Game-related ramblings.

Tag: IBOL

Back To Infinity: Approaching Infinity v1.3

If you haven’t already, you should read my earlier post about Approaching Infinity first. And, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Longtime readers may remember that I quite liked the space-faring roguelike Approaching Infinity. I’d always planned to return to it, especially after it received some major updates, but kept getting distracted by other games instead. Now I have finally returned to it, prompted by a reader comment, so I can tell you what I think of the updates and give some more publicity to a great game that I fear may disappear into obscurity.

In Space, No One Can Hear Your Roguelike Updates

Readers unfamiliar with roguelikes may wish to read my introduction to the genre, and possibly peruse some of my Roguelike Highlights posts. Also, as always, you can click on images to view larger versions.

Well, it’s been another long delay between Roguelike Updates posts, largely because I haven’t had much time to play roguelikes recently. But I do want to highlight a couple of big updates. First, Approaching Infinity has been at version 1.1 for a while, with another update imminent. Second, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup forever marches forward, now on version 0.16.1. I’ve had a chance to play both, and offer some quick thoughts below.

Roguelike Highlights: Approaching Infinity

Readers who are unfamiliar with roguelikes may wish to read my introduction to the genre, and perhaps peruse a few of my previous highlights. Also, as always, you can click on images to view bigger versions.

Longtime readers may remember that I posted about Approaching Infinity over a year ago, when it was just finishing up its Kickstarter campaign. The campaign was a success and the finished product is now available from Shrapnel Games (the Kickstarter campaign funded the majority of development, with the publishing deal with Shrapnel signed later). I intended to write about the game sooner because I was enjoying the various pre-release builds that were available during development, but once I started playing the official release I couldn’t stop. I had to see what the next few sectors would bring, always afraid I was missing something cool that I would want to write about. Now, having reached one of many possible endings, I can take a break to tell you about it.

First things first: Approaching Infinity ditches the traditional fantasy settings of most roguelikes and instead casts the player as a starship captain, exploring new sectors of space, landing on planets, finding equipment and trade goods, and doing business with various alien races, all in a universe that keeps going forever, without limits. And it’s great.

lim x→∞: Approaching Infinity Will Be A Space Exploration Roguelike

Readers unfamiliar with roguelikes may wish to read my introduction to the genre here, or my other posts about roguelikes here. Also, as always, you can click on screenshots for larger versions.

Regular readers will know that I’m quite fond of roguelikes. Given the genre’s roots of fantasy-themed dungeon crawling, however, it’s unusual to find roguelikes with science fiction settings. This may be why I’m drawn to examples like Xenocide and Caves of Qud, but even these still follow a single character exploring locations on foot. Approaching Infinity takes the roguelike to the stars, casting the player as a ship captain who both explores space in their ship and explores planets and shipwrecks with an away team. The game is on Kickstarter and has met its funding goal already, but there are three days left (at the time of writing) to raise more money for some stretch goals. If you’re interested, the Kickstarter page links to an alpha demo to try, and backers get an updated demo to play with. I’ve taken the public demo for a spin, and even in its unfinished alpha state I liked what I found.

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