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[Widget]

If you like Stone Soup for the mouse control and graphical UI you might enjoy ToME4 aswell. It's very much a beta (last I checked, anyway) and it's somewhat on the easy side (don't play the default difficulty) but it's a joy to play, in the sense of controlling your @ and just getting on with it.

It's drifted quite a long way from the norm and sacrificed quite a bit of the depth and complexity (which is why I stopped playing a while ago) for the fixed story and ease-of-use but it's got good points aswell. In particular, it's what I'd recommend to a newcomer who didn't enjoy the coffee break RL introduction.

[rszrama]

I should've mentioned this in my post above about accessibility... has anyone played 100 Rogues for the iPhone? It's a fully touch powered arcade Roguelike with sharp graphics and fun gameplay.  Tap to move / pickup / attack, tap and hold on the player to open a context menu for using special abilities.  It's very simple and a lot of fun - best RL experience on a touch device imo.

[shipwreck]

I should've mentioned this in my post above about accessibility... has anyone played 100 Rogues for the iPhone? It's a fully touch powered arcade Roguelike with sharp graphics and fun gameplay.  Tap to move / pickup / attack, tap and hold on the player to open a context menu for using special abilities.  It's very simple and a lot of fun - best RL experience on a touch device imo.

This looks really rad. I've already loaded up my wife's iPhone with games but one more can't hurt!

[rszrama]

This looks really rad. I've already loaded up my wife's iPhone with games but one more can't hurt!

lol - I did the same for a while after leaving my phone on a freaking bus in Copenhagen. 

She won't mind... maybe you can even turn her into a roguelike enthusiast.

[JobLeonard]

If you're looking for something slightly more left-field, try IVAN.

That's still one of my favourite roguelikes. The graphics actually serve a purpose (like harmed enemies spilling blood, allowing you to track them easily), and the number of commands is very effectively trimmed.

Too bad there hasn't been much progress since 2005.

[s0]

I should've mentioned this in my post above about accessibility... has anyone played 100 Rogues for the iPhone? It's a fully touch powered arcade Roguelike with sharp graphics and fun gameplay.  Tap to move / pickup / attack, tap and hold on the player to open a context menu for using special abilities.  It's very simple and a lot of fun - best RL experience on a touch device imo.

100 Rogues is good, but I think I enjoy iNethack and Sword of Fargoal slightly more.

[FrankieSmileShow]

I liked Incursion a lot. I like the levels it generates, these small individual rooms with their own radically different generation algorithms, mashed together into these huge maps. It was really hard too.

[X3N]

Neato, got a rogue-like for Mac. Now to install Nethack ASCII..
100 Rogues had some glitches, but they've been updating. I had trouble not being able to eat corpses.. need food to survive! (still, it's a fun game. The challenges were cool too)

Instances challenges would be a neat concept to see in roguelikes.. "kill X in Y turns with Z setup" etc.

[rszrama]

Instances challenges would be a neat concept to see in roguelikes.. "kill X in Y turns with Z setup" etc.

Yeah, I thought this was a great feature of 100 Rogues... makes for good playability when you aren't necessarily looking to begin an hour long crawl into the dungeon at large.

[Waltorious]

If you're looking for something slightly more left-field, try IVAN.

That's still one of my favourite roguelikes. The graphics actually serve a purpose (like harmed enemies spilling blood, allowing you to track them easily), and the number of commands is very effectively trimmed.

Too bad there hasn't been much progress since 2005.

I have to disagree about IVAN... I found it to be very fun at first but as I got farther I started to realize that it's design was forcing me to play in ways that were very counterintuitive and not any fun.  The biggest problem is that the game scales its difficulty to how good your equipment is... so if you find an awesome weapon or some sweet armor, and you decide to use them, the enemies instantly get much harder.  So this means that finding such an item is not an exciting event like it should be; rather, it's often smarter to NOT use it so the enemies don't become super-powered.  This kind of backwards thinking permeates other parts of the game too, like the fact that when you find potions of poison, you actually WANT to drink them because, if you survive, your toughness will increase.  Other aspects are simply a boring grind, like having to talk to villagers constantly to increase your intelligence.

It's a shame, because many aspects of the game were really good, like the humor, and the fact that different limbs can be severed or changed into other materials.

It reminds me of what Triplefox said about Roguelikes either encouraging grinding, or encouraging calculated risks.  IVAN encourages grinding, whereas Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, which I much prefer, is all about the calculated risks.

Brogue sounds really interesting, I'm going to give that a try.

[baconman]

Just d/l'ed Brogue, that one does sound interesting. Also, I'd LOVE to play 100 Rogues, but alas, I have no iTouch. I do have PokeMon Mystery Dungeon, though; it's terrific learn-to-Rogue, especially if you already have the PokeMon dynamic down. And the after-plot game that's ongoing is really fun, too; if only a bit generous (it generates a LOT of items for you).

