The goofy new game of the week has arrived to us from the Netherlands, it’s name, Triangle Wizard.
It has the look and feel of a minimalistic vector graphic Geometry Wars but is wrapped in a good ol’ roguelike RPG (plethora of races, classes, spells, baddies, and randomly generated levels).
While the controls are pretty minimalistic with all movement and spell aiming handled primarily with the mouse BUT it is definitely worth going through the tutorial and even reading the manual if you really want to get a firm grip of the pretty unique mechanics (like the significance of your chosen race and class). All of the monsters, in true ASCII roguelike tradition are represented by letters and symbols and there are no sounds (If you can imagine that “k” coming at you is a kobold, you can also imagine his crazy chattering).
True enough (re: sounds), maybe if were good they’ll add some later…but then again can you imagine the processing hit you’d take if they then processed sounds for ALL of the raging hordes in this game?
I think your speed is also greatly influenced by race (dwarves are SLOW mother F’ers). There also might be powerups in the dungeon that increase your speed (much like the Health or Jump related ones) but am not totally sure.
-Added Gelatinous cube.
-You can now unsummon creatures or release them from control by pressing DEL over said creature.
-Liches can now correctly no longer use the sacrificial shrine.
-Reaper and Grim Reapers now move more slowly.
-Flood now has an area of effect which increases with proficiency level.
-Fixed a small bug involving the F2 when used on creatures with death spells.
-Added three new unique levels which have a certain chance of appearing in a range of dungeon levels.
-Creatures in the Maevalin’s Outlet Shoppe are now called Customers.
-Dark Elf now gains bonus resistance per level in all resistances (except physical and poison) instead of a greater chance to receive resistance powerups.
-Raise Wall now has an area of effect and has a chance to produce spiked walls. This chance increases with increased spell level.
-Added two new unique creatures. (incl. Gnome with the Wand of Death).
-Fixed melee enemies freezing after jumping over them in a straight line.
-Benificial Enchantments can only affect their intended targets. This also fixes a problem with persistant enchantments being transferred to nearby creatures.
-Added keymapping support.
-Pressing INS will now provide a list of basic information of every spell.
-There should no longer be any powerups lying on any stairs.
-Dweomer Casters can nog longer gain spell levels above the limit.
-New game menu now shows information about races and classes.
-Fixed a small bug involving geyser and jumping.
-Doors should no longer be generated atop any kind of stairs.
-Spell powerups which boost spells of current proficiency level zero now have a cost.
-There shouldn’t be any more powerups underneath doors.
-Increased Pestilence’s damage.
-Increased Fire Wall’s damage.
-You now need to press ALT to descend stairs.
-You can also use ESC to quit messages.
-Added additional information to spell information screen such as damage, next level statistics, etc.
-Added a new shrine.
-Animate Dead and Recall Spirits can now be combined with Prismatic Sphere and Watcher.
-Autopickup is now off by default.
Why isn’t there a button for cycling through spells I have? I don’t particularly give a shit about the eleventy billion spells I don’t have, and rummaging through all of them to find my five spells is quite irritating.
I’d call the controls anything but minimalistic, what with all the buttons to remember. For me, it’s the roughest part of this game. It doesn’t matter so much in turn based rougelikes, but it hurts a bit more in a realtime game like this. Doesn’t annoy me enough to delete the game yet, though.
Aeon: You can assign spells to number keys, which helps a bit. I haven’t played long enough to have that many spells yet, though.
I started working on pretty much this exact thing a few years ago, then quickly stopped when I realized I didn’t have what it took to pull it off. I’m glad someone else made it for me!
When I skimmed the thread title, I thought that someone had finally made my dream game*, Triangle Hero. (“You’ve been playing for over an hour, and you’ve only hit it twice!”) But as a fan of roguelikes, I should check it out, anyway.
I got it, installed it, fired it up, and was killed within 5 minutes while trying to figure out how to do anything. Tried again, same result. I guess I need to go through the tutorial. Given I played nethack a huge amount, I thought I could get away without a tutorial :)
Is the game at least pausable while you look through your inventory and such?
It’s pretty easy if you play as a flying race necromancer (Angel!). You autododge all shots fired at you, and can stand over water pits to avoid most melee stuff. And since you have skeletons, other flyers will be distracted towards them instead of coming after you.
For me, the biggest issue is effing spell selection.
