Author Topic: Villain-based Roguelikes?  (Read 13145 times)

Happy Corner

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Villain-based Roguelikes?
« on: December 21, 2010, 05:05:04 AM »
In most roguelikes, your character is the good guy, or at least NOT the force of evil that's threatening the land. How many RLs are there where you can play the bad guy?

Rogue Survivor is a good example, where you can play a zombie and score points by killing humans instead of surviving the longest. Or arguably Prospector, if you start as a pirate (attacking/looting merchant ships instead of exploring planets). If it hadn't been a hoax, the Serial Killer RL would've counted, too.

What would be some other examples?

Note that I wouldn't necessarily count RLs that simply have "evil" classes/races (ie chaos knights in Dungeon Crawl, much as I love that game). Many games have those, but in most of them, you still have the same goal, face the same dungeon, and score points for the same things normal characters do, you just have a different set of tools and handicaps to work with (if even that). I'm curious about examples that change the game experience more drastically.

Skeletor

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Re: Villain-based Roguelikes?
« Reply #1 on: December 21, 2010, 06:42:11 AM »
http://www.gruesomegames.com/

In Gruesome you play the grue, lurking in shadows and eating adventurers.
Explore randomly generated caverns populated with wandering adventurers,
trying to avoid the light of their torches and grabbing a bite to eat when
possible.  You can't directly move into adventurers - either hang around
hoping they'll stumble into you, or snuff out their torches with a shadow
ball spell.


What I enjoy the most in roguelikes: Anti-Farming and Mac Givering my way out. Kind of what I also enjoy in life.

kipar

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Re: Villain-based Roguelikes?
« Reply #2 on: December 21, 2010, 07:42:22 AM »
There are also:

City of the condemned 7DRL(http://tapio.github.com/cotc/)
Bone to be wild (mod for ToME3, but I can't find the link)
Kobolds Quest (it's actually an anti-roguelike, where 'k' kills '@') http://bay12games.com/games/

Sadly, all of them are pretty short.

Z

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Re: Villain-based Roguelikes?
« Reply #3 on: December 21, 2010, 09:28:16 AM »
From the database:

ADOM - I think it does not satisfy your requirements, but anyway, you can pick other quests when playing a bad guy, and have a different ending, so it is not exactly the same

Decker - not a roguelike IMO, but anyway, your character is a criminal, so I think it could count

Get Out - added for completeness but probably does not count, because that's just a thief, not any greater evil (also very simple)

Save Scummer - evil, isn't it? ;)

Ancient

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Re: Villain-based Roguelikes?
« Reply #4 on: December 21, 2010, 02:31:14 PM »
There are few more.
From actively developing roguelikes list:

You can go pirate and befriend pirates in Ascii Sector (not exactly roguelike though) killing merchants and fighting Confederation.

In Bone to be Wild you are undead who kills to collect souls. Especially valuable are innocent souls. You need to download ToME4 and find it in modules.

Smart Kobold actually pictures you as evil adventurer who raids poor Kobolds for their gold. You can be a monster and kill baby kobolds. This despicable act changes their behavior.

As evil necromancer you go to find ancient artifact ... with which you will overrun the city with undead and take your revenge for them casting you out. Play Bane of the Living.

As a Floating Eye (Warning! This link leads directly to .jar file download) you trick adventurers into hitting you so that they get paralyzed and eaten by conveniently appearing grid bugs and newts.

You can play role of rogue wikipedia administrator in The Rougelike. You delete good articles, trash userboxes, insult others and occasionally do some good action so people do not force you out. Do not touch Jimbo. He's effectively invulnerable.

Xenocide does not qualify by your definition since game is the same no matter what but the Genetic Machine allows you to turn yourself into a true monster complete with tentacles and chitinous carapace. Worthy of a villain.

Finally, I, Monster puts you into a role of monsters defending the dungeon from a hero.

edit: fixed I, Monster link
« Last Edit: January 07, 2011, 04:12:27 PM by Ancient »
Michał Bieliński, reviewer for Temple of the Roguelike

Happy Corner

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Re: Villain-based Roguelikes?
« Reply #5 on: December 23, 2010, 10:44:22 PM »
ADOM - I think it does not satisfy your requirements, but anyway, you can pick other quests when playing a bad guy, and have a different ending, so it is not exactly the same
I was actually debating whether to mention ADOM in my first post, given that going for an "ultra" ending (while not necessarily evil) does require you to go to a bunch of new locations to collect chaos artifacts and get severely corrupted (which you normally avoid like the plague).

Anyway, these are some great responses. There are even more games like this than I had expected!

Hananakajima

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Re: Villain-based Roguelikes?
« Reply #6 on: January 02, 2011, 01:43:53 PM »
i, monster sounds interesting, but the link is dead, what gives?

Ancient

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Re: Villain-based Roguelikes?
« Reply #7 on: January 07, 2011, 04:13:10 PM »
Ooops! Thank you for notifying. I just fixed it.
Michał Bieliński, reviewer for Temple of the Roguelike

Hananakajima

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Re: Villain-based Roguelikes?
« Reply #8 on: January 31, 2011, 02:00:58 PM »
indeed it works now, thx mate!