Rogue-likes

[ThrobbingEgo]

For rogue-likes, I'd say Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Dude, you seriously said that the epitome of roguelikes would be "Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup"?

For shame. The epitome of roguelikes would be... ROGUE. Seriously, it has its freaking name in the genre!

Also, a type in this post led me to a cool word-thing: frEAks. I like it.

Actually, Dungeon Crawl/Stone Soup and Nethack are more the epitomes of the genre today than the original game.

I disagree! Nethack is an abomination! Dungeon Crawl was good, but ROGUE... ROGUE still wins. ROGUE is still the only game that retains the simplicity and raw entertainment of the roguelike genre.

But I guess if you're more attracted to its mutant, bastard children, I guess that's your thing.

I mean, ROGUE is to roguelikes as StarCraft is to RTS games. Sure, some might go more for AoE or something else, but StarCraft still rings true to the RTS soul. I assume that, though, because RTS games bore the hell out of me...

(Also, notice how I mistyped "typo" up there? That makes me sad for myself...)

I try not to pay attention to typos. When you do, you're bound to make one yourself.

Well, I'll give Nethack is definitely focused on LUCK LUCK LUCK, but Dungeon Crawl/Stone Soup do bring in a lot of the things other roguelikes seem to have. Or lack. Ha ha, Doom Roguelike.

This is a thread on rogue-likes. For those who don't know: Rogue-likes are games based on an old game called Rogue. Rogue-likes are complex RPGs, with procedurally generated content that favor flexible gameplay over pretty visuals. I'm not kidding here: traditionally your player character is an @. Everything's usually in ASCII, but there are rogue-likes with tile graphics and mouse support.

My favorite rogue-like of all time is Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup (which has FANTASTIC mouse support), though I'm also digging MageGuild.

Other popular rogue-likes include Nethack (which is too trial and error for me), ADOM, Angband, Moria... the list goes on. I've even played a rogue-like called incursion, which attempted to translate DnD 3.5 rules into a rogue-like. The games I've mentioned all all freeware, I suggest you check them out.

Now let me kick off this Discussion: What is the greatest rogue-like you've ever played?

For the record: I love mutant bastard children. Imagine if Phantom Slayer was considered the best FPS ever.

 

[hellthins]

Some how this feels like meta-quoting here.

Can I says some Dwarf Fortress? Ha ha... okay, as much as I love the fortress component, the Rogue-like adventure component is absolutely horrible. Too buggy, generally empty, really generic quests.

But then again, it has its shining moments of raw awesome.

I'm going to have to concur that Stone Soup is a really fun Rogue-like, what with the fact that holy shit it is difficult.

I'm going to also say Azure Dreams has some elements of Rogue-like in it, though certainly not in the graphics department, and in that regards is pretty fun. Not nearly as fuckhard, but still.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

Stone Soup is difficult - but not unfairly so. I feel like everytime I die, it's because I didn't think to use one of my magic items, or I stupidly surrounded by self by a horde of monsters, or angered whichever god I forgot I was worshiping. And let's not forget all those times I equip probably-magical items, without IDing them, only to find that they're horribly cursed.

I like hard games where every death is your fault. If you blame the game, it's stupid hard, I find that if you blame yourself it's satisfying hard.


Although I never really got into Dwarf Fortress, I don't think it's fair to blame the game for lacking in the rogue-like department. The whole questing thing seems like a bonus tacked on for the people who want to explore their own personal procedurally generated worlds.

Edit: Yeah, I turned our conversation into a new topic. We had gone off on such a tangent, that I thought this was more appropriate than derailing a thread... as I tend to do very often on forums.

 

[hellthins]

Ha ha, digression. And that's, again, why I like Stone Soup. It's incredibly difficult, but when you die you can't blame chance. You generally did screw up, and learning from your mistakes is what lets you progress down the floors rather than just getting really lucky.

As for Dorf Fortress, it's not about the adventure mode. It really is a tacked on thing. It's about the Fortress mode, throwing yourself up against increasingly difficult and strange challenges and in really screwy locales. Like the generated world's equivalent of Antartica filled with skeleton polar bears.