As far as Shrien reviews go, this basically comes from two sources: Casual RPG'ers saying "it's too hard and gimmicky," and people who love brutal and unforgiving Roguelikes going "this is easy/boring shit." That said, it means somebody's doing something right.

[JobLeonard]

@Waltorius: you have give some very good critique. I guess I just never noticed the bad parts because I enjoyed the good parts so much. And because I kept playing it "badly".

I really wish someone would take the good parts of it, fix the bad parts, maybe steal some stuff from other Roguelikes and then turn it into a new game.

[Waltorious]

@Waltorius: you have give some very good critique. I guess I just never noticed the bad parts because I enjoyed the good parts so much. And because I kept playing it "badly".

I really wish someone would take the good parts of it, fix the bad parts, maybe steal some stuff from other Roguelikes and then turn it into a new game.

That would be cool.  There are a few variants of IVAN, which you can see here:

http://www.attnam.com/downloads.php?show=variants

Most of them simply add items / locations and such, and don't really change the core gameplay much.  Of course, my complaints about the game are really due to personal preference... there are many players who enjoy figuring out these mechanics and how to use them to their advantage.  And as I said, there definitely are some great things about the game.  I guess I view it as something that can be fun to play as long as I realize that the game will probably kill me in a way that really seems unfair.  This makes it hard for me to play it "seriously", where I really try to get to the end.  To me, the only way to survive that far is to not really have any fun.

[JobLeonard]

 

the game will probably kill me in a way that really seems unfair.

Well, that was one of the stated goals of the developers, IIRC

[Slash - Santiago Zapata]

Check out roguetemple: http://www.roguetemple.com there's also the IRLDB which contains 291 games from roguebasin. http://www.roguetemple.com/irldb

I have also heard good things about DrashRL, CastlevaniaRL and Expedition here: http://slashie.net

[tametick]

I have also heard good things about DrashRL, CastlevaniaRL and Expedition here: http://slashie.net

Now that's just shameless

[Waltorious]

Brogue sounds really interesting, I'm going to give that a try.

So I tried Brogue, and it's really good!  It's definitely a simpler roguelike, without too many commands to remember, there's no character creation and not that many items compared to some of the more complex games like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.  But it's got an interesting dungeon generator, which makes things like pits and rope bridges that are pretty cool, and the ASCII art is great.  Fantastic use of color and motion in the ASCII.  I would definitely recommend it to someone who is new to roguelikes as it's simple enough to not be overwhelming to a new player but also manages to be really fun and still have good strategic decisions to make.  My only complaint is the apparent lack of a save feature... so if you get a character a few levels into the dungeon and you want to be able to return to that spot next time, you can't.  You have to play each character in one uninterrupted session.  But it's quick enough that it's not too much of a downside.

Thanks to rszrama for suggesting it!

[rszrama]

Woohoo! Glad you liked it, Waltorious. Lack of save comes up pretty regularly in the Brogue forum, so hopefully 1.4 will deliver. I'll pass on your mini-review to send Pender some good vibes, or you can post up other feedback / ideas in his forum at: http://brogue.createforumhosting.com/

[tametick]

Brogue sounds really interesting, I'm going to give that a try.

So I tried Brogue, and it's really good!  

I also tried brogue for the first time recently.

It is indeed very nice, but I ultimately got bored because the game was too easy.

I think I got to dungeon level 8 without needing to invest much effort trying to survive at all (just bashing everything i found), at which point I quit out of boredom.

[rszrama]

It is indeed very nice, but I ultimately got bored because the game was too easy.

I think I got to dungeon level 8 without needing to invest much effort trying to survive at all (just bashing everything i found), at which point I quit out of boredom.

Sounds like you quit a touch too early... the first few levels are indeed simple and pretty much exist to get a good pool of items into your inventory.  However, go a few levels deeper and you'll be slaughtered by trolls, ogre shamans, bog monsters (that creep up on you in the swamps), and dow blademasters that teleport right up next to you and slice you to shreds.

I rarely make it past level 10 or 11, and I think my deepest dive so far has been level 14.  It took many deaths at those levels to realize I needed to conserve my identifications and enchantments from early on as much as possible to ensure I buffed my equipment appropriately.  The real strategy of the game is making those resources you gain early on carry you through the final stages... items become much more scarce as you progress, and traps start dropping you down through floors, shooting you with lightning, and spewing acid on your armor and weapons.

Not trying to drag you back in unnecessarily, but I think it's worth picking up again later.

Two things you might use to speed up the early levels are X and A. X will auto-explore until it finds an item or new enemy, at which point you can decide what to do. A will auto-play until you tell it to stop (which can be frustrating if a monkey runs off with a good staff and the auto-player doesn't know how to corner it). It might be good feedback, though, for the "grindiness" of these early levels to be tweaked as a player becomes more experienced... like, drop me in on level 5 with a full inventory and let me figure out where to go from there.