Glorg, the only place where pressing a button really matters is in combat. Everything else the developer should have made happen automatically. With that and a little more variety in the enemies, and a shorter game length, Glorg might actually be a decent game, but it isn't at all a roguelike. It's more a shallow mockery of the same.

[radad]

I agree, glorg has no depth.

When exploring in a roguelike and you come across a choice in path, there is nothing to distinguish the choice. You have no prior knowledge to help make a decision. Both paths offer the same random occurances. Where is the fun in the decision when the choice in arbritrary? Exploration in most roguelikes *feel* like the choice for exploration given in glorg.

I have played DoomRL. I used to enjoy up until the traits were added. Then I lost interest, it was too hard to get into. Thats probably because of my limited time to play it. It was no longer a "coffe cup" game for me.

[Fenrir]

If roguelikes have arbitrary choices (which is completely incorrect, by the way), what makes them "too complicated" for you?

[radad]

That arbitrary choice was in respect to exploration. If thats not true then what decision process do you use to decide which path to take? What factors do you take into account?

One area I find too complicated is the number of weapon choices that seem to have little difference between them. It makes the decision of which weapon to keep a chore.

[Skeletor]

This game just sucks.
It lacks roguelikeness at all.

[Ancient]

That arbitrary choice was in respect to exploration. If thats not true then what decision process do you use to decide which path to take? What factors do you take into account?

My equipment, strengths and weaknesses, known spells ... really a lot of factors. It depends the most on map layout. Here's an example:


    #######
    #.....#####
#####........
..........##
#####.....#
    #..@..####..
    #...........
    ###.######..
      #.#
      #.#
      #.#

Assuming I came from south I would venture south-east now because I see a room there. Being a warrior I dislike being caught in middle of a tunnel by an archer because that will force me to take few arrows to the face. And if its a dragon? Few breathes might be not as survivable. If I am an archer cooridors are good places most of the time.

In caves I try to stick to walls with my melee characters because this lowers number of creatures that can swarm me. With spellcasters I wade though middle of open areas hoping to amass critters so that I can blast as many of them as possible with a single area-of-effect attack.

In ZapM I leave dark rooms for later preferring to go around whenever possible.There may be a facehugger hiding to jump at you out of darkness.

In Rogue I try to guess map layout to minimize backtracking. Food is important.

One area I find too complicated is the number of weapon choices that seem to have little difference between them. It makes the decision of which weapon to keep a chore.

If you know they have little difference why bother with detailed analysis? Pick one at random. Crawl is especially guilty of this. Weapons having damage with attack delay plus unclear skill bonuses make for a frustrating choice. I ignore that and pick weapon with neatest name. :-)

[Slash]

I find the game to be a fun sarcasm and critic of roguelikes and dungeon crawlers. It also looks pretty cute

[Darknoon]

Well, you have to say that glorg pretty much takes the 'wander through corridors into rooms' and strips it down to what that is, ie, wandering through corridors into rooms.

Despite there being complicated rogue likes out there, in them your still essentially doing that.

[Fenrir]

Right, except for the fact that tactics matter in roguelikes -- where the player stands and how he moves in combat matters. In order to have a place to stand and someplace to move requires that there be a map with two dimensions, something that Glorg DOES NOT HAVE. Glorg selects your opponent for you while fixing you in front of it, and, in so doing, denies you a key facet of roguelike gameplay. A roguelike player that has any chance of winning will avoid enemies he can't defeat and, when he does fight, position himself well. The original poster obviously hasn't played roguelikes enough to realize how important that is, which is probably why they're so frustrating for him.

[Darknoon]

Well, possibly I haven't played enough roguelikes either. But another possiblity is that alot of the time particular tile postion doesn't matter at all. Like say theres gold in the top left corner of a room - you walk over and get it and...that's it. That's no different from Glorg's one click exploration, really - in fact it requires more key presses for the same result.

Or say your walking through a room and out of the darkened corridor at the end some monster suddenly appears from the darkness. Well, it's as fast as you, so poof, your in combat. Same as glorg.

You can end up in some serious, chess like manouvering in a roguelike, totally. But how often is is - what percentage of time spent playing is that complex and what percentage of time spent playing is Glorg-like? It's a difficult question.

[ido]

This game just sucks.
It lacks roguelikeness at all.

I agree it isn't at all a roguelike (I'd say it's a very minimalistic dungeon crawler), but I think the author's point was to explore what is doable in a 1-button game & I think the game is very good in that context.

[Ancient]

Well, possibly I haven't played enough roguelikes either. But another possiblity is that alot of the time particular tile postion doesn't matter at all. Like say theres gold in the top left corner of a room - you walk over and get it and...that's it. That's no different from Glorg's one click exploration, really - in fact it requires more key presses for the same result.

Lets change gold to large medikit in DoomRL. It sits there in the corner but look! There is a door in the north wall. Walking straight to medikit is stupid. You should either move cardinally to the door with spread weapons and perpendicularly close at the medikit if you heard baron/knight howl because you want to dodge first surprise shot. If it does not matter how you explore a room the roguelike game in question has not yet reached maturity.

Or say your walking through a room and out of the darkened corridor at the end some monster suddenly appears from the darkness. Well, it's as fast as you, so poof, your in combat. Same as glorg.

In old Rogue it is like that. In newer games it is your fault for not bringing lantern and thus your failure to take advantage of positioning possibilities. All very unlike Glorg.

You can end up in some serious, chess like manouvering in a roguelike, totally. But how often is is - what percentage of time spent playing is that complex and what percentage of time spent playing is Glorg-like? It's a difficult question.

Perhaps it is. I suggest you play DoomRL on Nightmare difficulty, Toby the Trapper, ChessRogue with extended pieces. These will punish you for careless adventuring 95% of the time. Have you heard about autoexplore woes in Crawl? Many players detested it at first because it explored levels without positioning player character well and thus wasting many advantages of sighting a monster early. Sometimes even it put the player right in front of a giant spiked club wielding hungry ogre.

My point is when a game approaches Glorg with playing style it distances itself from roguelike qualities.

[Darknoon]

I'm thinking of nethack mostly, and there are quite a few rooms where you saunter over and that's it. It's different latter in nethack, but glorg isn't that long either. In terms of the earlier levels of nethack, glorg isn't far off from what is 80% of the early nethack play.

It sounds true that glorg is not a doomrl-like.