Are you enjoying Tony? I am having great fun.
I’ve only played the tutorial, and as you know, I’m a hardcore Brogue evangelist. So this one is going to be uphill with me. Not because there’s anything wrong with being influenced by Brogue – but rather, because I’ve played Brogue, and I still play Brogue, and I’m going to be thinking, why am I not playing Brogue right now?
But who knows, maybe it will win me over… ;)
Anyone played Unexplored with a controller? I can’t figure out how to put items in a forge or interact with shrines.
ACTUALLY, my Unexplored stream will be WEDNESDAY at 7pm Eastern/4pm Pacific! A little amuse-bouche before the main event of Tom’s stream! GET READY!!!
I can’t keep up with this crazy scheduling!!
Live now at http://www.youtube.com/ponycarnival/live
see an Unexplored skeptic grapple with Unexplored!
I was at a movie with the missus. How did it go?
Thanks, that was indeed great. I’ve never played brogue but watching that really makes me want to.
You can see for yourself right here!
I didn’t like it. A lot of stuff that wasn’t particularly well explained, puzzles that felt more annoying than rewarding, and I don’t like arcadey combat in a roguelike. That last point is 100% subjective and based on my own personal gaming tastes but the first two points are OBJECTIVE TRUTHS! Obviously I’m being facetious. But sort of not?
You definitely should! It’s really a triumph, a very special game that I am very bad at and I don’t care. I may keep playing it forever?
good stuff, pony. id watch more roguelites-from-the-perspective-of-a-curmedgeonly-brogue-fan streams. i actually stopped the stream partway through and bought Unexplored because I found it very compelling almost immediately.
There is a lot to love in there indeed. Only played my first run (to level 8, #Iamsogoodatthisgame) but I really enjoyed that they take from Brogue one of the best parts of its design in my opinion (that what you need to solve a level appears on that level, or so it seemed), and that the action aspect really is feeling good. I love how each weapons got different reach and area of effects, or how the crafting system, implying discovery and memorization, works. Enjoyed also having simply to “pray” to get unstuck from the occasional locked room you may fall into.
Really looking forward to spending more time with it.
… those damn ee… err fishes!
Some people here have talked about Shiren: Tower of Fortune and Dice of Fate and I was wondering… how is the NPC partner system in that game?
Oh god, is it anything like the one in Shiren on Wii (2008)? That was the worst exercise in cat herding I’ve ever played. The game’s fun factor crashes and burn as soon as you get an ally and it only gets worse when another one joins up. Playing all three characters manually is slow as shit, but you can put them on auto and have the AI do the work faster. But if you do that, they waste all your good “heal-every-ailment” items on petty problems. Thankfully, there’s a long list of items you can allow/forbid them to use, except it’s an all-or-nothing proposition. There’s no “stop throwing shit away like a dumdum” option, so you have to toggle between the two modes frequently.
So I get to one of the latter bosses I’ve never seen before and it paralyzes me. I forgot to put the sidekicks on manual. The other two idiots stand there wasting their turns doing useless shit. They will not help me, I’ve forbidden them to use the curing items! (“Help me, man, I’m dying here!” - “but boss, you told me not to use the super-healing scroll. No can do”). If I had let them use it, they would have wasted them on the way there anyway. So everyone dies like a loser. Haha, there is no “take manual control of the other idiots if Shiren is incapacitated” setting either, screw you. So then you lose everything and go back to level 1. Yay!
It works much better than on Shiren Wii. The companion AI mostly just follows your lead, and you don’t have to worry about them using consumables. And of course, the real meat of the game is in the bonus dungeons after completing the main story, and most of them you’re solo.
I just picked up the new Shiren last week. It was on a PSN sale for $15 so I had to bite, particularly because I was waiting on delivery of a new PlaystationTV to play it on. I loved Shiren DS and look forward to digging into it.
To add a little more Rogue-like discussion. I’ve been hooked on Leap of Fate for a month or so now. It really scratches the itch for me. I love the quick game play and ability to level up and branch out a new character quickly. I know it goes against hardcore rogue game design but I like unlockables and persistent upgrades. I’ve got 3 of the 4 characters unlocked and while I probably won’t finish it or anything since I suck so badly, I’ve definitely enjoyed the ride.
Before that I played the hell our of Rogue Legacy for a few months. I had a lot of fun with it but after the 2nd boss I kind of felt like I had seen it all and haven’t had much desire to go back. I still played a ridiculous amount of time and had a ball getting there.
Now I just need to renew my PS Plus so I can give Spelunky and Binding of Isaac Rebirth a go. They seem to be the type of Rogue like/lite I’m hooked on lately. I’ve played and enjoyed BoI original but I’ve been wanting to give it a go with the controller. It seems a perfect fit for it.
Did you ever try Forced Showdown? I tried Leap briefly on iOS but didn’t like it. Haven’t played Forced Showdown, but something about it looks a lot more fun to me.
I absolutely love Forced Showdown. It’s a great melding of twinstick, cards, and roguelike all wrapped in a SmashTV style tv show wrapper. I played Leap as well, and in many ways it is similar to Forced Showdown, but it pales in almost any way I could compare them.
I’ve been revisiting Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup lately. If pressed I’d call it my favorite. Caves of Qud was a great thing to see and that caught my fancy fairly recently and I do enjoy the puzzles and metagame of Desktop Dungeons quite a bit.
Those are my current Roguelikes
Tom Mc
What about Hand of Fate? I heard the combat was pretty meh. Did it improve? I notice it is on sale on steam.
I didn’t enjoy Hand of Fate after the first few hours. It became quickly clear to me the game was of a masochistic kind, based on anti-progression. If I am to be a good dog, I want to be petted sometimes, not systematically kicked.
What do you mean anti-progression? It’s one of the easiest roguelites out there and even then, you can still progress a little bit within the cards.
The last mission, though, it’s a toughie…