Game-related ramblings.

Tag: ToME

Roguelike Updates: New Crawlers and Redder Rogues

Readers who are unfamiliar with rogulikes may wish to read my introduction to the genre, or some of my Roguelike Highlights posts. Also remember that you can click on images to view larger versions.

One of the two updated roguelikes I’ve been playing is somewhat timely: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup reached v0.14 a mere three weeks ago (and is now on v0.14.1 with some bugfixes). The other is not: Red Rogue (which is actually a roguelike-like) reached v1.0.3 over a year ago (and I even mentioned it an an earlier Roguelike Updates post), but I hadn’t gone back to try it until recently. And then I found myself drawn in once more, playing it far more than I expected and being impressed all over again. I decided it was worth adding to my original post about Red Rogue with my more recent thoughts on the game.

Read on for details on these two, plus a run-down of other updated roguelikes.

Roguelike Highlights: Tales of Maj’Eyal

[If you are unfamiliar with roguelikes, consider reading my introduction to the genre. You can read previous Roguelike Highlights here. As always, click on screenshots to view bigger versions.]

In the year when Dungeons of Dredmor was released to critical acclaim, topped the Steam sales charts for a while, and introduced a whole bunch of people to the roguelike genre, I was somewhat surprised to discover that it did not win the ASCII Dreams Roguelike of the Year award for 2011. Instead, a game I had never heard of took the prize: Tales of Maj’Eyal, a.k.a. ToME 4. Upon further investigation I discovered the the award is simply given to the game that receives the most votes from its fans, and that indeed one can easily vote twice or for several different games. Still, the fact that ToME 4 took the prize for the second year running indicates a very devoted fanbase, so I decided it was time to check it out.

I’m glad I did, because ToME 4 is actually one of the more unusual roguelikes out there, with quite a lot of ideas and mechanics I haven’t seen in other roguelikes. It’s not just a game, but also an engine, providing building blocks and tools for players to construct their own roguelikes. The game itself demonstrates the versatility of the engine, which is able to handle both traditional and non-traditional mechanics, as well as sound effects, music, and fancy sprites and graphical effects if desired. I haven’t poked around with the engine myself, so I’m not sure how easy it is to use, but it’s certainly powerful.

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