Dungeon Crawlers

Lately I've been enjoying a roguelike called GearHead. If you've never heard of it, GearHead is a mecha-themed roguelike inspired by such things as Macross, Robotech, Gundam Wing, and whatever else features giant robots shooting at one another and beating the snot out of each other. It's got curb appeal from fans of the genre, but is surprisingly deep and imaginative; I hate anime in general, but was surprised at how enjoyable the game is. Plus, everything is named in English or named randomly instead of given names in broken Japanese, which is a huge bonus. =)

I played GearHead about six months ago and set it aside from a good while, but recently picked it up again more seriously and found it very rewarding.

GearHead 1 is the original. It is no longer under active development, but is very stable and feature-complete at version 1.100. It includes a traditional DOS/ASCII-based interface for those people who enjoy the classic feel, and also includes a sprite-based SDL version for people interested in a flashier, more-modern interface (but beware of eye strain on newer monitors, as they rarely support 16-bit colour mode at higher refresh rates). It is the most complete version of the game, with plenty of gameplay to enjoy.

GearHead 2 is a sequel of sorts by the same author as GearHead 1. It could be construed as a "reimagining" of the game; even though the game is set in the same timeline and universe, there isn't really any perceptible continuity between the two games and GH2 is what I would simply call a newer, spankier version of the original. It is under active development, though the author's wife did recently give birth so development is slower than usual. The DOS/ASCII interface seems to be a step back from GH1, sadly, but to its credit the 3D SDL interface is much, much spiffier and -- after the initial period of acclimation -- is quite entertaining to play.

Both games feature two main scales of gameplay. The personal scale, featured prominently in GearHead 1 but downplayed somewhat in GearHead 2, is a standard roguelike scale where you walk around bashing on things, except instead of bashing things, you wind up shooting at things instead. The mecha scale is a far sight larger, with you piloting a ginormous metal behemoth and blowing up enemy mechas instead.

You'll have plenty of opportunity to rack up a large body count in either game. The game like many other roguelikes can be unforgiving at times, but what is very impressive about the games -- particularly GearHead 2 -- is their random mission and random plot generators. Various "plots" are generated every five game minutes and an astute player can pick up on these by hearing the latest rumours and tracking down fixers.

A mad-lib generator produces random conversation tidbits from NPCs while you try to work on improving their relationship with you. I find the mad libs to be irritating and sometimes even painful to look at, but they are occasionally amusing -- particularly because some are taken from anime pop culture with nouns and adjectives mad-libbed -- and are a subset of a feature that is very useful. Improving your relationship means better deals from shopkeepers, a higher likelihood of being accepted for a mission, and a good reputation.

A great feature is the way that all objects are built out of components, and yes, you can usually customise them. Want to strip the leg off of one mecha and graft it onto another to make a three-legged monstrosity (dirty joke not intended)? No problem! Even personal scale equipment, though limited in tweaking, can be upgraded with store-bought add-ons.

The component system is fundamentally built on top of the "Point Value" system, which prices all commodities based on their perceived value to a player. The basis of economy in the game is thus how powerful something is, meaning that high-grade equipment is naturally more expensive than low-grade equipment and everything balances out rather nicely. I was pleasantly surprised that someone else had developed a system like this, since I was planning one for my own games!

The reason the PV system is particularly wicked is because of the game's plug-and-play modding. All mods for the game are written in plain text and can easily be tweaked to your heart's content. New mechas can easily be added to the game using stock parts by dropping a new .txt file into the Design folder, and NPCs and shops alike will start stocking those mechas -- with an automatically calculated price. Personal equipment can also be dropped into any PC_*.txt file or simply appended onto the end of PC_Equipment.txt for more fun.

Plots are fully moddable too, with a little scripting language built-in, but that's not for novices; the plot scripts are rather complex walls of text that are easy to understand only once you've gotten the hang of writing them. I'm not there yet. ;-)

Guns and gadgets can have splenderiffic special effects. A plasma cannon ignores armour and can turn most bad guys into quivering masses of goo, thanks to its tag system describing it as ARMORIGNORE. A rocket launcher can blow holes in people (sadly, terrain is immutable) and produces an area-effect explosion thanks to being BLAST 3 BRUTAL. Attaching an Aux Grenade Launcher add-on to any rifle gives you battlefield capability like any modern soldier.

