review

Regicide!

Bart: [watching Flanders] An ax.  He’s got an ax!  I’ll save you, Lisa![tries to walk on his leg, falls back] Uh, I’ll save you by calling the police.  [dials 911]

Voice: Hello, and welcome to the Springfield Police Department Resc-u-Fone[tm].  If you know the name of the felony being committed, press one.  To choose from a list of felonies, press two.  If you are being murdered or calling from a rotary phone, please stay on the line.

Bart: [growls, punches some numbers]

Voice: You have selected regicide.  If you know the name of the king or queen being murdered, press one.
— The Simpsons, Season 6, Episode `Bart of Darkness`

I had been looking forward to playing this game since I saw the name. I also vaguely recall being very interested in the author’s previous 7DRL, Chompy (looks like he went ahead and finished it, awesome! Will have to check that out after these reviews are done).

So, Regicide! The plot is pretty simple and drives the theme very well. You are tasked with dispatching an evil King. The game starts in a prison, and the prisoner mechanic is very nicely done. Throughout the prison levels, there are prisoners that you can free with keys. Some are fellow revolutionaries and will help you. Others are vicious murderers, and will attack you! I wasn’t sure how to tell which was which before I let them out but I suppose that is part of the game! (A fun part, too)

I’ll admit that when I first freed a prisoner I wasn’t sure what would happen. I was pleasantly surprised when he started bashing the prison guard with me. I was hoping that would happen!

I was hoping that would happen.

From the display side, this is another libtcod game. I could’ve used bigger fonts… I had trouble making out the doors (+) from the walls (#). But, that could just be the fact that I am a) old, and b) destroying my eyes by playing so many roguelikes! Playing in full screen mode greatly alleviates this. I also really dig the scrolling levels. Nice and smooth.

The friendly revolutionaries were helpful, but not very good at avoiding my dagger when I walked into them, or following me through doors. According to the author, the next version fixes this. It would also be awesome if they could follow me downstairs, although I did learn later to not waste gold on prison guards and to save it instead for the Royal Guard down below. This bribing feature is one I really like. I guess we both independently came up with it, since I included it in my 7DRL, GnomeSquad.

Once you get past the prison level it gets crazy. There are worms that spit acid and destroy your armor! And the rock walls! Having monsters destroy the scenery is an awesome feature. I don’t know of any other roguelikes that do that. Can someone enlighten me if I am wrong?

Arg! My armor! (destroyed by acid)

This is as deep as I got 🙁

So, at this point I died. A lot. I really want to go down and kill that stupid king but no amount of potions or scrolls of fire seem to help me. I am looking forward to going back and trying once I have finished these reviews though! This game shows a large amount of polish for a 7DRL. Very full featured but simple in all the right places. (e.g. no need for giant inventory, just pick up a better weapon if you find one) Even the little things, like the way the prisoners moan or the murderers yell stuff, and the way the message buffer slowly fades over time.

Very promising stuff, keep it up!

And I will be back to finish off the king later!

Stygia! The very name conjures up memories of ancient lands.

Stygia! I really dug the lighting and the dungeon layouts were awesome.

Sygia! I died. A lot. So many times.

This happened a lot.

Stygia is a classic (in a good way) roguelike dungeon diver, with a few twists. I like the heating effect. Throughout the dungeon are random “hot spots” that raise the temperature of the otherwise chilly dungeons (this temperature drops as you go down). When you are warm, you can rest to regenerate health. This makes locating hot spots a top priority for each dungeon.

According to the author’s posts on 7drl.org, you can finish the game by getting down to dungeon level 10 and defeating the bad-ass boss. I would love to meet him! I couldn’t get past the 3rd dungeon level. However, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to come back and try! It just means that I have many other 7DRLs to play.

So, stuff that I liked? Title screen! I love a good title screen. The story is interesting without being overbearing and explains some of the game mechanic to you. The libtcod engine looks amazing as per usual. I did have a hard time seeing the grey “g”oblins through the diffused yellow light, but maybe that was just me. Kobolds and ogres were easier to see.

Title screen!

I also dug that the weapons/armor were highlighted based on (I assume) rarity. So, if you see a green weapon lying on the ground, you know it is more rare (better?) than a white or gray one. And it goes up the color scale (white, green, blue, purple, etc) that I learned from Borderlands, but probably started in World of Warcraft or some older RPG that I haven’t played.

It was a little hard to tell which armors were better than others. So if I find a green +2 leather armor, is that better than a gray +0 platemail? It’s entirely possible I was missing something, but my armors did not seem to effect by “Defense” stat.

The other thing that bugged me (that was also maybe a feature) was the enemy movement. These guys pounce! They seem to move 2 spaces for my 1 space. Again, maybe this is on purpose, but it takes some getting used to.

