Dungeons of Dredmor is a Rogue-like, but not an ASCII game. That is, in addition to a tileset, its UI is mouse-based rather than based on command keys, which may make it accessible to the less geeky. Like all Rogue-likes, it still offers algorithmically generated levels, monsters, treasure, and the like, with the concomitant virtues and difficulties that this entails: there's enormous variety of encounter, with no two games alike, but you can often find yourself in no-win situations, and this is a game with permadeath.
Submitted by Offriender on Mon, 02/14/2011 - 21:48.
Liberal Crime Squad is a game that makes us nostalgic for a period in American history when hippies were looking for new direction in their lives, and were ripe to be snatched up by any cult or extremist group that needed the manpower. It simulates the answers to some interesting questions: What if someone could succeed today where the Symbionese Liberation Army failed? What if instead of causing a media storm with the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, they had simply “enlightened” her and returned her to her normal life as a newspaper heiress? What if they had managed to use their crimes to sway public opinion to the Liberal end of the spectrum instead of alienating everyone? Of course, reasonable discourse never enters the equation. The future of the nation is far too important for one to even bother with such naïve measures.
Rogue Survivor is an entertaining Rogue-like set during the zombie apocalypse. Though it has grainy pixel-art tiles rather than ASCII art, the usual Rogue-like rules apply; num-pad to move in 8 directions, and most everything in the game is a single key-stroke command (though you do manage your inventory with the mouse, and can mouseover objects and characters on the map for information about them).
Unlike most Rogue-likes, the objective isn't to become the mightiest adventurer in the land and delve deep into the dungeons of peril; rather, it is to avoid having your brains eaten. There are no experience points; instead, each day you survive, you level up.
This gives you an additional point of skill, but your hit points and such increase rarely if at all; even at high levels, your best strategy is often to flee.
What you can do, however, is build impressive fortifications, find enough firepower to survive -- and recruit other survivors to be your lackeys. With a bit of work, you can survive in style -- at least until the food runs out. Because there are limited resources in the city, NPCs consume them as well as you, zombies keep spawning, and ultimately there is, of course, no hope.
But then, the same is true of Space Invaders, and the enjoyment is in surviving as long as possible, beating your high score, and unlocking the 8 accomplishments in the game.
Entertaining old-school fun, particularly if you have a thing about the zombie apocalypse. I should note that the game is in alpha, though, and while I've had no problems with crashes, others apparently have.
Submitted by William Tuegel on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 18:18.
Suggested By:
Narushima
What's better than powering your way through a labyrinth of fiends, monsters, traps, and treasure, with guns a-blazing? Doing it with a friend! Same-screen multiplayer is what sets this game apart from the other Rogue-like shooters. With both single player and co-operative modes available, Shoot First is more complex than a first glance will tell you.
"Desktop" in a game name makes me think of Desktop Tower Defense, and my a priori assumption is that the game must be a fairly polished Flash implementation of another game style -- inferior, of necessity, given the limitations of Flash, but still polished. Desktop Dungeons is not, however, a Flash-implemented Rogue-like (which sounds like a good idea, actually), but a downloadable game, inspired by Rogue-likes, with a point-and-click interface and a (typically) 10-minute playtime.
Xong is an odd and idiosyncratic munge of a Rogue-like, a level-based puzzle game, and an Arkanoid clone. It's Rogue-like, in that it's an ASCII graphics game with procedurally-generated levels, but the actual gameplay is puzzle solving with Breakout-like aspects.
Elona is a Japanese-developed Rogue-like with a nice tileset and considerable depth for a one-man project. As you might expect, it has graphics reminiscent of 8-bit JRPGs; there's a fair bit of NPC dialog, some of which is moderately humorous, although you do run into the occasional Japlish.
The UI is a bit confusing -- it's entirely key-driven, but with pop-up menus and odd key choices for selection and navigation. However, Rogue-like "hot-keys" give you access to the most common options, and while the tutorial doesn't tell you about them, as with most Rogue-likes the "?" key is your friend.
The Dungeon of D is a "print-and-play" (PnP) game, meaning it's not available for sale, but instead you can download PDFs of the components and print them out to make your own copy. In other words, it's an amateur rather than a professional production, but it's worth remembering that "amateur" has its roots in the Latin "amare" (to love); that is, an amateur does what he does for love, not for money. While its rare for any amateur product to reach or exceed professionally-produced products, it can and does happen -- as it has with this game.
Submitted by TheDustin on Wed, 11/11/2009 - 20:45.
Suggested By:
beboped
I'll say right off the bat that this game is awesome, and if you don't download and love it I'll think less of you as a person. But I digress. Ahem, every nerd's gotta grow up someday. In time superhero comics transmute to Alan Moore graphic novels, and after a while DBZ VHSs metamorph into Evangelion DVDs. Today I'm going to ask you to take the next leap, the next step in your nerd evolution: play a Rogue-like. It sounds daunting, I know, I've been there. I tried playing Nethack when I was a lad of 15 and I just got baffled. There weren't any graphics to speak of, I died roughly every minute, and there were ten different ways to drop your items. Shit got confusing. I felt there was something amazing lurking underneath though, so ever since Derek Yu popped my procedurally-generated cherry with his little cave game I've been wanting a Rogue-like fix. DoomRL admirably fills this role, and is a perfect introduction to the genre. Instead of twiddling your thumbs and waiting to pay your Activision-Blizzard overlords for a re-skinned Diablo II, play this thing.
Jacob's Matrix is a seven-day Rogue-like developed by Jeff Lait (of Fatherhood). It's also -- very un-Rogue-like, really.
Oh, it's a Rogue-like, all right; you're tooling around an algorithmically generated ASCII dungeon, moving in eight directions and fighting by running into things. But you're under time pressure: A song is playing, and if you don't finish the level by the time it ends, you lose. Maybe it's a "Musical Chairs-like."
Human beings generally assume that other brains just aren't ticking the same home-brewed quality of consciousness that we experience individually. This is true of our perception of animals and other human beings. Maybe some species actually possess acute intelligence, but they just don't speak our language. Like velociraptors -- they're hunters you know.
65,000,001 BC is a platform adventure where you play a raptor with certified ninja skills on a quest to save the world from meteoric doom. Unlike Dino Run it takes an exploratory pace with a dose of tongue-in-cheek writing, allowing you to experience raptor-hood not as a primal hunter racing for survival, but as an intelligent problem-solver saving the world with calculated method. The controls give a sense of Metroid: Redesign garnished with a taste of The Lost Vikings, not quite perfect but smooth enough once you sail through the first areas. The flow is supreme, like a slit eye focusing keenly.
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