roguelikes

[simple man]

the comic got me interested in the imaginary fourm. what are they?

[Alex]

Re: roguelikes

Look it up?

[Toaster]

Re: roguelikes

What do you think this is, the library? olol

Asking him to LOOK IT UP.

[simple man]

Re: roguelikes

ok... is there any console or handheld rougelikes?

[Alex]

Re: roguelikes

There's five.

[Toaster]

Re: roguelikes

Exactly five.

[simple man]

Re: roguelikes

names?

[Valkysas]

Re: roguelikes

google.

[Alex]

Re: roguelikes

Roguelike, Roguelike 2, Roguelike 3, Roguelike 4, and Roguelike 6. In Japan, it's Roguelike 5.

[Perversion]

Re: roguelikes

ok... is there any console or handheld rougelikes?

Well, Imagine Fashion Designer might be one. Or Imagine Makeup Artist. Or Imagine Working in a Mall Kiosk, Trying to Sell Fat Rich Women Overpriced Cosmetics By Being Cloying and Fake. So, yeah. I'm pretty sure those might be rougelikes.



On a serious note, why is the roguelike genre all of a sudden the IN buzzword? From what I understand, they've always been popular in Japan, but have only recently begun making inroads in America. Is this one of those, "I'm more hardcore than you, because I play roguelikes?" things?


In any case, simple man, for something in that genre (and I've read kinda BARELY in that genre) that might be your speed, I'd say try Pokemon Mystery Dungeon or Chocobo Dungeon of Simple Things or whatever the hell it's called.

[marcus]

Re: roguelikes

the comic got me interested in the imaginary fourm. what are they?

A roguelike is a genre of games usually categorized by the following things:

* A randomly generated character
* Simple ASCII graphics or square based tiles
* A randomly generated dungeon with randomized monsters and items
* A single goal that usually consists of "Get to the bottom of the dungeon without dying"
* Death is permanent meaning once you die, your save is erased

Roguelikes inspired the modern pc hack and slash games especially Diablo which is pretty much a watered down roguelike with a story and pregenerated characters (Nightmare mode in Diablo 2 is closest to the roguelike tradition). Roguelikes are usually incredibly simple in design but more complex than any game in their execution. For example, in most games walking down the stairs while carrying heavy objects might cause you to slip and break your neck. Cutting the head off a cockatrice lets you use the head against enemies and turn them into stone. Rubbing a lamp will make a genie pop out but if you have to be specific with your wish (saying something like "I wish I was on another floor" might transport you back to the top floor).

ok... is there any console or handheld rougelikes?

There's a couple but not in the traditional sense.

You have hack and slash random games in general like Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance, Diablo, Sacred, Titan Quest, etc. which take the random aspect of roguelikes and make them more friendly for casual gamers. As far as true console/handheld roguelikes you've got:

* Powder (a free roguelike for the DS/PSP/PC/GBA)
* Fushigi no Dungeon series (translates to Mystery Dungeon which is essential Japan's take on roguelikes like Tower of Druaga, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, and several others from various different series)
* Baroque

Roguelike classics like Rogue, NetHack, and Angband have been ported to the PSP and DS.

On a serious note, why is the roguelike genre all of a sudden the IN buzzword? From what I understand, they've always been popular in Japan, but have only recently begun making inroads in America.

You've got that flipped around. They've always been popular in America and only recently got popular in Japan (the first Japanese roguelike, a Dragon Quest spinoff, came out in 1993). Rogue, the game that created the genre, came out in 1980 and had some 400,000 players (mainly college kids) who downloaded the game over usenet. It was basically a virtual Dungeons and Dragons and people would chat about how close they got to beating the game or whatever.

Now then, I bet you're wondering "What do I play?" Well, here's a list of my favorites.

Rogue The 1980s game that started it all. Recommend you play here if you're a newcomer as it will introduce you to concepts in other roguelikes (particularly how to "visualize" the graphics and not making hasty decisions)

NetHack This game is kind of like the Final Fantasy of roguelikes in that it's one of the most popular ones and got casual players to check the genre out. It offers you EBTKS (roguelike-ese for Everything but the Kitchen Sink)

Angband A derivative of Moria and a game that spawned countless variants, Angband provides a much more serious and fantasy oriented approach (as opposed to roguelike tradition of being really goofy).

Ancient Domains of Mystery ADOM is the first (one of the first?) roguelikes to provide a unchanging worldmap with random dungeons. You can get quests and stuff so it's one of the first that blends traditional rpg's with roguelikes.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup The best variant of the original Crawl, this game offers you EATKS (rogulike-ese for Everything and the Kitchen Sink).

Iter Vehemens ad Necem Not my favorite roguelike but it's definitely the bloodiest and most ridiculous. I love coughing and suddenly having my leg fall off.

Dwarf Fortress It's basically The Sims the Roguelike. By far not the most intuitive roguelike but once you actually learn how to play the game (it's not as difficult as it looks and I'm currently writing a tutorial that doesn't suck) it will steal your time away.

Elona A recently translated Japanese roguelike, it's incredibly ridiculously weird. In one game, my little girl slave drank from a well, got pregnant, then an alien burst out of her stomach and killed all the villagers. This kind of emergent gameplay is what makes roguelikes fun.

I think that's everything off the top of my head. There's dozens of other ones but some I don't recommend to newbies especially like Incursion which is the hardest roguelike I've ever played.

If you don't like the graphics, each game usually has a huge bunch of fan released tiles but I seriously recommend playing with the original ASCII graphics as it's more fun to envision your "@" as a fully decked out hero with battle scars and a glowing gem encrusted emerald sword.

[Duel]

Re: roguelikes

Roguelikes?

What a horrible title!

[hitogoroshi]

Re: roguelikes

Angband is my favorite one, though Jase swears by Dwarf Fortress.

My current character is Pell the XXVI. (For those uninitiated to roguelike-ese, you add a roman numeral each time your character dies. So this is Pell's 26th time through the meat grinder.)

[Loki]

Re: roguelikes

There's been quite a few new ones recently. There's the Pokemon Mysterious Dungon games. They're like rougelike light. There's Izuna: The Unemployed Ninja. I hear that 2 is much better than 1. Shirin, The Wanderer is generally considered the best on the DS. It's really hard but also super fun. And Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon just was released for the Wii. I haven't had a chance to play it yet but it's supposted to be a lot of fun.

[Big Rick Cook]

Re: roguelikes

Why am I just now hearing about these "roguelikes"?