Lazy day

Some family happenings and other things have left me quite mentaly fatigued today. So no progress on Combat Test beyond getting a few methods named but that was some progress.

So thinking back to roguelikes I've planed I remembered Desktop Dungeons. While the site right now is gearing up for some paid version of the game the free original one is still there. Desktop Dungeons was a very interesting game for me. It combined puzzle games and Roguelike elements into a nice little package. The main idea was that only the player moved around, combat could be easily predicted (except for some cases), and the only thing randomized was the layout. The layout was very important, beyond health potions, mana potions, and some class abilities uncovering unexplored area was the only way to regain any health or mana. The game starts out quite easy with only 4 class selections and no game changing monsters but adds them to the dungeon every time you beat the floor with a class. After that a new class may be unlocked along with themed floors, new items, and other such goodies. The goal of the game was to unlock everything so you could do ranked dungeons.

It executes this quite well. One of the running themes in good roguelikes is that they are "fair". While you may not get the optimal gear or the best layouts if you know what you are doing you can beat the game. This is not always the case but it's a good rule to follow. My first few attempts at Desktop dungeons were horrible failures where I didn't even level up a few times. In later runs on new computers I easily beat the starting portion of the game so learning what to do is a big part of the game. Each class plays differently and beyond the rogue or other classes that have chance abilities you know how most things will play out and can weigh your options to win. With enough planing you can take down the dungeon boss at relatively low levels due to killing other monster to gain level up mid "fight" with it. Generally entertaining though it encourages you to pull out paper or notepad to best mop up a floor.

Not sure what he's doing now. From the looks he's turning the idea into a full fledged game and having the minecraft inspired "pay for a beta and I produce it scheme". I played it a while ago and almost unlocked everything before moving onto other thing but it was a fun time. If you got a good 10 minutes to waste it's something to check out.