The more I play GearHead and sequel, the more I think of it as a shining example of emergent gameplay. With just a few goodies defined in raw object data files, the play experience can be entertaining and surprising each and every time.

* The GearHead RPG Homepage
* GHWiki


It's also open-source, but don't get your hopes up -- it's written in Pascal. =)

Regular Dungeon Crawlers forum-goers might be aware of this roguelike, but for those who aren't, Incursion celebrated the release of version 0.6.9A on Sunday, May 14th -- and was ported to the Mac and Linux on Tuesday, May 27th. I kept putting off this review, but enough is enough!

Incursion is, in a word, a mechanic-based roguelike. Well, okay, that was four words. Anyway, where the typical learning curve of most roguelikes is learning a huge number of ways to die by experimenting with things you don't quite understand yet, Incursion takes a different approach: most of the numbers in Incursion are exposed, meaning that you get to see the die rolls you make and the target rolls you are up against. The feeling is indescribable, and you'll either love it or hate it. Myself, I love it.

The current release of Incursion is the module "Halls of the Goblin King", which is a 10-level single-dungeon adventure. Julian Mensch, the game's author, has expressed an intention of releasing other modules of the game, including an overland mode and multiple dungeons to explore. As it is, however, you probably won't get bored of the current module. Not only is it diverse and entertaining just as it is, those 10 levels will last you for many hours just to get to the bottom, and barring that you'll still have opportunity to try many playthroughs.

Most of Incursion's mechanics are based from the d20 OGL system released by Wizards of the Coast. However, many creative liberties were taken with reinterpreting this system for a game context, including adding a time system (instead of forcing every action to take a whole minute) and totally hacking out and slapping in a brand spanking new magic system. As a result, people familiar with d20 will be pleasantly surprised by the game, while people unfamiliar with d20 will be able to pick up most of it just from roguelike experience. As I said on the forum, "It takes many of the good parts of d20, and replaces the bad parts with its own unique brand of awesome."

Novice delvers beware, however: Incursion is not for the neophyte. You can be tempted to spend upwards of half an hour designing your character in the very beginning, only to encounter a nasty claw zombie and end your career in a most spectacular fashion just three minutes into the game. This is a trap of the game. With practice, you'll learn to spend less time experimenting with your character in the beginning and start to come to terms with the one unique difference between Incursion and every other roguelike I've played: planning. In Incursion as in D&D 3.0+, you receive perks every few levels; careful selection of these perks gives you a character worthy of its name, but not without a lot of hard work and planning for your future. It is not merely a good idea in Incursion to plan, it is necessary strategy. The fact that Incursion is so open about its mechanics allows you to perform this planning intelligently instead of in the form of blind, dumb luck. For that, I am very thankful!

One complaint, if I had to make any, is how powerful magic and subterfuge are when compared to brute force. Though you might ordinarily be inclined to try a Warrior in Incursion, since in most roguelike games they are the easiest classes to start with (and then become progressively more difficult than the other classes due to their magic-related handicap), in Incursion it just isn't so. The easiest way to beat Incursion is to play as a stealthy rogue or ranger, because you can then pick and choose your battles at will. This is refreshing in a way, since it encourages intelligent gaming; unrefreshing in another, since it encourages a slow pace.

When that is pretty much the only negative thing I can say about the game, that really says something. All in all, Incursion is a masterpiece which I highly recommend, and I eagerly await its continuation -- and maybe a BYOND game which can do it justice!

If you want to try out Incursion, visit its homepage at http://www.incursion-roguelike.org/

Looking for a roguelike to play? Here's a short list of some of the more interesting roguelikes I've come across (descriptions taken from RogueBasin):

1) Ancient Domains of Mystery (http://www.adom.de/) (my personal favorite)
The game is set in the world of Ancardia, an original creation by Thomas Biskup. The objective is to find the source of chaos and disorder that is arising in the world, and stop it if you can. The game is much more plot driven than many other roguelike games, with many beings in the game assigning you quests, giving you advice and helping you on your way. There are a few compulsory quests, but the majority of quests and tasks in the game are optional. There are also multiple possible endings to the game.

