2011-02-20, 03:35 PM
I've never seen a roguelike discussion here so I decided to take the initiative.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Shiren the Wanderer, Izuki: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja, etc, would all be considered roguelikes, though non-traditional. Features indicative of a roguelike include:
-a top down perspective of a dungeon
-turn based gameplay
-randomly generated dungeons
-a heavy emphasis on exploring unknown parts of the dungeon and exploring what unknown items do
-permanent death. when you die, you start a new game.
-high difficulty, which lends to the high satisfaction the genre gives
Traditional roguelikes also adopt an ASCII motif (although there are graphical tileset mods available to most, and some roguelikes are developed with a graphical tileset), therefore letting the players imagination take over. A sample follows.
I'm kinda tired of typing so I'll just go ahead and give some examples.
Desktop Dungeons. A more-casual (relative to more hardcore games like NetHack, Dwarf Fortress, and AngBand) roguelike, games typically last from 10 to 15 minutes. Designed as a "coffee-break roguelike", and as such, serves as a good first roguelike. Four starting classes, 14 unlockable classes, three dungeon modes, one campaign mode, and four challenge modes. The website has an active wiki and community, and the game is nominated in the current IGF awards for Indie Game of the Year, among other things.
NetHack. One of the most influential and widely played roguelikes to date. Developed in 1987, the game has a de facto story, many dungeons, races, monsters, items, etc, and offers a fair amount of difficult and playtime (games usually last upwards of 8 hours). This should be your first real roguelike and trust me, you'll be glad you did.
From there, you can probably find other roguelikes you'd be interested on RogueBasin.
So after an obligatory introductory post, hopefully there's some other people around here who play roguelikes too o:
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Shiren the Wanderer, Izuki: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja, etc, would all be considered roguelikes, though non-traditional. Features indicative of a roguelike include:
-a top down perspective of a dungeon
-turn based gameplay
-randomly generated dungeons
-a heavy emphasis on exploring unknown parts of the dungeon and exploring what unknown items do
-permanent death. when you die, you start a new game.
-high difficulty, which lends to the high satisfaction the genre gives
Traditional roguelikes also adopt an ASCII motif (although there are graphical tileset mods available to most, and some roguelikes are developed with a graphical tileset), therefore letting the players imagination take over. A sample follows.
Code:
------ - Wall
|....| ############ # Unlit hallway
|....| # # . Lit area
|.$..+######## # $ Some quantity of gold
|....| # ---+--- + A door
------ # |.....| | Wall
# |.!...| ! A magic potion
# |.....|
# |..@..| @ The adventurer
---- # |.....|
|..| #######+..D..| D A red dragon
|<.+### # |.....| < Stairs to a higher level
---- # # |.?...| ? A magic scroll
###### -------I'm kinda tired of typing so I'll just go ahead and give some examples.
Desktop Dungeons. A more-casual (relative to more hardcore games like NetHack, Dwarf Fortress, and AngBand) roguelike, games typically last from 10 to 15 minutes. Designed as a "coffee-break roguelike", and as such, serves as a good first roguelike. Four starting classes, 14 unlockable classes, three dungeon modes, one campaign mode, and four challenge modes. The website has an active wiki and community, and the game is nominated in the current IGF awards for Indie Game of the Year, among other things.
NetHack. One of the most influential and widely played roguelikes to date. Developed in 1987, the game has a de facto story, many dungeons, races, monsters, items, etc, and offers a fair amount of difficult and playtime (games usually last upwards of 8 hours). This should be your first real roguelike and trust me, you'll be glad you did.
From there, you can probably find other roguelikes you'd be interested on RogueBasin.
So after an obligatory introductory post, hopefully there's some other people around here who play roguelikes too o:
