Cogmind - An Amazing Sci-fi Roboroguelike

Ohhhhh thanks, will definitely watch those!

So from Cogmind I moved to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, which I tried once but never got into. Now I’m getting hooked on that! Like I don’t have enough things to play!!! At least it did what I wanted - got me off of Cogmind until it’s further along.

My favorite part about this game are the slow motion deaths. As different systems fail, you start rapidly trying to replace them from your inventory, then picking them up from the ground, and ultimately just try and find some nearby hover pieces to throw together so you can successfully run away. But then you come across a stray informer on your way out, and suddenly a police dude catches up to you. In a last ditch effort, you turn on your rocket launcher that you’re generally too nervous to use, and fire. Turns out that structure you’re next to is a nuclear reactor. It explodes taking out those hover jets you just picked up. Police come from all directions and you just start hobbling praying there’s an exit around the corner (there almost never is).

This sounds really cool. Want to wait for an official release though so whatever time I spend with it will be with the best possible version.

Probably a good idea. I’ve had a few goes to check it out, and find it difficult to stop myself from firing up another run… but I want to wait until it’s a bit more done as well. Though it feels complete.

Roadmap says it’s 75% complete, mostly maps and story to come, and 23 weeks dev time remaining.

Grid Sage Games says:

2016 is coming to a close, and so is Cogmind development! Okay, that sounds a bit premature–I’ll be working on the game for a while yet, but the last remaining story elements are very close to completion, and as those are wrapped up along with some accessibility features and whatever other content I can squeeze in, it’s about time to call this 1.0… and then just keep adding stuff for a while as usual :P

This is excerpted from a newsletter.

Cool… I think. :P

Been dabbling on and off, waiting for v1. But if he keeps adding stuff, do I keep waiting?!

Game today entered Beta, whee!

Cogmind is still not truly “done,” but I’ve decided that from here until 1.0 we’ll be calling them Beta releases to signal that while development is still not complete, it’s no longer as early as “Alpha” might imply. This is a huge milestone, technically bigger than the future 1.0 itself, and the switch also reflects a coming change in pace: we’ll be seeing fewer large releases in favor of putting out smaller updates more quickly.

I was hoping this thread was being bumped because the game was finished. So many games on my wait-to-buy-when-it’s-done list. Oh well. I guess I’ll check back in 2019.

At least ‘beta’ means ‘feature and content complete, bug fixes only’!

Doesn’t it? It used to. :(

The author isn’t sure. I think he loves his baby so much, he doesn’t want to see her leaving home ;)

I finally tried this. Love the interface. It’s like a text-base interface from the 80s terminals that kept evolving for the last 20 years in an alternative universe. It looks better in motion that you get from screenshots.

It’s still not out on Steam but you get a Steam key if you buy from his site. Looks like the developer had a concussion so he’s delaying the Steam release to recover, which could be months. (He went right back to work after the concussion at at full speed and then had terrible side effects from that, so now his recovery is going to be slow and require staying away from the computer for long periods of time.)

But it’s a quite complete and polished experience in its current version.

Is it going to Steam on EA, or at 1.0?

It’ll be EA.

Though technically it’s in beta now, the dev considers it “done” as all the story content was finished. But he wants to keep adding more stuff when it’s on Steam - in his words “further development is mostly optional fun stuff”.

According to the roadmap, there’s also some audio, metagame, and accessibility left to do.

image

Note there was also a typically lengthy devblog post on versioning schemes as he agonised over all this!

Following Cogmind’s development was like spectating Bizarro Gr****re.

It was so fascinating, sometimes freaky, to read his concerns, his trying to maintain control, and his open way of sharing all of it.

Still need to play the game properly after all this time, though!

Cogmind releases on Steam next week. Just got the email with my key!

It’s finally on Steam. I’d bite, but I’m busy with Loot Rascals.

Picked this up. Unfortunately I’m too blind to play the thing, everything is too tiny. I upped the font as large as it would go, minimal effect. I should have paid closer attention to full-screen screenshots.

Seems fun for what little I could get through before hanging it up though.

Yeah he talks about that here:

http://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/ui_preview.html

http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2016/01/alternative-ui/

And ultimately decided against created a separate layout. What size monitor are you using?

I’ve been playing this for a few months on my MacBook via Wineskin and you’re spot on about the graphics. I do have an older laptop connected to a 28" 4K monitor and it’s very easy to read. But the Mac requires me to use reading glasses because the font is so tiny.

This is one of the few games I’ve ever played obsessively for 6 hours straight.