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roguelikes and lemmy (lemmy.one)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Grenfur@lemmy.one to c/gaming

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Hello friends! Is there a lemmy community for roguelikes? I am, in this case, looking for a place focused on more traditional roguelikes (DCSS, CCDDA, BROGUE, etc)

If there isn't one, no worries, send me you're favorite unknown traditional roguelikes. I'll tell you mine. It's called "Empires of Eradia" it's a more open combat focused RL with a unique twist on permadeath. It's got great crafting and a strong focus on risk reward.

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[–] donio 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Played Nethack for many years but switched to Crawl eventually. Lately I've been playing Brogue too. Never ascended in any of them but that doesn't keep me from enjoying them.

Must have: HJKL navigation (including diagonal). Big plus: terminal mode. Not a fan of tiles but I've grown to like Brogue's hybrid approach. I think I am ok with it because it's done so tastefully.
I've gotten spoiled by auto-explore and other travel aids in Crawl and Brogue, hard to go back to Nethack now. I am sure there are some variants that have it, I will look around at some point.

For a while I played Nethack using an Emacs interface, that was pretty neat but it hasn't kept up with later versions.

A few communities I am finding on https://browse.feddit.de/:
https://lemmy.world/c/roguelikedev
https://lemmy.sdf.org/c/nethack
https://lemmy.world/c/crawl
https://lemmy.world/c/dcss

[–] Denaton@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I am developer of a roguelike game and i was looking too for a community for it, thanks for sharing!

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[–] Grenfur@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You know, I never got into nethack. I can appreciate it's complexity but it seems just a little too much for me. I've played well over my fair share of crawl though. I don't mind tiles so much when done well but ascii is just as good.

I must admit I'm spoiled not only to auto explore but also to the numpad... dcss always hit that perfect balance of an auto that was fluid and purposeful without diving you into weird situations and feeling inadequate (looking at you Qud, I love your game but your autoexplore is garbage).

I guess I may have to check out nethack again though. Thanks for the suggestion!

Eyy!! Just saw the edit! No idea why those didn't show up when I looked! Thanks you very kindly!

[–] shapesandstuff@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

quick Q since I keep reading about it, are Crawl and DCSS the same thing?

[–] Grenfur@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They are.

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[–] Ascyron@lemmy.one 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Interested! My first roguelike was, well, rogue. Never got overly into it, but spent many many hours playing ADOM, nethack, and others. I hope there's a community already, and if not, let's make one!

[–] kresten@feddit.dk 5 points 1 year ago (11 children)

That's the spirit. I've played dead cells and rouge legacy

[–] Grenfur@lemmy.one 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Both excellent games. Though not entirely what I'm looking for. If you've never had the experience of a traditional roguelike I would HIGHLY recommend Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It's free and has a tile version, and can even be played directly in your browser. It's complex and unforgiving at first but an excellent intro to the genre. And when it does start to click its one of the most well paced RLs I've ever played.

[–] kresten@feddit.dk 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I didn't realize you said 'roguelikes' at first 😅 I'm more into roguelites I'll admit. Is Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup a -lite or -like?

[–] Denaton@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A good way to tell between -lite and -like is that lite you get stronger (ex. Stats increase) between runs while -like only unlocks new content.

[–] donio 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Another one: if it needs a pause button it's 'lite.

(I am willing to give Necrodancer an honorary pass)

[–] Grenfur@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

I would absolutely give Necrodancer a pass as well!

[–] kresten@feddit.dk 2 points 1 year ago

Oh, that's a good rule of thumb

[–] tal@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The definition isn't an absolutely hard one, but I think that DCSS would be pretty uncontroversially a roguelike.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike

See the section on "Berlin Interpretation", which is one commonly-used set of factors to determine whether something is a roguelike.

[–] Grenfur@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

I have a love/hate with the Berlin Interpretation. While I certainly prefer my RLs that way, I think some times it gets used to gatekeep excellent RLs kind of on the fringe of the interpretation.

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[–] Grenfur@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

No worries at all! While I personally prefer the more traditional RLs, I know that's not everyone's thing.

DCSS is definitely -like. But it's not terribly hard to grasp and can be an incredibly fun time if you don't mind failure.

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[–] Grenfur@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

I've never even touched rogue actually. Played quite a bit of ADOM though. Definitely a good time :). Also there's a post up above with links to RL communities :)

[–] sorrowl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Would love a roguelike community somewhere here. My favourite one is definetly Tales of Maj'Eyal, but that's not really unknown, so I would recommend Approaching Infinity. It's a space faring roguelike where you fly a spaceship and exolore planets, stations and such. It gets tons of updates and has a story too, which is nice.

[–] Grenfur@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

Yoo Approaching Infinity is great! The duality of the Ship and Away Team is done so well! They really kind of break up the gameplay loop into distinct bites. Definitely a great dame.

