Deals, anyway.
“I’m growing anyway,” laughed the backlog, “you can’t leave those Humble Bundles alone.”
I have a Steam wishlist and a Playstation wishlist, and I often check both for deals. My gaming backlog knows no boundaries.
Backlogs only really start when you pass 1000 games unplayed. :)
I have an Xbox Wishlist that has cost me so much money. Oh wait, no I don’t because the Xbox doesn’t support wishlists.
Yep. It sucks. It doesn’t prevent me from having a mental Xbox wishlist though.
Only items that I’m looking for, but only at steep discounts that make them worthwhile being added to my backlog, are:
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Life is Strange: Before the Storm
Civ VI: Rise and Fall expansion
Fallout 4: GoTY
But I check on my short wishlist daily to see if there’s any movement and I’ve passed up 50% off discounts already. It’s not that the games aren’t worth more, but if I’m not going to get to it for a year, I’d hate to spend too much now.
Well I’m certainly open to suggestions! I thought Dungeons of Dredmor was pretty well liked around here. I just tried DCSS the other day but the tiles version doesn’t fit the window properly (the left part and top part is cut off slightly) and I can’t for the life of me figure out how to work full screen so I just uninstalled it.
Thraeg had you covered above.
Everyone’s being so positive about the Steam sale. It’s like the world is young again.
Well maybe I’ll try Sword of the Stars: The Pit. Or some of these newfangled hybrids? Which would those be?
The Pit really wears out its welcome quickly. It’s totally generic sci-fi and the systems aren’t tuned that great.
DoomRL is OK
TOME (Steam) is OK
Caves of Qud is insane
We have a thread on roguelikes somewhere
One I would recommend is Dungeonmans. I find that it is a great roguelike for beginners since it is pretty accessible, but it still has plenty of depth and complexity. The game has a nice sense of humor, a lot of different ways to play, and there is a mechanic that allows you to carryover benefits between lives (you can turn that off if you want a pure RL experience though).
I keep Dungeonmans perennially installed on my PC.
Another option would be Dungeon of the Endless which combines a roguelike with some light tower defense aspects. It also has a really slick presentation and is part of the Endless Universe of games like Endless Space or Endless Legend.
I also really enjoy Tales of Maj’Eyal, ADOM, Sword of the Stars the Pit, Brogue, and Cogmind might be worth a look.
Yeah, there was a lot of excitement in the runup to launch, but the appeal didn’t last long. I’m actually kind of glad the user titles got purged, since mine came from beating the game right after launch, but I wound up really disliking the game.
Your recollection is about right – it was trying really hard to be jam-packed with quirky “stuff”, but quickly got really tedious to actually play, with interesting decisions being few and far between. Just an endless stream of rooms where you fought mechanically similar monsters using the same few abilities, and lots of tedious waiting around to heal.
The indispensible core of a roguelike is the idea that you play it multiple times, each time facing a different random arrangement of obstacles and resources, and that you’re stuck with the consequences of your actions rather than being able to reload a save or try the same level over again.
Historically, these principles were mainly applied to top-down, grid-based, turn-based, dungeon-crawling RPGs directly descended from the original Rogue. But they actually pair really well with a wide variety of other mechanics, and indie developers have run with them in the last few years, so if you’re more interested in, say, platformers or tactics games than RPG-derived mechanics, you can start with one of those. Here are a few that I recommend:
Classical roguelikes: Brogue is still my top recommendation overall. DCSS and SotS: The Pit have already been mentioned. If you have a DS or Vita or are willing to emulate, I highly, highly recommend the Shiren the Wanderer series. They stick pretty close to the classical formula, but trim the interface cruft and have an incredibly varied and distinctive set of monsters. The DS version was what made roguelikes really click for me many years ago.
Platformer: Spelunky, Downwell
Tactics: Into the Breach, Renowned Explorers, Invisible Inc.
2D Action: Galak-Z, Cryptark
Twin-stick Shooter: Binding of Isaac, Nuclear Throne, Neon Chrome
Card: Slay the Spire, Dream Quest, Solitairica
Micro-puzzle: Hoplite, Enyo, Desktop Dungeons
Not only that, but after playing a story mode which accounts to an extended tutorial (it last a couple of dozen hours, I think?), they let you pick as hardcore or laidback an experience you choose.
I would never even have thought of recommending them, with the PC bias associated with roguelikes, but Thraeg’s advice is the best: if you have to pick one, pick Shiren, especially The Tower of Fortune and Dice. The series also sounds and looks gorgeous!
What, no FTL? Everybody sick of that one already?
FTL is too RNG for me.
Also: Freelancer-style space combat rogue: Everspace
FTL was fantastic right up until the final boss fight made me wish I could get a refund for the stupid game.