Real-time roguelikes give me hives (but they can still be good and they can still be roguelikes, especially if they rip off Brogue as much as this one seems to – whoops, I used another pejorative phrase!). Just a personal taste issue. Not saying it’s not good.
Alright, my misread then. Apologies.
I read it that way too.
I kinda went crazy buying some small indie titles this last month, with some real winners, and Unexplored took up the most time. Not something that I expected, since I wasn’t the biggest Brogue fan. Which is to say I was a fan, just not an enormous one.
Calling it a real time Brogue would be both fair and selling it short. Just like every game before it, including Brogue, it stands on the shoulders of those that came before. I think this is a great thing, and get annoyed when people insinuate it isn’t.
Well said. After all, there’s a reason we call them “roguelikes” (or are they “Broguelikes” all of a sudden). The genre has been using and reusing the same ideas for decades, repackaging them in new and interesting ways and adding their own spice to the mix.
If you look at the entire genre, they’ve covered pretty much everything in terms of how to do character progression mechanics. But a lot of that was a product of the new millennium. The original games were either classless (you just played “a character” who had capabilities based on whatever mechanics that could be stuffed into limited disk space) or had basic classes and you acquired powers (or spells) through level up/finding spellbooks. Or maybe you didn’t get many or any powers at all. Designs were similar to early D&D in that respect. Even Pernband/Tales of Middle Earth, which had an arguably more elaborate race + class system than Zangband, was much closer to D&D than what we see now with ToME. Much simpler and much less variety than we get today.
Of course there are games that allow you to dabble outside of your class, so you can pick up magic potentially (although it’s not likely to be as useful on your Troll Warrior), e.g. ADOM (which also has a skill system that’s basically independent of the class system; it’s not the only RL like that but I’m not thinking of another one right now). I guess you could call them “class light” systems. I’ve always liked that approach (at least versus what e.g. you get in most *bands. I don’t like it more than ToME; but I do like them about equal, for different reasons).
I wouldn’t swear by it, but Cthulhuband might have been the first one to try to switch to an entirely improve-via-doing skill system. It was super elaborate (there a whole bunch of different types of magic which worked in different ways, and all these non combat skills + lots of different ways to approach basic combat). It was a later forming Angband variant (from Zangband, actually). It got abandoned was it was getting interesting, unfortunately. Probably the devs got et by something unspeakable.
And this isn’t even getting into the Console side, which goes back farther than you might think with (to the mid 90s, at least) with stuff like the Original Shiren and Azure Dreams. Those weren’t elaborate systems either but that seems to be how the console games do it typically.
I couldn’t have said it better myself! If you look at my initial post, I definitely was not claiming that Brogue sprang from the forehead of Brian Walker, wholly original, devoid of influence. I just wanted to clear up some confusion about the new ideas Brian did bring to the table. Brogue isn’t just “more than the sum of its parts.” It brought new parts. That’s so rare, and so special. That doesn’t mean it didn’t borrow other ideas, it doesn’t mean it’s the best game evar, it doesn’t mean it’s better than every video game that “merely” repurposed other people’s ideas – some of my favorite games are essentially remixes. But Brogue isn’t just a remix.
Like ogres?
Okay, now you’re just trolling me! :)
That comment was just to say – we already knew how much Unexplored borrowed from Brogue, so it probably also took how Ogres work from Brogue. (They work similarly in both games.) I never said Brogue created ogres.
Sounds like they are ogre-ing you*
*Sorry stuck in the car and bored:)
Actually, he’s ogring you. shakes fist at Scott
Fair enough, and I agree that’s worth celebrating. However, to take a game to task for stealing/borrowing/being heavily influenced by another game, when THAT game took its very name (and a whole lot more) from another/others is laughable.
I think you would find that Unexplored also falls into the “not just a remix” category if you were to try it (and for the record I also have a dislike of real-time roguelikes but the way this one approaches it is extremely clever and works very well). The decision to go completely top down and have the characters be one-eyed so that facing is so clearly communicated seems so simple, but it’s brilliant in its simplicity.
He can’t try it, that would give him gamer hives! All he can do is write it off!
I hereby promise that if anyone sends me a Steam code for Unexplored, I will try it. ;)
I’m glad @justaguy2 got a code - hopefully he got it before the server move!
I got back from lunch and found out at some point when getting constantly interrupted I left the game paused, played for a bit, and then unpaused the game and had an entire conversation with my wife - almost 10 minutes of lost footage. Blast.
So, I recorded new footage instead! Enjoy!
Yeah :)
Just teasing.
I cannot in good conscience recommend Wizrogue at this time, although I continue to play it. I’ll elaborate later. It’s an odd duck, though.
Thanks for that Scott, really interesting. Can’t wait to play it and also see what Tony’s thoughts are.
So I played about 15 minutes of unexplored and have so far reached the second depth. My random seed however is completely in the dark. My torch lasted for about two rooms. This makes things very difficult. I managed to overcome a big kobold using my +2 ring of hearing and throwing some daggers and his own shurikens back at him. Enjoying the game so far but I hope the next seed has lighting.
I’ve actually played 10 or so games and never been in full dark yet, so you must have just gotten crazy unlucky (or there is some kind of bug or something else going on)… Would be funny if you equipped a hood or something that covers your eyes, LOL.
love the look of this. I reached to see if they had any plans to port to any mobile device (iOS, Android, switch). (since my time at a PC is limited)
Edit due to schedule change: My stream of Unexplored will take place WEDNESDAY evening before Tom’s!