[–] mister155@lemmy.fmhy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I didn't know about Approaching Infinity, and it definitely is something I'll enjoy a lot! Thanks!

[–] shapesandstuff@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago

My first real foray into roguelikes was Nethack.

Absolutely overwhelming but bit by bit i figured out the controls and found a decent android client to mess around in.

Never ascended, but had some good runs :)

[–] ram@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

DragonFangZ is a cute, anime themed traditional roguelike that's noteworthy for its cute chibi artstyle, and its rather poor localization. It's not bad in that the translation choices are bad, but in that the person who did the translation, they did their best and it's really endearing!

The gimmick of this game is the Fang system, wherein sometimes when you kill a monster, they'll drop a "Fang" which can be consumed for a permanent upgrade, or equipped for access to an ability. These are themed around the monster the Fang dropped from and can be combined. Further, there's the Brave system that incentivizes players to leave corridors and battle with 8 spaces surrounding them for an attack boost.

Overall, it's a really sweet and endearing game, and I wish more people would give it a shot!

[–] supergrizzlybear@pawb.social 5 points 1 year ago

I've had it on my switch wish list for a while but never picked it up because it just didn't look as good as Shiren the Wanderer (which is excellent), but your comment has convinced me to give it a try, thanks!

[–] Grenfur@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

I've actually never heard of this one! Definitely worth a look.

Both the Fang and Brave system sound great. Particularly the later since you generally DONT want to fight in the open like that in RLs. What a cool idea!

[–] tal@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

send me you're favorite unknown traditional roguelikes.

My favorite roguelikes are probably pretty well-known roguelikes.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. You listed this one.
Caves of Qud

The ones that I've probably spent the most time on that someone today might not have played are mainly because they're pretty elderly now. Tales of Middle Earth 2, the predecessor to Tales of Maj'Eyal. Zangband and Angband.

EDIT: Oh, right. And Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup; someone else mentioned that below. Would go with the "not at all unknown, but a good game" category above.

[–] SilentStorms@lemmy.fmhy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

I've just started playing Qud. The depth to the game is insane. First roguelike I'm really getting into.

[–] whelk@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was surprised to see your post as the only result doing a find for Angband in this thread. I've played it casually for decades and never beaten it. Got a level 50 dwarf priest right now that I've been puttering around with, not really sure what to do in order to prepare for Morgoth, as I've never encountered him before.

I haven't loved the direction of DCSS in recent years as it seems like there's been a huge focus on removing things for being "not interesting", but it seems like it really boils down to "not interesting for veterans who are interested in a low turn count run through the game". And I'll never forgive them for removing the chance to meet up with friendly angels in the Abyss if you're a TSO follower. Apparently they're always hostile now? That was such a cool touch, and I struggle to understand why its' better to take away those neat little potential experiences. Ah well, still a fun game to play now and then.

[–] tal@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Hmm. So, I don't know the specificsfor that particular elemen but...while I liked Angband (and Zangband was even more of a "throw in the kitchen sink" thing), my own take on the philosophy behind the DCSS "remove elements of the game if they don't involve making interesting decisions" is positive.

Like, one thing people don't like is just doing...I guess "drudge" work in games? Like, in Cataclysm, one can result in loads of loot from dead zombies. Sorting through all of that can be a pain. The game could require you to do that -- which does add gameplay time -- or it could add features to accelerate that via automation, like searching for all nearby items containing a given material.

I can think of a lot of game elements like that. In some old games like the gold box Dungeons and Dragons video games from maybe the late 1980s, part of the game was walking through a dungeon, and as you went, having some graph paper handy and mapping it out. There'd be teleporters and secret walls and whatnot, and without a map, it was hard to make it around and fully search an area.

Over time, most video games stopped doing that. Exploration was still a thing, sure, but almost all video games had an auto-mapping feature that recorded seen areas on a map in-game.

Or taking notes as to what missions you had to do in RPGs and persons of interest. A lot of games from that era involved you needing to keep a notepad handy and joy down notes about people you needed to talk to and places to go. Today, most RPGs have some form of automatic tracking of missions and of important bits of information. Sometimes that involved even just providing waypoints.

I think that that's because, on the whole, game designers realized that transcribing maps onto graph paper just wasn't all that much fun. Nor was writing down each piece of information that sounded useful in case it might be important later.

What made something "fun" or not?

Linley Henzell's heuristic with Crawl was that if the player had to do something in the game, then it should be because he had to make some kind of meaningful decision, some in-game tradeoff. I should have the option to take this skill only if not taking it might be a bad idea. Use an item now or save it in the hopes that it might be more-useful later. If the player had to take an action and that action was a no-brainer, the only reasonable thing to do in that situation, then it wasn't interesting and the game shouldn't require a player to do it. Either the game should do it automatically -- as with DCSS's auto-explore or "remember locations of all seen items and let me search for them and auto-walk back to them" -- or just remove it as a gameplay element. Otherwise, it's likely to become one of those not-fun drudge gameplay elements.

