Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I have two, TWO, things about Doom to show you. This is like being an archaeologist in the jungle and discovering a skellington, but the skellington’s heart is still beating and then, oh noes, there’s a ball chasing me and I’ve dropped my hat and give me back my whip Alfred Molina! This Doom reporting is tough work. No wonder all the journalists from that period are scarred and flinch whenever they hear the game’s name. For the brave, there are two Doom mashups that you should be excited about.
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Roguelikes! Everybody worth their salt is making a roguelike this week but the cheeky chaps at Kerberos jumped the gun somewhat and started work on their Sword of the Stars spin-off ages ago. The Pit is out now and can be purchased from GamersGate for £7.99 or through Steam for £6.29. There is also a demo, which I’ve dabbled with. It’s from the Dredmor School of Accessible Roguery, with chunky cartoonish graphics and what I think is a sense of humour. My roguelibrary has a sci-fi gap in it so I’m willing to give the lasers and spacestations a fair shake, but I’ll most likely end up craving something more complex.

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If you play as many roguelikes as I do, peoples’ email addresses begin to look like a vulnerable hero trapped in a corridor and surrounded by terrifying monsters. These most complex and cruel of dungeon crawlers may be destroying my ability to communicate electronically, particularly with anyone going by the name ‘DoUgLAS’, but my desire for them cannot be satiated. In the coming days, there will be an influx of new roguelikes, springing from the creative cauldron of the 7 Day Roguelike Challenge. Running from the 9th to the 17th of this month, it’s a fairly self-explanatory event. Make a roguelike in 168 hours or die trying do what I do and wait ’til other people have done the hard work, then just play them.

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This unfortunately-named roguelike (it’s never wise to call your game something that sounds like a 1990s Epic fansite) had a brief mention from Adam back in 2011. This scares me because Adam’s still the new boy in my mind, and now it seems he’s been working here for going on two years. I digress! UnReal World is an iron age-set roguelike about survival, and the difficulty thereof. Though lo-fi, it’s a brutal affair, with the frozen early Scandinavian Finnish environment as likely to do you in as wolves and roaming warriors are. It’s now gone donation-based, which means you can download and play it for as long as you like for free, hopefully then sending a few groats the developer’s way if you enjoy it.
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In 2013, I resolve to convince as many people as possible to play Roguelikes and I’ll be particularly targeting those people who have never delved into the devious dungeons of ‘@’ before. It’s OK to admit that you’ve avoided them in the past because they look intimidating/crappy. TOME could be the gateway game you’ve been waiting for. It’s a variant of one of the core roguelikes but when it reached version 1.0 recently something miraculous happened. Firstly, it actually reached 1.0, which is on a par with the parting of an ocean given how many of these wonder-works are fated to grow forever, passing from designer to designer. But more amazing still, TOME has neat graphics and a friendly interface. Download it immediately.

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I just lobbed a fire bomb at a couple of crossbow-wielding blobs but I got it all wrong and ended up on fire with one of my arms hanging off. Thankfully I’m a cartographer so I can quickly make my way back to a healing shrine using a safe path, essentially teleporting myself to the dungeon level’s spiritual hospital. Once there I found that there were too many enemies nearby, hunting me, so I couldn’t perform the ritual and heal myself. My arm dropped off. Doesn’t matter. It’ll grow back. I’ve been playing Epilogue, a roguelike that snubs orcs, dwarves and the like, and instead creates an ever stranger world, one that changes from level to level. There’s a very sizable demo here, and a video and more thoughts below.

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I wasn’t even a twinkle in anyone’s eye (not sure I ever was to be honest) when Jeff McCord started work on Gammaquest II, the game that would become one of the first roguelikes, Sword of Fargoal. Flash forward from the non-twinkling eyes of my parents to the dark hollows around my own ocular cavities. I am tired, I am drifting above the ocean in a metal tube, I should be sleeping but instead my eyes are glued to a tiny screen. I tap it, it shrugs and my avatar dies again. It is 2012, I am flying to London from Vancouver, and I am playing Sword of Fargoal on a phone. It occupies me for the entire journey. Now there’s a Kickstarter for a much-expanded sequel on Mac, Windows and Linux as well as iOS.

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FTL is out today! At long last. I reckon there’ll be a fair few people reading this who are about to receive their first Kickstarted game and that’s quite exciting, as is FTL itself. I’ve already shared some of my thoughts on the beta version but it does seem as if I’d been drinking vinegar that day. Skimming back through my words, I don’t seem quite as enthused as I actually am about the game’s finer points. When fires rage and crew members panic from room to room, FTL is a delicious brew, random elements combining to create a heady commingling of anxiety and roleplay. It’s a new form of ARPG. Available direct from the developers, on GOG and Steam shortly.

Here’s a wee free dram of roguelike-like for those who enjoy such things of an evening. Steam Marines is a squad-based, turn-based space-based game in which four tiny doomed people wander through a starstriding vessel and get killed by robots. Even though they do die a lot they’re not weaklings, able to smash through metal walls just for the sake of it. Covering entrances and exits seems to be the best way to advance, luring enemies into crossfire. Different weapons and speeds make it important to know each squad member, and there are movement units within each turn, which along with the multiple characters is reason for the extra ‘like’ on roguelike. Trailer with glorious music below.

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Mercury is “an experimental winner-generated arcade roguelike”, which immediately made it sound more exciting than “a massively anti-aliased cover-based shooter set in a warehouse on the moon” when I read about it first thing this morning. It’s a free game in the early stages of development, which, because of its brilliant conceptual twist, makes it the perfect time for the good people of RPS to enter its dungeons. Mercury is “winner-generated” because after each cycle of play, the two players with the most points are allowed to make new content for the game. So what started as a single class, single enemy, single item dungeon crawl is becoming more complex and chaotic as time goes on. Try the beta now or read more below.

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