2) NetHack (http://www.nethack.org/)
In NetHack, the most popular of Hacklike games, you must fight your way down through the Dungeons of Doom, and then the underworld (Gehennom), retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, fight your way back up to surface, and give the Amulet to your god.

3) Labyrinth of Reptoran (http://reptoran.roguelike.us/)
The Labyrinth of Reptoran is the first in a series of roguelikes planned by Jared Brayshaw. It is going to be a dungeonhack, with a large town on the surface and 100 levels of random dungeons underneath. This game is different from standard roguelikes mainly in how it approaches skills, magic, combat, and quests.

4) Crawl (http://www.dungeoncrawl.org/)
You choose a race and, based on race restrictions, a class, then dive 27 levels to retrieve the Orb of Zot before ascending back to the surface. On your descent you will need to make side trips to branch dungeons to acquire "runes", keys needed to enter the Realm of Zot.

5) Deep (http://www.deep.homepage.t-online.de/)
Deep is a graphical roguelike game written by the German developer Oliver Mecking. This roguelike is easy to access, due to only a small amount of hotkeys, graphics which speak for themselves and an easy, forgiving gameplay. You can also save whenever you want (for a little gold fee) or restart the dungeon with the same character and all his equipment. There is only a single dungeon, but its theme changes every 10 levels and there are lots of special rooms, boss enemies, unique items, secrets and npcs, all of which appear randomly (more or less).

6) Angband (http://rephial.org/)
Angband is a freeware roguelike based loosely on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. It was created by Alex Cutler and Andy Astrand at Warwick University in 1990. It is named after the fortress of Morgoth in Tolkien's works, with "Angband" literally meaning "Iron Prison" (or "Hell of Iron"). The latest version is version 3.0.8, released July 8, 2007, which is available for a wide variety of platforms.

Of course, that's only an extremely small list compared to the hundreds of other roguelikes out there. Is your favorite roguelike not listed here? Post the name of it in the comments so we can all try it out!

I wrote a while back about game designer Sean Howard's project to come up with 300 game mechanics in 300 days. He gave up on trying to do it in 300 days, but he's still coming up with ideas on a semi-regular basis, and it's time you checked some of them out.

A surprising number of his ideas are adaptable to Roguelike games, and the awesome part is that BYOND is an ideal tool for rapidly bringing ideas like his into reality.

#22 - Tiny Crawl: The basis for a lot of his Roguelike ideas, this is a sort of mini-screensaver that runs an autonomous dungeon crawl you can watch but not so much participate in except for giving hints to the good guy. It's called "tiny" because it takes place in the size of a mini-banner image.

#29 - Tiny Crawl World: Using multiple banners in an overworld, the NPCs have experiences, move from place to place, and go about their quests.

#32 - Tiny Universe: Mechanics for grouping Tiny Crawl World windows together, forming quest parties.

#33 - Tiny Dungeons: A dungeon editor for Tiny Universe. The types of dungeons involved in the game are much easier to visualize here, and this can easily be a project for procedurally generated dungeons.

#37 - PGC Templates: Writing a simple parser could describe an entire dungeon layout for you, allowing for great variety. Or, if you have a map generator already, this concept can be used to fill the rooms with interesting stuff.

#53 - Alphabit Rogue: This describes a very simple way to make monsters' danger factor a bit easier to gauge, while also allowing for some interesting characteristics. It also has ways of simplifying the interface (yay!) and a very cool concept for random items.

#54 - PGC World: Describes a simple way to adapt the concepts of procedural content to create an overworld, connect towns, and even work out how to build in obstacles and puzzles to unlock access to different areas. This can be used to create a small-scale RPG that changes each time you play, or an overworld for a Roguelike that makes it possible to explore more than one dungeon.