I don't think that that quite captures all of video-game design -- like, in a World War II combat flight simulator, the long, droning flight out to drop a bomb on a tank might be part of trying to replicate the experience that real World War II pilots experienced, and it is that experience that is what the game is aiming for, though it involves little by the way of interesting decisions. But I think that it was legitimately a powerful insight into what gameplay elements ultimately had the potential to become "drudge" work rather than remaining fresh. Especially for a roguelike, which relies heavily on being very replayable, I think that it was a valid insight.

I won't say that every decision made by the DCSS dev team is the "right" decision. I don't know about the religion change they made there. But I think that the basic philosophy there contains a really important epiphany about designing games. I've seen game designers in other fields pick up on that and use that heuristic as well -- that is, it's been influential in game design.

DCSS is known among roguelikes for seriously paring down the game, to try to remove extraneous content that adds complexity without adding those "interesting" decisions. It aims for not having drudge work, and might also keep the learning curve on the game lower. Other roguelikes acquire a huge amount of functionality which makes the game bigger, and don't try to chop content. I like Cataclysm, but I cannot deny that while its simulation of stamina may be realistic, it can be a little annoying to manually lug an heavy item down a city block while having to stop and manually take frequent rests.

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[–] Spiracle@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As a very casual rogue-like enjoyer (failed to ever kill the unicorn in nethack), I regularly enjoy Rogue Fable III. There’s not a ton of story or content, but all the essentials are there.

It’s a generic dungeon with various themed levels. (No puzzles.) Minor lore through occasionaly messages by the underlord or by reading signs/messages. Get the keys from guardians in side dungeons, then beat the big wizard and take his goblet of immortality.

You get a race for basic modifiers (no weight limit, but only move horizontally, for example).
You get a class, which determines your default talent/spell list.
Then you can get some extra talents/spells regardless of class from books/altars/librarians.

It’s simple, but I enjoy doing it while listening to other things. No direct challenge modes, but various race/class combos are more difficult than others.

[–] Grenfur@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Rogue Fable is excellent! Definitely a good intro to the Genre for more casual play.

Speaking of, if you like more casual RLs, check out The Ground Gives Way or Path of Achra.

TGGW is a coffee break RL. Meant to be played in small 15-20 min bites. Simple, yet effective.

PoA is a RL almost entirely built on character theory crafting. The actual RL play can be done with 1-2 buttons most of the time. The character and build creation is... a lot lol. But if you're into theory crafting and build variety its a great time.

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[–] insomniac_lemon@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Not sure if it's just me, but I find many games tedious (often because hunger and inventory management). Difficult games are just a different kind of tedious than filler games.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon is one, it does let you deal with things from many angles but I don't think it's good enough for unknown/cursed equipment. Especially as it's so easy to get screwed over (especially early on).

I play the (old) free alpha of Rogue Fable III on itch. It has a completely different feel, a lot more going on mechanically (skills/attributes, terrain) so it at least somewhat feels like more my fault when I lose.

Either way we both know I'm probably going to lose with unused potions/scrolls even if I got a good sword, but I probably will not have gotten suitable armor etc. either. And when I win it seems like I either got perfect luck or I found a way to (borderline) cheese the game (which I mean sometimes that may be intended, but it doesn't feel great to try again).

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[–] slicedcheesegremlin@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Not sure if it counts, but I've been playing Elona/Eternal League of Nefia. it's been hard though because there is very little english discussion of it, and I refuse to set foot on 4chan where most of it would probably be.

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[–] sourcery@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

I also really enjoy DCSS and have got the orb out a few times. I hope a true general and traditional-only Roguelike community will pop up soon.

[–] shapesandstuff@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh if you don't know it yet, check out Ultima Ratio Regum.

Still in development but super impressive

[–] Grenfur@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Now we're getting into some B Track RLs! I haven't played URR in ages! It's incredibly ambitious and if it ever gets finished will easily be near the top of the list in the grenre.

[–] shapesandstuff@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

I just saw that he implemented ship travel by now, which sounds nuts. I also really hope it gets to a point where a proper game loop works

Probably the one project I've been following the longest.

[–] Veraticus@lib.lgbt 2 points 1 year ago

Super big Caves of Qud fan here!

[–] Helvedeshunden 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've really enjoyed SanctuaryRPG: Black Edition (really cheap on Steam as I type this), Brogue and Shattered Pixel Dungeon.

[–] Grenfur@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

Eyy SanctuaryRPG has some wild ascii art! Definitely a good game!

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