Dunqan
1941
Wow 98% positive rating - pretty impressive - I’ll have to pick it up.
Ok people. Recommend a roguelike/roguelite game. Some points:
-I liked games like Dungeons of Dredmor or Dead Cells. I have pending to try TOME one of these days. I think my next roguelite will be Slay the Spire, I hear good things.
-Have graphics. It doesn’t have to be super pretty, but no ascii games.
-Have great variety in each run. So as you know, one of the key aspects of roguelikes is that usually have small ‘graphics budget’, but thanks to that, they have more depth in systems and/or content. I was searching something like that, that have great variety in classes for examples, I love games where playing another class is suddenly like playing another game, with different tactical considerations, different toolset, or even different resources.
For example, I’m also a sucker of strategy games where each faction is asymmetric and plays totally different (different resources, style, victory conditions)
-It isn’t super hardcore. It is a pity, but most games of this genre are ‘my way or the highway’ school of design. High default difficulty, and even worse, no difficulty options. One of the things I liked from DoD was the better accesibility (easy/normal mode, but also you could choose to save between floors, or even if you wanted a normal or a long run).
You’ve already identified my rec - TOME 4.
Well Slay the Spire fits everything in your list, excepting I wouldn’t think of it as a Roguelite/like
My recommandation would be Has-been Heroes, but it has got a pretty steep learning curve (it probably will seem random and/or totally puzzling for the first dozen of hours). Not much reflexes are required, new unlocked characters quite expand the game, without turning it onto itself like some others might though.
Once I got into it I really enjoyed it, but its initial inaccessibilty (which I blame on the dev wearing blinders and thinking their game was so great everybody would get it right away) is tricky to get around. The game also unlocks mechanics in a quite schizophrenic way, which again hints to the aforementioned blinders.
Great game though.
Yeah, I think Tome is what you want based on that list.
It can be a touch brutal at times but I feel like the difficulty levels address that well enough.
Dude, just go play TOME. Right now.
Tim_N
1948
I really should get back into playing TOME again. Are the expansions worthwhile picking up?
How does this TOME 4 website for a free game differ from the steam version which I have?
EDIT: Finally found a thing saying it’s like the free version with extra features that donators get, or something.
Thraeg
1949
TOME and Slay the Spire are both excellent choices. But Into the Breach would also be perfect for your criteria.
ITB has a whole roster of squads that play extremely differently from one another, as well as the eventual ability to make a random or custom squad.
Easy/normal/hard, undo ability, choice of whether to tackle 2, 3, or 4 islands before triggering the final battle, and flexibility to just focus on winning at first, and gradually progress to shooting for perfect islands and tricky meta-goals.
That’s exactly it. If you donate money, you get a few minor perks. Buying on Steam counts as having donated that much money. Also, you get to use Steam’s DLC interface for the DLC, and there’s Steam Workshop support for mods, and Steam achievements. That’s about it.
You might want to check out Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. It’s a completely free game i stream heavily and provide tutorial video’s for. It’s got a HUGE content pool with nearly complete control over the difficulty/world-setup/character options you can use. I have probably 2k+ hours into it at this point and still haven’t seen/done everything. It gets half a dozen updates day also, so it’s an easy one to take a break from and come back to all new stuff to enjoy.
Grab a beverage and some snacks and watch this to see if you might be interested in the game:
Or here is a very humorous intro/review/comedy-routine about the game:
milspec
1952
+1 on Cataclysm DDA, one of best roguelike ever especially if you want a change of pace from fantasy genre.
Go NEO Scavenger if you want some survival/adventure elements all up in your sort of not quite entirely unlike a roguelike…The world tiles and loot is random but there are fixed named locations that are always in the same spot. Also there are no levels or classes or anything just starting skill points (both negative and positive skills!) and combat is something you generally don’t want to do because you can die real fast.
Basically if you get hit…you fight worse, which means it is easier to get hit more and it snowballs fast and you die. Best way to not die in combat is to never ever get hit EVER. Otherwise you’ll also probably die from starvation, dehydration, hypothermia, poison, or during one of many adventure segments when you try to do something…
Putting together what I’ve been recommended here and other forums:
-TOME
-Into the Breach (I already have it, in my brain it’s classified under the strategy genre, not the roguelike genre :P)
-Has-been Heroes
-Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
-Neo Scavenger (not sure how it applies my requirements)
-Enter the Gungeon (because EtG fans seem to totally ignore what I wrote lol)
-DungeonMans
-Golden Krone Hotel
-Tangledeep
-Desktop dungeons
-Caves of qud
-20XX
-Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
Golden Krone Hotel is a roguelike that checks almost all your marks but the variety, but it’s got a gimmick (the turning into vampire and back into human) whose mechanics I didn’t enjoy once I understood them, so much I quite rejected the game — but to explain those mechanics would be spoiling a big part of the game, so!
Dungeonmans is a roguelike with persistance: while you can play it hardcore as a true blank-slate roguelike, it has been balanced to play (and grind) around a world you’ll build up your bases and generations of heroes into. It thus lacked the main appeal of the genre to me. It doesn’t have difficulty levels but clues as to the difficulty of the dungeons, so you don’t get jumped by super tough mobs all of a sudden without at least seeing it somewhat coming. That game seems to really click with some people.
Desktop Dungeons is one of my favourite games, but it can’t be called even a roguelite in fairness: like Into the Breach, it’s much more of a smart as hell dynamically generated puzzles game to me. I can’t recommend both highly enough.
If somebody is recommending Enter the Gungeon, I’ll up it with a Binding of Isaac. I think it’s a much more satisfying game, as a whole, and a lot less punishing.
It seems Dungeonmans has a custom mode where you can tweak a whole bunch of parameters of the game, maybe that’s why it was recommended. It also has a quirky vibe going on like DoD.
Oh it doesn’t at all. I just felt like talking about it. :)
I wanted to like Dungeonmans (not least because I kickstarted it) but it’s never really clicked for me.
I am having a blast watching the stream of you playing Dark Days - I even pulled it down to give it a try, but wow, talk about options. I probably shouldn’t start off hand crafting a character, talk about options. Cyborgs?! Man.
Is there maybe a video you (or someone you recommend) has done to ease new players into the basics to get the ball rolling?
Welcome to the Cataclysm. Definitely play the most recent experimental release and use the Launcher. I would start as vanilla as possible, then add/adjust the mods and difficulty to suit your needs in later games. If you feel the need for some help i have created some new player friendly series on YouTube designed to introduce the game and answer questions. Here are some links:
Full Tutorial Play-through (Evac shelter/Survivor start). Watch at least to Episode 6, then more if you are enjoying the series as i continue explaining mechanics/systems/strategy as they come up during the playthrough:
Cataclysm University:
Cataclysm Quick Tips:
The goal of these video’s is to ease the early game frustration and show how cool/complicated the systems are once you realize just how much is simulated. I’m happy to answer any questions in the comments or on my Discord channel (or here of course).
If you do give it a try and want your game to look/sound the way mine does in my current episodes let me know and i can point you to the settings/soundpack/tileset info that will be best with your computer configuration.
