A roguelike itch

[Yegolev]

Tired of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.  Dwarf Fortress is just... what it is.  Nethack is too old.

Some mild googling turned up a list at some place called Temple of the Roguelike:

1. DoomRL: 227 votes

2. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup: 170 votes

3. Incursion: Halls of the Goblin King: 69 votes

4. POWDER: 48 votes

5. Elona: 32 votes

6. GearHead 2: 27 votes

7. Angband: 24 votes

8. Unangband: 21 votes

9. Privateer: ASCII Sector: 19 votes

10. Triangle Wizard: 18 votes

I'm not very encouraged by the top two titles.  I'm considering trying out some of the others, but I'm afraid that #3 might be a very distant third.  Then again, an ASCII Privateer?

I wonder if I am at the edge of a rabbit hole or if I'm just going to get very angry in a short amount of time.

[schild]

100 Rogues, iphone.

Shiren, Wii. You pick.

[Ard]

Incursion isn't a bad game, but it's a 100 different flavors of broken, varying by build.  It might be interesting if it ever gets finished.

If you never played it much, I highly suggest ADOM.  It was my favorite one of the pack from 10 years ago, and it still stands up fairly well.  It has some of nethacks need to have a faq to play stuff (mostly because for the first while you'll be confused as to where to go since it has an overland map), but once you get the general lay of the land down, you can pretty easily step away from that.

Otherwise, ditto schild on Shiren.

[lesion]

I liked Alphaman 'cause it's goofy. But I hate these games.

[Ingmar]

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon? 

If it were me, I would just play Nethack, so I guess I'm not much help.

[Aez]

Desktop Dungeon is a great roguelike/puzzle hybrid.

[Rasix]

Baroque 

[Ard]

I liked Alphaman 'cause it's goofy. But I hate these games.

God, I loved Alphaman.  I haven't seen it mentioned in like 10 years.  I never was able to live much more than 10 minutes in that game though.

[Vaiti]

This game I haven't played since the very first alpha's, but it impressed me then by covering alot ideas and mechanics I've been wanting to see in other games.

Prospector - http://code.google.com/p/rlprospector/

from the site

A roguelike in space

In an unexplored sector of space humanity is trying to establish a permanent presence. Megacorporations employ freelance prospectors to find exploitable resources and map unknown planets for them. The player commands one of those scoutships, trying to become filthy rich as a prospector.

Worth a look, games tend to be fairly short.... or they were for me. Million things to kill you pretty much instantly.

[Tebonas]

Let me second the ADOM recommendation even if some purists scoff at it because it isn't open source.

Tales of Middle Earth is basically Angband, but with a stronger Middle Earth theme than the original.

Or, if you want to go really oldschool Omega, where you start without a class, but can join different guilds with different prerequisites during the game. The character building is unique for a roguelike, but the game itself is horribly unbalanced and clearly shows its age.


A better overall link for Roguelikes:

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

[Ingmar]

ADOM is OK. The late midgame/endgame is kind of retarded but hey, it's a roguelike so you probably won't survive til then usually anyway.

Omega is a mess. And it should be noted an *unfinished* mess.

[Sparky]

Elona is pretty cool.  It's completely crazy and gives you a huge world to explore.  Has a cool system of jobs and tasks so if you don't fancy killing monsters you could farm or play piano for a living.  Just graphical enough to be a little more immersive than your average roguelike too.  You'll have to be fairly tolerant of anime shit to enjoy it though.

[Ollie]

Tried Elona on a whim. I found my social niche within the first 10 minutes, as I prostituted myself to a drunken innkeeper, contracting a disease in the process. The innkeeper was struck insane by the apparently stellar coitus and spent the next dozen or so turns confusedly bumping into objects and babbling inanely. He did pay me, though.

roguelikes. They have their moments.

[Yegolev]

100 Rogues, iphone.

Shiren, Wii. You pick.

I don't have an iPhone, so....

ADOM.  You know, I think I have that one laying around somewhere.  I don't remember why I stopped playing it.  I'll see if I can determine why.

I am taking some of these links into consideration.  I'd like to come back to this thread after a time and explain why any or all of these suck balls.

Baroque 

YEA I KNOW... but trying to branch out.  I'm not averse to the Japanese variants but that's not what I am looking for just now.  Same for Chocobo Mystery Dungeon and Torneko.

[Draegan]

I tried ADOM last week.  Looks great, to many control schemes to learn.  I don't have time for that complexity right now. 

[Yegolev]

Eh, I hope that wasn't it.  I am thinking bad controls might have been why I stopped.  I hate bad controls.

EDIT: I didn't play ZangbandTK because I could not figure out how to walk one step at a time.

[Threash]

Another vote for elona.  Quirky and fun and has decent graphics.

[schpain]

100 Rogues, iphone.

Shiren, Wii. You pick.

To be honest I much preferred irogue touch to 100 rogues. 100 rogues felt a little forgiving. Besides I can't think of a better way to die then being backed into a wall by a slime and in a last ditch attempt blowing your head off with an unidentified potion.

[Yegolev]

One of the reasons I got tired of DCSS was that instead of depth of play there was "I hope I don't find a OOD monster on this level".  This has its charm but that has worn off.  I'd like a more elaborate toolset for determining which items and equipment won't kill me, which is missing from DCSS.  I also don't know why I can't simply throw a potion at something rather than be limited to drinking it (entirely!) and hoping it doesn't paralyze me or set me on fire.

With a roguelike, I can be confident that such things are design decisions, and so I don't have to wait around for a bugfix.

[schpain]

Well I did try throwing potions at them on a subsequent character and found I was throwing potions of clairvoyance and healing at them. No winning and not enough ident scrolls.

[Hawkbit]

How's the Shiren DS game? 

[Quinton]

I finally got around to giving Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup a serious look (needed something to distract me for a bit while home sick) and wow, it's actually a pretty slick roguelike.  I've mostly played nethack before.

Things about DCSS that I'm enjoying:
- piles of UI enhancements -- I like the sidebar showing the nearby monsters "a - giant ant" etc, the nice visible stats in the upper right, the travel/explore options, etc
- some nice variety to dungeon design compared to classic hack/nethack rooms'n'tunnels
- the skill based gameplay is slick -- XP goes into a pool and then is spent to raise skills when you do things (combat, casting, stealth, etc)
- feels a little less brutal than nethack so far. almost every death has been attributable to carelessness on my part

[Soulflame]

Shiren DS isn't too bad.  It's a pretty brutal rogue-like.

[Yegolev]

I have not had much free time lately but the next one I try will be AliensRL.  Seems different enough and MAYBE a bit X-COMy.

[Ironwood]

That's....fairly awful.

[Kageru]

I enjoyed Zangband enough to beat it waaaay back.. might have to try the stone soup one. Save it for the netbook while on holiday I think.