A lot of modern roguelikes (and I use that term in a very broad manner - once again screw the Berlin interpretation!) have nice graphics and easy-to-learn interfaces that make them accessible for more and more players - who then run against a wall of difficulty. Don't despair, in this series of posts I shall shine some light on those that I have played and beaten and give some tips regarding strategy and practice on each individual game.
Last time I wrote about the first two bosses of Pixel Dungeon, how to get there and how to beat them. This time we'll delve further into the depths, seeing what we can do about the other three bosses and their minions. After you beat the Tengu, the game curves up a little, getting more difficult. If you have beaten the Tengu, however, you get a book that lets you specialize your character class further - and that is something you get for every future play-through on that class. What to do to get through the caves though? Read on!
31 January 2014
23 January 2014
How to beat a Roguelike: Pixel Dungeon part 1
A lot of modern roguelikes (and I use that term in a very broad manner - once again screw the Berlin interpretation!) have nice graphics and easy-to-learn interfaces that make them accessible for more and more players - who then run against a wall of difficulty. Don't despair, in this series of posts I shall shine some light on those that I have played and beaten and give some tips regarding strategy and practice on each individual game.
Let's start this out with Pixel Dungeon. The game is made for Android-devices and is a classic random-generated, turn-based dungeon-crawl with an interface optimized for touch-screen use. It is also well-enough programmed to run on my old cellphone and doesn't mind a small screen. Plus you can zoom in and out and other nice touches. Pixel Dungeon is notoriously difficult and even the comments on the Play Store speak about how much is dependent on pure luck when playing this game. This is partially true but let me tell you what you CAN do to get ahead and beat this roguelike.
Let's start this out with Pixel Dungeon. The game is made for Android-devices and is a classic random-generated, turn-based dungeon-crawl with an interface optimized for touch-screen use. It is also well-enough programmed to run on my old cellphone and doesn't mind a small screen. Plus you can zoom in and out and other nice touches. Pixel Dungeon is notoriously difficult and even the comments on the Play Store speak about how much is dependent on pure luck when playing this game. This is partially true but let me tell you what you CAN do to get ahead and beat this roguelike.
13 January 2014
Delay!
Sad as it is to have to make this post: Our game will be delayed as the programmer-half of our little devteam has fallen (non-terminally) ill just before finishing the Beta. Stay tuned for we will release as soon as he can sit in a chair and code again.
08 January 2014
Choose your own CaveVenture: Announcement!
Okay, here it comes: The roguelike we've been working on for quite a while, with me leaking some thoughts on the design process every now and then, will, baring a disaster of civilizaton-destroying force, be released this coming Sunday, January 12th 2014. Let's talk about what the game does, shall we?
Choose your own CaveVenture, which was the work-in-progress title but kinda stuck, is a roguelike with the classical theme of exploring an underground cave, but with the interface of a choose your own adventure. That means that instead of traditional top-down ASCII-graphics and/or tilesets or a 3D-enine, the entirety of the game will work with descriptions of the player's surroundings and what happens, while the controls offer you options of what you can (attempt to) do.
This may seem like a very primitive way of doing things at first but it does have some advantages over the classical roguelike:
-You do not need to memorize half your keyboard worth of functions. What you can do will be, with some exceptions of general things, always visible on the interface. This makes the game extremely easy to learn, even for non-gamers.
-As description and game-view are the same, you do not so easily miss things like descriptions of audio and such, as may happen in other roguelikes.
-Accessibility. The game can be played by the visually impaired with a screen-reader as those programs are designed to read lines of text.
All you'll need to play the release version of the game will be a Python 2 compatible decompiler, which can be got here (make sure to get a Python 2 version, as Python 3 is not backwards-compatible).
Anyways, come back on Sunday to get the game, while we put some finishing touches on version 1.0!
Choose your own CaveVenture, which was the work-in-progress title but kinda stuck, is a roguelike with the classical theme of exploring an underground cave, but with the interface of a choose your own adventure. That means that instead of traditional top-down ASCII-graphics and/or tilesets or a 3D-enine, the entirety of the game will work with descriptions of the player's surroundings and what happens, while the controls offer you options of what you can (attempt to) do.
This may seem like a very primitive way of doing things at first but it does have some advantages over the classical roguelike:
-You do not need to memorize half your keyboard worth of functions. What you can do will be, with some exceptions of general things, always visible on the interface. This makes the game extremely easy to learn, even for non-gamers.
-As description and game-view are the same, you do not so easily miss things like descriptions of audio and such, as may happen in other roguelikes.
-Accessibility. The game can be played by the visually impaired with a screen-reader as those programs are designed to read lines of text.
All you'll need to play the release version of the game will be a Python 2 compatible decompiler, which can be got here (make sure to get a Python 2 version, as Python 3 is not backwards-compatible).
Anyways, come back on Sunday to get the game, while we put some finishing touches on version 1.0!
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