Tag Archives: roguelike

Retro Select: Dungeon Hack

Enjoy D&D games but hate that they have to end eventually — and if you want to play again you end up playing the same old story over and over?

Enter Dungeon Hack, the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition take on the roguelike genre, making use of Westwood’s Eye of the Beholder engine. That’s quite a pedigree, I’m sure you’ll agree — and it’s a great game, too, particularly if you enjoy hack-and-slash treasure huntin’ dungeon crawlin’.

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

Atari ST A to Z: Rogue

It’s time for a biggie! A truly genre-defining game, at that — although its real influence perhaps wouldn’t become truly known on the mainstream side of gaming until quite some time after its original release.

I’m talking about the legendary Rogue, of course, which has an interesting story behind its original creation — and whose Atari ST version is one of the best ways to play out there. This edition, published by Epyx and put together by one of the game’s original creators, is an accessible and friendly way to enjoy some dungeon crawling — and a great way to kick off a roguelike addiction if you don’t already have one!

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

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short;Play: Teleglitch

As wonderful as true teleportation technology would be, I think we’ve probably had enough cautionary sci-fi tales by now to make anyone very wary of actually pursuing research in this field.

One that I’m rather fond of is Teleglitch, a charmingly lo-fi roguelike-inspired action game that takes a number of cues from classic first-person shooters and survival horror games. In it, you play a scientist at a military research installation with rather questionable ethics where, unsurprisingly, work on both teleportation and genetic engineering has gone horribly wrong.

Enjoy my gameplay in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

short;Play: Dungeon of the Endless

Amplitude Studios first came to my attention a good few years back with the release of Endless Space, a 4X strategy game that I didn’t completely suck at.

Since that first game, they’ve expanded the Endless universe considerably with several other games. Probably my favourite of them all is Dungeon of the Endless, a curious hybrid of roguelike, board game, tower defense and all manner of other goodness. And it’s out now for Nintendo Switch! You can get it in a box and everything.

Having not actually played it for a while, I decided to see how I got on with my rusty skills. The answer is “not well”, but I hope at least you can see why this game is so enjoyable if you take the time to learn it!

If you enjoyed the video, don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

Yodanji: Stabby Weasels and Licky Umbrellas

Every now and then, I like to trawl through Nintendo’s various digital marketplaces to see if anything interesting catches my eye.

The most bounteous sources of unusual and cheap Nintendo- based entertainment to date have been the 3DS eShop, which brought us games such as the highly unusual but thoroughly compelling Puzzle Labyrinth, and the Switch’s eShop, which is awash with small-scale indie projects from all over the world.

One that grabbed my attention recently — primarily due to it being on sale for less than what you’d pay for breakfast at Starbucks — was Yōdanji, a game originally released by Kemco for PC, mobile and Switch in 2017, and a self-described “coffee-break roguelike themed after Japanese folklore tales”. I’m in! Let’s take a look.

Continue reading Yodanji: Stabby Weasels and Licky Umbrellas

Atari A to Z: A-Rogue

Roguelikes are big business today, but they’ve been around for a long time.

Much like many early games, they originated as mainframe affairs that didn’t get home ports until much later, when ambitious programmers decided to see exactly what they could get their micros to do.

A-Rogue is what happened when Robert Jung decided to take the original Rogue and rewrite it in Atari BASIC for 48K Atari home computers. He did a pretty good job considering the limitations he had to work within!

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

First Look: Neverinth

Something I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of sooner is the combination of heavy-hitting, stamina-management combat, randomly generated dungeons and a long-term unlockable-based metagame.

These mechanics and structures have proven themselves to be pretty consistently popular at this point over the course of a variety of well-received games, so it makes sense that someone would finally take the plunge and try to mash them all together into one coherent lump.

The result looks something like CreAct’s Neverinth, an action RPG for PC that just entered its public Early Access period at the time of writing, and which a few people I know have been making excited noises about for a while. Let’s take a look!

Continue reading First Look: Neverinth

Xenon Valkyrie+: 16-Bit Procedural Platforming

You might think the “roguelike” subgenre is oversaturated (it is). You might think the term “roguelike” is widely misused (it is). But that’s not to say there aren’t still good examples of games with roguelike elements being released.

One such example is Xenon Valkyrie+, a game originally developed by Spanish coder Daniel Fernandez Chavez (aka “Diabolical Mind”) and enhanced for its PlayStation 4 and Vita release by solo French developer Fabrice Breton of Cowcat Games. If that pairing sounds familiar, you may recall we looked at their previous collaboration Riddled Corpses EX a while back.

Riddled Corpses EX impressed me a great deal, so when Limited Run Games offered a physical release of Xenon Valkyrie+ a few months ago, I thought I’d jump on it and see what else this dream team could come up with.

Continue reading Xenon Valkyrie+: 16-Bit Procedural Platforming

Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God – A Mysterious and Fragrant Dungeon

Japan’s most commonly seen take on the popular roguelike RPG subgenre — typically referred to as “Mystery Dungeon” games after the Chunsoft series that cemented the formula — is a little different from how we tackle our dungeon-delving here in the West.

Mystery Dungeon-style games have been developed by a wide variety of companies over the years, and the formula is straightforward and versatile enough that it’s been applied to all manner of franchises ranging from Pokemon to Etrian Odyssey as well as a number of original creations.

Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God from Compile Heart and Idea Factory takes Compile’s venerable Madou Monogatari series — that which ultimately begat the much more well known Puyo Puyo puzzle empire — and reimagines it for the Mystery Dungeon age. The result is an accessible and enjoyable game that is a great introduction to this style of RPG.

Continue reading Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God – A Mysterious and Fragrant Dungeon

Mega Drive Essentials: ToeJam and Earl

Ah, the ’90s. The era of attitude. Or, more specifically, the era of everyone spontaneously and inexplicably wishing they were Californian.

Video games certainly weren’t exempt from this trend at all, though various different titles from the era took their attitude towards, uh, “‘tude” more seriously than others.

One noteworthy game from the early ’90s that simultaneously acknowledged the popularity of California-style attitude as well as poking fun at the inherent absurdity of it all — particularly the disconnect between your stereotypical video game nerd and what one would think of as a “cool dude” — was Johnson Voorsanger Productions’ ToeJam & Earl, published by Sega for the Mega Drive in 1991.

Continue reading Mega Drive Essentials: ToeJam and Earl