I decided to check out this Armored Commander roguelike that Tim Stone has pushed in The Flare Path a couple of times. It’s a slick-looking WWII tank combat game.
It’s actually a lot more boardgamey than I expected. Many things are abstracted, such as infantry support that randomly destroys your enemies. Dice rolls are front center. For some reason I thought you’d be driving a little tank @ symbol around and pew-pewing like the Doom Roguelike. Heh. Instead there’s a neat boardgame-style map mode. Each area you move to has a chance to trigger a random encounter that takes place on a map like this:
You can turn the turret toward different sectors and fire various shots at the enemies. When you’re done (or your crew fails to make the dice rolls to sustain fire) you end that phase and resolve the damage you’ve done.
Oh, doing a little more Googling, it looks like this is based on the boardgame “Patton’s Best.” That makes more sense. Anyway, just wondering if anyone is hooked on this. Otherwise I might hold off a little longer to give it more development time.
Thanks! I thought you were a champion of OWH. Will add that to my next Lunar sale purchase. Sorry to hear about Flamebreak. it looks intriguing but I am having a hard time determining if it would work for me.
Since this thread bubbled to the top, ADOM. Been playing a bunch of that lately. It’s actually been competing with Xcom 2 play, but that might be because I’ve got my best character yet running in it. Level 13 or 14 now orc barbarian. Gained literacy from Dwarftown so I can finally read ID scrolls, getting in good graces with my god so I can make holy water, successfully completed the pyramid and arena. I know a stupid death is looming on the horizon (Especially since I’m a melee character and that golden gladius is already starting to seem slow) but I’m enjoying it while it lasts.
Overall there are a fair number of things about ADOM I like less than other roguelikes, but something about it has been pulling me back. I think it’s because similar to Caves of Qud there’s a good rate of advancement, especially early on. You go from “Level 1 newbie” to a fairly tolerable pile of stats and equipment you’ve grown attached to in a short amount of time which keeps you invested in the character. Even though DoomRL has way better combat than ADOM or Qud for example, I feel less attached to my characters because progression is a bit more linear.
Cool game. No idea why I never tried ADOM until it showed up on Steam.
Also had been playing (Until the Xcom 2 and ADOM apocalypse) some Infra Arcana. Lovecraft/Blood roguelike. Has slow character advancement and your character isn’t a powerhouse, but it has some neat mechanics. Most notably instead of a hunger mechanic to keep you moving, it has sanity. You can soak up a certain amount of tension on each level as “Free”, but once it hits 100% you crack and start taking permanent sanity damage. Then when you advance to the next floor the tension is reset to 0. And as you would expect, some monsters are horrific and mess with that system, and casting spells/reading scrolls/drinking potions basically all increase tension/insanity. Biggest complaint I had (Apart from the slow progression, which to be fair is keeping with the setting. It’s not very tense or horrific if you can just shotgun through everything) was you couldn’t unload ammo from weapons or magazines. So if you find a drum of tommy gun bullets you can’t put them in to your pistol magazines to conserve ammo, they’re locked in as tommy gun only. Also some bad luck moments where you open a door and there’s a cultist on the other side that one shots you instantly with a shotgun, but such is life.
Squee just wanted to thank you for mentioning Infra Arcana. I was not aware of it before your post and it looks like it has those gorgeous Oryx Design titles. Can’t wait to install it and explore the world.
On the strength of this post alone, I just picked up OWH and it’s “Plus” DLC. I assume I should dive in with the DLC installed and such? Any tips I should know before giving it a go?
Yessssssss. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I do, and last longer than I do because that game loves to kill me. A LOT. And then tell me what I did wrong.
Seriously, when you lose it judges your performance. It’s kind of hilarious.
I’ve been learning/playing Brogue a lot recently (which is just a gorgeous game) and having a ton of fun. I’ve only made it a few level depths down and one of my notable deaths resulted from being “stuck” in a room with 2 monkeys and a pressure plate that released Confusion gas into the room. When I entered the room I was close to starving and had lost all of my food rations in deep water earlier in the game. That final room turned into a comedy of errors (or maybe a Benny Hill chase routine with psychadelic undertones) where both the monkeys and my character kept accidentally triggering the pressure plate in our attempt to flee the gas-filled room thereby releasing a new blast of Confusion gas which further impaired our movement abilities and orientation.
So my rogue died of starvation in a room pumped full of gas with 2 monkeys running around in a delirious state! What a way to go.
Brogue is one of my favorites by far. I reached out to the developer and was like… do you accept donations or anything, and he declined. At least he knows that gamers like and appreciate it!
