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A Diversity of Roguelikes
This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. Once upon a time, the "Roguelike" genre was a semi-hidden cache of secrets in gaming. Games like Rogue and NetHack were passed around from floppy to floppy, not sold in stores, not discussed in magazines, and certainly not treated as part of the same tradition as an Ultima or even a Gold Box game. Maybe it's because the genre name is just so stupid. We don't call first-person shooters "Doomlikes" or puzzle games "Tetrislikes." Unfortunately, I don't have a better term for it. Perhaps over the course of describing them in a column we can think of something. Here are the consistent attributes of the genres: it involves a series of randomly generated levels, starting hard and getting progressively more difficult. They're usually stripped-down role-playing games, where you roll a quick character, pick a class, buy a couple items, and then get killed permanently by a slime and have do it again. They're also designed for short play sessions.
IndieCade 2011: Desktop Dungeons' inspiration, past, and future
If you enjoy PC games, especially action RPGs like Diablo, but you've never once played Nethack, you probably should. No, seriously -- go, right now, download it, and check it out. Sure, it's hard, not very accessible (there are no graphics, only ASCII symbols to represent the player, items, and monsters), and enormously complicated. But it's also essentially the root of the "roguelike" genre (named after a game called Rogue), featuring random dungeons with dozens of levels, exciting turn-based combat, and plenty of unpredictable magic. Desktop Dungeons is a game that continues in that tradition, though with one important twist: While Nethack, Rogue, and all of the other roguelikes take place over huge dungeons with multiple levels and lots of complexity, Desktop Dungeons champions simplicity. It takes place on basically one screen, in one grid, and that dungeon will cause you to level up from start to finish in just about ten minutes. It's the roguelike genre, boiled down into its most essential ingredients. And it's glorious.
IGF winner Desktop Dungeons gets a facelift, up for pre-order on PC and Mac
Hailing from South Africa -- notably the home country of Joystiq editor Ludwig Kietzmann -- QCF Design is building on the momentum it earned at this year's IGF awards with its bite-sized roguelike Desktop Dungeons by ... building on Desktop Dungeons. The game, which took home Excellence in Design honors, will be getting a major makeover for its full release on PC and Mac that "looks better, sounds better and is generally just more awesome," according to its developer. In addition to general gameplay and balance fixes, the release -- the game's currently playable in a free alpha version -- will evidently boast an entirely new inventory system with a focus on character class progression and converting weapons when they're worn out. That and "so. much. content." Pre-orders are open through QCF's site for the standard ($10) and special editions ($20) of the game, both of which offer access to its upcoming closed beta. The latter includes a "commemorative building," extra quests and an addition character class. No longer on offer: a $75 "exclusive edition" that gets its purchasers referenced in-game and their names in the credits.