#57-#59 - PGC Cards (Part 1, 2, 3): This is a cool way of using a deck of cards to "deal" a dungeon. This set of mechanics is quite close to my heart as I've had an idea in the back of my mind for some time to create a Roguelike CCG.

#60 - Alphabit Kingdoms: Taking the Alphabit Rogue concept, this uses letters A-Z to represent 26 different races or nations, which have different skills, different affiliations, and different relative advatnages to each other.

#70 - Tiny World Cities: Part one of a three-part concept, this goes over the idea of creating a sim-like overworld for autonomous adventurers that go off exploring dungeons for fun and profit, and you get to watch. It makes mention of the game Majesty, a "fantasy kingdom sim" my wife recently discovered quite by accident.

#71 - Tiny World Commander: Part two goes over the AI that will drive your little adventurers. I was surprised to learn this uses a goal stack very similar to the goal stack concept I ended up building into the NPC AI in SotS II.

#72 - Tiny World Encounters: Part three gets into the meat of the dungeons themselves, introducing the idea that you can have multiple dungeons going and earn "DP" to alter their layout. Each one is broken up into screens, and the idea is that you can watch a screen like an aquarium to see the little guys in action.

I just picked out the Roguelike-related ideas here, but there are lots of other good ones on the 300 project page. Hopefully one of them will inspire you to start a new project or take an existing, stalled project in a new direction.

Okay, I'm tossing this out there for the heck of it because I think it'd be awesome--I also never expect to see it, more's the pity. Pinball in particular is difficult to do in BYOND, although having done some physics in a project and with the new control over game speed, I wouldn't call this impossible in BYOND. Nevertheless this'd be best suited to a virtual pinball table, or a real one. (Note: If any pinball maker actually builds a machine like I'm about to describe, all I ask is to own one. WANT.)

The trappings of a Roguelike game could be adapted to pinball in a few ways. Traditionally, most roguelikes have several common elements:

• Randomly generated maps
• Randomly appearing items and hazards
• Unidentified items
• Enchanting equipment for more power
• Character growth (levels)
• Hunger (not especially relevant to this concept)

Traditionally, pinball machines also often have several common elements:

• Bumpers, targets, rollovers, spinners
• Special ramps
• Skill shot
• Multiball
• Goal-based bonuses
• Extra ball that can be earned during play

Starting simple, I envision a pinball table where most of the targets are widely spaced and spread all out over the board. Each target might represent a different item with different effects on play, but the exact item would be unknown until the target was hit, or an "identify" was earned via hitting one of several target banks. (I think as a rule, the best items should be more likely to show up under 2- or 3-target banks.) Some items might activate special buttons that could be used by the player to save the ball, or they could simply set up changes to the playfield like a door that temporarily blocks one of the outlanes. Which item went with which target/ramp/etc. would be lit by an LCD rollover that could change images.

The table should have multiple areas of play, with one smaller section set aside near the top like a mini treasure room or such, and extra flippers there. Even better would be something like the classic Gottlieb Haunted House table, which had three levels of play--one was a lower level visible through glass.

Now here's where the rubber meets the road: The playfield would change between "map levels". One of the recurring goals would be to earn the "stair bonus" that would drop the ball through a hole, and changes would be made to the table before returning the ball to the plunger. In a virtual pinball game this is cake, and it'd be easy to have several possible configuration templates that could be chosen at random. In a real table, I imagine this would involve some really impressive feats of engineering and the actual configuration changes would be severely limited--but still wicked cool for being there at all. The items associated with the different targets would move, but they would still remain identified. This random reconfiguration would also apply at the beginning of each game.

After reaching a certain number of stair bonuses, a quest item is earned, and then the player must journey "back" to score a huge bonus.

An easy concept? No. An awesome one? Frell yes. Even a virtual pinball game of this nature would be a blast to play, but imagine it, as close as you could possibly come to this, in a real table. But if this doesn't sound like your kind of game, consider applying the ideas behind Rogue to a different format instead. The excitement of exploration and firing up the imagination can all be present in games you never thought could achieve it.