Dungeons of Dredmor: A Roguelike For People Who Aren’t Horrible

Dungeons of Dredmor, a new PC game released by the indie studio Gaslamp Games, is a Roguelike.

Okay! So what is a Roguelike? A Roguelike is a sort of game that makes people who can only grow a beard on their neck wax poetically about how gaming has devolved since the 80′s and they remember when things were complex and interesting and not all consolified like absolutely all games are now which is why they suck. More specifically, it’s a form of turn-based adventure/RPG. You walk around a map, you thwack monsters with things, you get items, and you gain power as you go via experience points doled out for a variety of reasons.

More importantly, though: you die. You die so often that it quickly becomes a game not about vanquishing monsters, but about considering exactly how paranoid you should be and whether you can make it to the second floor this time without stepping on a trap (stupid stupid I’ll never make that mistake again) or forgetting that your own flame spells can hurt you (just need to be patient next time) or wandering into a new room that is chock full of monsters with your HP at half and your Mana at bupkis (I can’t keep betting that the next room will be empty!). I have made 12 characters so far. None have lived to see the second level of the dungeon.

A good Roguelike will put you through your paces without mercy, and Dungeons of Dredmor is a good Roguelike. So why is it any better than the next Roguelike, most of which are free?

Well, this is what the extremely popular Nethack looks like:

Oh well that is an interesting series of what I can assume are game... things?

Here is what Dungeons of Dredmor looks like:

I can make out shapes, even things!

It isn’t exactly pretty, but for goodness sake it is at least making a goddamn effort. That says to me that the developer is actually attempting to create an entertaining game to be enjoyed by others rather than shoving more and more statistics into an already bloated pile of ASCII characters.  Dredmor retains the gleefully horrific difficulty and unnecessarily deep skill/crafting/etc systems that endear people to Roguelikes, while being accessible to a wider audience.  If you are at all into adventuring, RPGs, or puzzles, you owe it to yourself to give this a shot.

Proun: Free, Fast, Fun, Fucking… Really Good

So hey! Hey, I’m not really what you’d call a Race Cars Fan. I don’t know that you’d ever call anyone that, now that I think about it. I feel like there’s probably a less stilted way of saying it. No don’t tell me I don’t even care god.

The point is: I don’t love racing, but I love Proun more than your parents love you. It’s exhilaration in a tiny, simple and very beautiful package. It’s difficult to describe, but here:

That’s it. It’s a beautiful abstract landscape unlike anything you’ve seen set to a jazzy soundtrack that allows you to experience speed that makes your hair fly back. And the landscapes are really beautiful at full resolution with all the bells on. Simple, obviously, but crisp and bright and clean and man just nice. Little graphical tricks that don’t do much to improve games that are trying to mimic reality really make the tracks in Proun shine.

And that’s the whole thing! It’s an experience in trying to quickly react to changing environmental hazards in order to shave time off again and again until you can do the level such a ludicrous speed that you’re less reactive than precognitive. There are, of course, online leaderboards to track your progress. You can even race your friends locally, on the same computer and even same keyboard if you feel like it.

It's just, it's really pretty. Even more pretty in motion, too.

The online community has also already started churning out extra maps in new and strange abstract landscapes, something I hope continues to pick up pace. Hell, are you an artist? Make something for this and I guarantee you more people will be excited about your work than are currently pretending to be.

The best part about all this? It’s free! Well, actually it’s pay $whatyouwant. If you’re somehow completely unable to find joy in the gameplay video and screenshots, you can simply download the whole game and give it a go. If you’d like a neat little bonus track to play, you can donate money to the author. I gave $5, which seems frankly unfair. I may give more later! You should see the game for youself and give it the money you think it deserves. And if you don’t think it deserves any money, you’re dead inside.

Rock of Ages is a Fun Looking Game

So there’s finally more information about the next game from the creators of Zeno Clash, Rock of Ages!

I’ve been pretty excited about it for a while, if only because the art design in Zeno Clash was worth the price of admission, and the idea of them taking on a simpler game with similar attention to art design interests me. Zeno Clash was certainly interesting and ambitious, but it was only partly a success in terms of actual fun gameplay, what with a lot of repetition and a cool but slightly wonky combat system. This looks to be a weirder, more puzzle-oriented affair that will be more amenable to repeat visits.