Other than that, the combat felt really solid. I seemed to be bashing monsters with an appropriate number of hits. They were just bashing me much more quickly! 🙂

So, Stygia, I wish you well. I will probably come back and play you after these reviews, but for now I must move on. Definitely keeping an eye on this one.

(Since typing this originally the author has come out with an updated version, which I will try out soon.)

Gridfolk was initially classified as a successful 7DRL entry. However, the author has since reclassified it as a failure. Either way, I started looking at it.

After playing the game (I had no problems getting it running, personally) I tend to agree with the author’s own comments. It is an interesting tech demo, but not a game.

That being said, it is a very interesting tech demo. The multiplayer roguelike is an elusive holy grail for developers. The concept for this game was a good one. I would certainly be interested in playing the end result.

The fact that the author got a fully functioning client/server realtime roguelike working in 7 days is impressive in itself. Although I have a lot of experience with python, I have never done any networking code beyond a few simple socket listeners.

Also the screen is nice. I like the presentation and the colors and the weird enemies.

Digging Mode definitely needs to be a toggle. Having to hit ‘D’ every time you want to dig is a super-pain. I didn’t go down very far.

So, great concept. Interesting tech demo. Looking forward to next time. 🙂

So many roguelikes! Up next is the epically-named DESTINY OF HEROES.

When I first read the name I read it as DENSITY of Heroes. Not sure why. But then I got to thinking… Density of Heroes would be an awesome 7DRL! You could have monsters based on the elements of the periodic table and try to gain protons and electrons (and neutrons) in order to defeat your enemies. Combat is resolved by density. Of course your nemesis is the arch-fiend of elements: UNOBTANIUM.

Anyways, back to the game. Destiny of Heroes is the first 7DRL entry by IBOL. It was created in Dark Basic. Which I imagine is some sort of twisted arcane version of regular-basic. (I personally used a lot of Q-BASIC back in the day) The version I played was not the “official” 7DRL version but rather the next version, which I assume fixes some number of annoying bugs. I’m no glutton for punishment.

oooh.. dynamic lighting! (nice)

First off, I love the intro screen! This roguelike is off to a great start. Clear goals, big font, no overly-wrought fantasy setting introduction (let’s be honest they all boil down to the same thing).

The game itself is a fairly standard (and I mean that in a good way) crawl-esque dungeon diver. I say crawl and not nethack because of cool things like this:

• throwing items — appears that you can throw anywhere within radius X, as opposed to cardinal directions (the throwing interface is especially awesome)
• dungeon generation — these are cool organic-looking dungeons, not your usual box & corridor (great job on this part IBOL!)
• no-nonsense inventory — it knows when you pick up a mace you would rather just get rid of your dagger (Vicious Orcs was great about this too)

Go away, whitespace! (Although a surprisingly useful implementation of SENSE TREASURE)

Killed by python. Yeah, that seems appropriate for me.

Next up is the confusingly named 7DRL Challenge Challenge. I would’ve gone with a more descriptive name like “Time Attack” or “Time’s Up!” or “Where the @#$%^# is that damned down staircase??”.

This game uses the LOVE engine, which is some kind of 2D lua game-making framework. Since my game requires both python and pygame, I can’t really complain about downloading LOVE, so away we go.

First problem — this game is way too small! Apparently some people in the forums had the same problem. Since I was determined to play this game I found a solution (others may not be so forgiving):

• Extract the .love file
• edit the “player.lua” file
• rhe last line says “fixed.ttf’, 8
• change the 8 to 16, or (presumably) any other number
• rezip the files
• re-name the archive to .love
• re-launch the new .love package

Aaah… much better!

Now, with that out of the way, we can play the game. Here is the good part: this game is fun! The goal is to get yourself (@) to the down stair (>) on each level. In your way will be pits (0) walls (#) and doors (+). So, what’s the catch?

You need to do this in about 30 seconds.

It is a perfect example of a first 7DRL entry. It has a simple potentially non-genre-standard mechanic (time is ticking in real time) and a simple presentation. The way the level fades to black as your time runs out is quite ingenious and also quite maddening! Never before have I mashed my numpad keys so frantically in a roguelike. Running, Running, RUNNNIIINNNGGG!!!!

Noooooo! (fade to black)

So yeah, it’s fun.

One beef — is every level “winnable”? There were a few times when I couldn’t see a way through.

A few suggestions:

• exit highlighting — show me the exit when the level starts. I wasted the first 5-10 seconds of every level just looking for the > symbol. Or maybe just change the color?
• time tokens — if you can’t find the exit quick enough, run for one of these to give yourself some extra time

Good for what it is. A solid 7DRL.