Posted by Derek Yu
Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:16:00 GMT
Yes! New Dwarf Fortress release. Actually, two releases – the second version (39b) patches up a lot of bugs that were found by players in 39a, including a nasty (and kind of hilarious) bug that caused dwarfs to sleep indefinitely.
The biggest changes to the game are in World Generation. Heroes will duel with heroes, civilizations will wage bloody wars against one another, and megabeasts like titans and dragons will roam the earth, hunting and being hunted… all in savage detail that is readily available to you in Legends mode (see the screenshot above). Jeez. Thousands of yarns spun before the game even starts!
Not only that, but you can create your own worlds using an in-game editor.
Boy, the mind reels at the idea of a fantasy world whose in-game history is enriched by the depth of these “real-life” adventures. It’s nuts. I love it. Be sure to read Tarn’s development journal for more insight into the new features.
TIGdb: Entry for Dwarf Fortress
Posted in Highly Recommended, Roguelikes, Windows, Strategy, Freeware | Tags TarnAdams | 33 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:52:00 GMT
The Doryen Arena
The Chronicles of Doryen is an experimental roguelike-in-development that touts “real-time gameplay” and “2.5d perspective” (i.e. limited z-axis) as two of its biggest features. While some might argue over whether the game’s real-time gameplay discounts the game as a roguelike… well, who really cares! The important thing is that the characters in the game are represented by (very colorful and pretty) letters, numbers, and the ever-present ”@” symbol.
There’s no playable version yet, but you can see a video of the game in action, or follow the blog (which is updated fairly regularly). The developer, J.C. Wilk, has also released a sub-game, called The Doryen Arena, that lets you test out Doryen’s combat system in a gladiatorial setting. In the arena you face off against waves of increasingly stronger opponents until you meet an appropriately grisly demise.
As simple as it is (and still v0.5), TDA definitely shows off some of the potential of the real-time thing. It still feels like a roguelike despite having a basic, timing-based combo system(!). I’m interested to see where it goes from here! A multiplayer roguelike with this system seems like it could work!
(C/C++ roguelike developers may also be interested in The Doryen Library.)
Thanks, Xion!
Posted in Roguelikes, Linux, Windows, Freeware, Previews | 10 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Fri, 02 May 2008 06:45:00 GMT
Yeah, torture motherfucka what?
From the mad minds behind Barkley, Shut up and Jam: Gaiden comes an all-new adventure – The Sewer Goblet: The Wu-Tang Clan and the Wu-Tang Baby! As the story goes, The Wizard stole the Wu-Tang Baby and fled into the sewers. You must send one of the Wu-Tang Clan into the dungeon and bring the baby back! Along the way you’ll tangle with Teknodwarfs, Baby Seals, and other unsavory characters.
The Sewer Goblet gets a lot of credit as the first rap-themed roguelike game, but doesn’t do too much to innovate the genre in general. Equip weapons, learn spells, manage your hunger (in TSG, every action costs hunger points), eat Wu-Tang snacks with randomized effects, etc. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing – it’s a solid dungeon crawl that’s easy to get into and somehow it never quite gets tiring bringing “da ruckus” as the Wu Tang Clan. Each member has his own special abilities that will aid you on your quest.
Now, all someone has to do is make a gory Bone Thugs-n-Harmony RPG set in an alternate reality Cleveland and I’ll be set!
(Source: Tim, via the IndieGames.com blog)
Posted in Unique / Bizarre, Roguelikes, Windows, Freeware | Tags TalesOfGamesStudios | 10 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:31:00 GMT
POWDER’s been around for quite a while, but I noticed it just hit version 1.0 this year, so I took it for a spin (it’s currently at version 1.04)! The developer, Jeff Lait, created it so he could have a roguelike to play on his Gameboy Advance, and primitive versions of the game were only available for that platform. Now, however, you can also play the game on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, DS, and even PSP!
POWDER is a graphical roguelike, and it’s much smaller in scope than most games in the genre (which typically try to throw the proverbial or literal kitchen sink in there). The game also includes a mouse-driven interface and a tutorial that walks you through the basics, so I’d recommend it readily to beginners… and to veterans of the genre, too! If you’re looking for some lighter fare (or something to play on the go). It’s quite fun.
But be warned… there’s no diagonal movement!
(Source: Slashie, via Rogue Temple)
Posted in Mobile / Handheld, Macintosh, Highly Recommended, Roguelikes, Linux, Windows, Freeware | Tags JeffLait | 22 comments
Posted by Guest Reviewer
Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:10:00 GMT
[Guest review by gnawingonfoot. Thanks!]
Jim DuBois, the guy behind Arcane Journeys, has released two upgraded Windows ports of his Palm games. While he’s just now getting around to releasing Windows versions, I’ve been a huge fan of his Palm stuff for several years now, and I’d love to see him get some more exposure. His are among the few games for Palm that don’t play like casual shlock. They’re very original and interesting, though I think some better pixel art wouldn’t hurt them.