Basically, it’s a game in which you set up defenses to stop a giant boulder from rolling into your castle, and also try to roll a giant boulder into a castle that has set up defenses around itself. It’s got a variety of other modes of varying levels of fun-looking, too! It seems like a mix between those games where you roll a marble down a circuitous path, and well tower defense games. Plus, it’s got a weird unnecessary art-history theme. I like it! Here’s the official explanatory poster:

Gametrailers has recently posted a few cool preview videos here, including an interesting 10-minute walkthrough of a “Tower Offense” match. But I can’t embed because apparently WordPress sucks. Instead, I’ll let you see the trailer and then go watch that movie on your own if you’re smart enough to find it really interesting.

And I guess because you’ve been good, here’s another video with a bit of the two-player game mode where you take turns defending and attacking.

Hawken!

So, I just caught this on RockPaperShotgun, and it looks sweeeeeet.

I love giant bipedal robots. I know they’re pretty damn silly but holy shit, they’re so cool. Oddly, almost no games in the modern era have had them, or at least decent versions. I mean what, Armored Core? That was a yawnfest. I want giant robots with sweet create-your-own shit and also boom boom boom boom.

I don’t know from the ability to create your own robot, but holy shit does indie studio Adhesive Games seem to have brought the booms quite effectively. It’s completely pretty, it’s got massive death-dealing robots that have jetpacks… and even better it’s a whole in-robot HUD look (that you can see briefly at the end of the trailer) that I love.

The trailer shows robots that move a little jumpy, but that is because it is not bullshit. It’s actual footage of actual people playing a real game through an observer, and although it’s a little bit weirdly animated, I appreciate the honesty.

And in fact, checking the developer site:

Yes, there is choppiness in the mech locations in the video, but it’s because it was captured in slow motion with a spectator camera from demos recorded from network games. Actual network play looks okay.

I am so fucking excited for this. I love that indie games are starting to actually punch in the same weight class as AAA ones, frequently filling in niche gaps that are being ignored by the current development generation. Little is known about the game for now, but here’s hoping for an actual release window soon. They do mention that they hope to make it a downloadable title on PS3/360/PC released for reasonably cheap. And! It’s not just going to be Deathmatch, there are “Two unique game modes”, whatever that might mean.

BAM!

 

suteF: Weird, Good, Oddly Scary.

This time things will go better, right?

suteF is a game that feels wrong the moment you begin playing. It’s Whimsical Platforming, it’s an indie game, it’s got pixels coming out of every orifice. It shouldn’t be disconserting. And yet it manages to make me feel uncomfortable in ways the blandly horrible Dead Space 2 wasn’t even able to attempt.

It’s a really simple game: you control a blue man, who tries to get out of places. Usually, that means climbing toward a giant television playing snow. Death only resets the level.

Usually.  Much like my favorite creepy game, The Void, suteF makes the most of the fact that it’s a game by pulling the rug out from under you. You’re taught the very minimum of rules to progress, and you can’t help but find yourself making assumptions. You progress slowly ahead in terms of level complexity and available tools and assume that you’ll hit a plateu when you have access to all your tools and start hitting harder and harder levels, then a boss or something. But that doesn’t happen. Instead, you get thrown into situations that continually redefine what it is you need to accomplish in order to survive while always managing to present a puzzle that’s engaging to confront. As you play, little hints of exactly how terrible a situation you’re in get thrown at you. You start to notice more and more corpses that look oddly like you.

It’s as though someone took Super Meat Boy, and made the evil mirror universe version. Slow instead of fast, brain-teasing instead of reflex-testing, horrific instead of delightful. Frankly, it’s worth playing. You can get it at http://rottentater.com/sutef/, a tiny indie developer who will appreciate you taking the time to check out his cool game idea.

Also, the game has a Computer Bear, which is when a Bear is also a Computer.

Super Crate Box!

Super Crate Box is a game, and it is a pretty dang good game. It is also free.

It is quick, simple, and fun. What you do is you get crates. The more you crate, the more you score. In these crates, crazy weapons are there. So you take these crazy weapons and you kill kill kill the monsters that are constantly dropping from the ceiling to prevent them from hitting the fire because fire only makes them stronger. While gathering more crates for a higher score. Because each crate gives you a new weapon at random, replacing your previous one, you end up crazy switching between them and dashing about and man is it fun.

You should give it a look, people. You should look so hard you actually download it spontaneously.