Dungeoneering in 2014

I know haven't posted here in a while.  As Andy Dufresne (Shawshank Redemption) would say if he was a Rogueliker, "You get busy dying...or get busy dying."

I've been mostly posting on my Steam Roguelike group and neglecting my poor blog.

I'm looking forward to Dungeonmans and Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkranox, both on Steam Greenlight.  Vulture, the graphical interface for Nethack is also on Greenlight now.  And finally, Tales of Maj'Eyal has graduated from Greenlight to a full Steam release!  It's now on sale in the Steam store but you can still pick it up for free here.

As usual...my quest for the Amulet still eludes me but I have a good feeling about 2014.

Happy Dungeoneering!

Games for Soldiers: Looking for Ideas

I'm working with Games for Soldiers and hopefully some other organizations on compiling a DVD collection of DRM-free, freely distributable freeware pc games for deployed troops.  I'm trying to compile a hand-picked collection of the best games that money can't buy.  These games would be tailored to play on lower end computers/laptops, not requiring the latest and greatest CPU/GPU to play and not requiring an internet connection to play or install.

I'm working on compiling the collection, including faqs/guides/instructions with the games.  Once I've finished compiling it my intention is to send these DVDs out to organizations like Games for Soldiers who will in turn distribute them to deployed troops.

I've been there myself (deployed to Iraq twice) and if you have internet at all you're lucky and it's nice to have something to play in those rare occurrences when you do get spare time.

Of course, I'll be including some Roguelikes.  If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, Roguelikes or otherwise for games to include hit me up!  Just comment below!

2012 Roguelikes of the Year

The results are in for Ascii Dreams' annual Roguelike of the Year contest.

It will probably come as no surprise to veteran Roguelikers that Tales of Maj'Eyal is again the #1 Roguelike of the Year. 

However, nipping at it's heels was ADOM (Ancient Dungeons of Mystery) in 2nd place and ADOM II in 3rd place.  Both ADOM and ADOM II have seen a massive fan resurgence in the last year due to new development on the original ADOM and it's sequel.  It also garnered a lot of crowd-funding support.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, a solid fan favorite came in 4th and Dwarf Fortress in 5th.

You can check out the full voting results at the Ascii Dreams blog here:
http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2012/12/full-results-for-ascii-dreams-roguelike.html

Free Roguelike Giveaways for the Holidays on the Roguelike Steam Group!

The Roguelike (RGLK) Community Group on Steam is giving away 3 free Steam games for the holidays!  How do I know?  Because I'm the one giving them away!

The games are "Hack, Slash, Loot" (item), "Dungeons of Dredmor" (item) and "The Binding of Isaac+Wrath of the Lamb DLC" (redeemable code).

All you have to do to win, is have a Steam account (register for free), join the group and wait for Christmas!

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/roguelike

Winners will be drawn randomly.  If you have a preference, put it on your wishlist!  If you already own all these games, you'll be skipped and another number will be drawn.  Winners will be announced after all prizes are successfully claimed.

Aside from that benefits of joining the group include announcements, discussions, events and contests related to Roguelike-ry as well as a community of players who share a similar love of exploring dungeons and being killed by that horse on the 7th floor when I tried to feed it an apple!  Seriously, what's up with that?

I'm not making any money or raking advertising dollars in off this so the only thing I have to gain is more souls to offer up to Huan Ti in my continuing search for the Amulet of- I mean nothing...absolutely nothing to gain...at all.

Merry Dungeoning!

Holiday greetings, fellow Rogues!

In case you're not aware, there are currently a lot of great sales on Steam for Roguelike games, including Hack, Slash, Loot, The Binding of Isaac, Krater, Dungeons of Dredmor and FTL (Faster than Light).  Of those games, you'll probably find HSL to be the most traditional roguelike of the bunch.

Also, Humble Bundle 7 is currently on sale for 11 more days and it's full of dungeoning goodness!

It includes 2 platform/puzzle titles Snapshot & Closure, Shank 2 ( a 2D BeatemUp), Indiegame: The Movie (a documentary film), The Binding of Isaac (a non-traditional Roguelike) and if you pay more than the average (about $6.41 atm) then you also get Legend of Grimlock, a 3d dungeon crawler as well as Dungeon Defenders along with all the DLC packs!

http://www.humblebundle.com

Steam fans, be sure to check out our Roguelike (RGLK) community/group on Steam for Roguelike news, discussions, giveaways and contests!  And remember, you gotta be in it to win it!  So join our Steam group today!  I'm not saying there might be some holiday giveaways but...there might be some holiday giveaways...know what I mean?  All you have to do...is be a member.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/roguelike

Diablo 3 and...well...just Diablo 3.

There has been a lot of talk lately as gamers get all antsy in their pantsy about Diablo 3's upcoming release date, May 15th.

Aside from Diablo 3 and the occasional and non-life-changing updates and patches to various RLs around the "internets", there hasn't been a whole lot of news on the Rogue-front.

While Diablo 3 has been the subject of much hype and fan-boy salivation there are those who aren't too enthused about the real money "Auction House".

Many beta testers have in fact lamented that there is a disctint drop in decent loot in Diablo 3.  It sounds to me like they have increased the "grinding" on Diablo 3 to a God-like level or what you may also know as Every-Korean-MMORPG-Ever-Made.  It makes sense of course to avoid market saturation but it sounds like the odds are in the casino's favor more than they are in yours.

Blizzard's take from auction sales has also been criticized.  Blizzard charges a dollar for you to post the item, regardless of whether or not it sells.  For stackable items they take a 15 percent cut on all sales.  Alright!  You finally sold something and want to transfer it to your PayPal?  Blizzard takes a 15 percent cut on top of that!  Then of course you have to pay the PayPal transaction fee as well.  So if you're selling commodities it will cost you a dollar plus 30 percent of the sale to post, sell an item and pull the money out.  For non-stackable items it will cost you a dollar plus 15 percent to post, sell and pull out your greenbacks.

You can find out more about the auction house drama here at Gamespot.

Server Regions are separated into 3 categories, Americas, Europe and Asia.  To give you an idea of the lumping going on here the Americas includes US, Canada, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia.  Europe includes Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, Middle East and UAE.  Asia includes South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

Talk about one of these not being like the other.  I'm expecting there to be some serious server division and possibly some straight up hate between some players.

There is something called Global Play which will allow players to Region jump to play with their friends but you basically only get to take yourself and won't be able to transfer any items between Regions because God knows, if a US player took a glowing, purple sword from a South Korean player and brought it back to the Americas server the whole world would implode.

And as some added last minute disappointment D3 will not ship with PVP and supposedly Auction House will take at least a week before it's up and running in the Americas and longer in other regions.

So in other words, get ready for the release! ...and then get ready to continue beta testing it.

Game on!

7DRL 2012 Ends!

7DRL, the 8th annual challenge to make a complete roguelike (aka dungeon crawler) game in just 7 days is over now.  There were no places or prizes awarded.  Possible e-fame and a sense of accomplishment were the only real prizes.

There still isn't an official tally of the total number of entries, winners and not-so-winners as announcements are still being made and some are crawling out of the woodworks.  However, Björn Ritzl has posted a nearly complete list of entries, successes and failures over at the Peeks and Pokes blog.

There's a number of interesting (and FREE!) games to check out and for those that didn't quite make the deadline there are still some promising titles that will continue to be developed in hopes of a late release.

Check out the latest news at the official 7DRL page.