Angelus the Necromancer feels and plays like a slimmed down roguelike, but I’ve never actually seen it discussed within the roguelike community, so I don’t know whether or not that term actually fits. The game certainly shares the difficulty of most major roguelike games, but this is a lot shorter.
Adventure Solitaire sounds bland, but it is easily the best game I’ve ever played on my Palm. It’s a mish-mash of strategy and puzzle in the sense that it has the depth and diversity of a typical strategy game and the presentation and gameplay of a puzzle game. I bought the Windows version as soon as it was released because it is just that amazing!
Demos are available for both games, but unfortunately they feel really limited, especially the Adventure Solitaire one. I’m tempted to write the guy and tell him that he needs to open the games up a bit more if he wants people to like them enough to buy them. But that aside, both are worth checking out, especially Adventure Solitaire.
Posted in Mobile / Handheld, Roguelikes, Puzzle, Windows | Tags ArcaneJourneys | 4 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:49:00 GMT
Thomas Biskup has released some screenshots and a video of JADE, the sequel to his popular roguelike, Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM). While the video isn’t terribly exciting, it does show off the game’s awesome zoom feature, which is used to great effect to reveal a massive human settlement.
In his post, Biskup admits the game (currently at version 0.0.7), is “woefully incomplete” and that he intends to shift gears soon and focus on gameplay issues over engine improvements.
Posted in Roguelikes, Previews | Tags ThomasBiskup | 6 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Tue, 18 Mar 2008 04:20:00 GMT
The results of this year’s Seven Day Roguelike Competition are in! There were 23 entrants in total, 9 of whom successfully completed their roguelike.
Some of the games are really interesting and well-executed, like Fatherhood (pictured above), a RL which has you damming up floods while taking care of your three rambunctious children. There’s also Numbers, an educational roguelike where you solve math problems to defeat monsters like the Pithon and the Minussaur.
Thanks to Slashie of Rogue Temple for the info. And be sure to check out his entry, MegamanRL, which I believe is the first side-scrolling platformer roguelike ever made?!
Posted in Roguelikes, Developers, Competitions | Tags Slash | 6 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Mon, 03 Mar 2008 10:18:00 GMT
Finally got around to reading this Gamasutra interview with Dwarf Fortress co-creator Tarn Adams (the other half being his brother, Zach). It’s a really great read that covers a lot of Dwarf Fortress’s history and pre-history, and also gets into a lot of geeky stuff like pathfinding and fluid dynamics.
But this is the best part:
What’s left to answer is why’d we be so into doing a fantasy game. That’s probably the same as everybody else: Tolkien, D&D, myths, and of course, the movie
Beastmaster. (We like the part where the evil priest is like, “You’ll be sacrificed to ‘The God of AAaa,’” like they didn’t even bother thinking of a name, just powering through on the power of their badassedness.) But there were all kinds of things like that. In the movies, books, the arcade, PC, consoles, we were surrounded by that sort of thing.
Yes, frickin’ Beastmaster! I love that movie! I love you guys!
The image depicts YADFA (Yet Another Dwarf Fortress Anecdote), from DF forum member goldminer:
Its [sic] pretty fun to capture invaders and then devise crazy ways of getting rid of them. My current method happens to be a gold arena over an active volcano with an enraged bronze colossus. Goblins get dumped in through a hole from above.
Every year or so, the dwarves lower the bridge, re-capture the colossus and ‘clean’ the arena for future use. I had to build walls around the arena because too much precious iron was getting thrown into the magma.
Via this DF forum thread.
Posted in Roguelikes, Community, Interviews | Tags TarnAdams | 7 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Sat, 16 Feb 2008 14:15:00 GMT
I don’t usually post about each new DF release, but I wanted to point your attention to creator Tarn Adams’s post with the release. Recently, he’s been adding infrastructure to support religion for all the races, and he wrote a mini-story about one of his encounters at a goblin temple.
It’s not often that Tarn writes in length about his personal experiences within the game, so… I’ll transcribe it here for you, after the jump. It’s pretty awesome.
Read more...
Posted in Roguelikes, Community, Windows, Freeware | Tags TarnAdams | 12 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:50:00 GMT
After what seems like an eternity of reticence, ADOM / JADE developer Thomas Biskup has revamped his website by adding a more community-friendly blog, and announced that he is resuming work on JADE, his spiritual sequel to the Roguelike classic, ADOM. Regular updates are to be expected in 2008.
It’s great to hear that he’s back at work, although one has to wonder… since the announcement of JADE many moons ago, Dwarf Fortress has taken the spotlight and already has many of the features that made JADE sound brilliant then (e.g. insane attention to detail in world generation and character interaction), and more. Especially now that Tarn is working on DF full-time, the race to create the most massive, detail-oriented Roguelike seems already won.
Not that there really is a race – if JADE can provide a great single character dungeon crawl and the controls and interface are both extremely intuitive (graphics, plz?), then I can make room for it in the tiny, black chunk of frozen garbage that is my heart.
(Source: Slash, via Rogue Temple)
Posted in Roguelikes, Community | Tags ThomasBiskup | 10 comments
We're drawing robots in the forums. 
