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aas Bandit
Sep 28, 2001
Oompa Loompa
Nap Ghost
Just a quick note that Desktop Dungeons is great. I played the beta a bunch and enjoyed it quite a bit, but got distracted by something shiny and hadn't even thought about it in months.

The final product that just came out on steam is pretty drat fantastic; they've added a lot of content to the game and spiffed up the art and streamlined some of the mechanics and it all just comes together really nicely. I played for a couple of hours tonight and had fun with it all over again.

The alpha is available for free on the desktop dungeons site and will give you a good taste of what the game mechanics are like if you're in doubt--just know that the full version adds quite a bit to the game on all fronts.

The only real :downs: I've seen so far is the lack of a "quit" button--apparently they're so used to it being a browser app they forgot to add one, so you have to just Alt-F4, or close the window. There's also what seems to be a missing font in one section of the menu/manual, but it doesn't really affect gameplay.

This is really an enjoyable game.

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aas Bandit
Sep 28, 2001
Oompa Loompa
Nap Ghost

Dirk the Average posted:

do all of the puzzles that show up as soon as you can; learning how all of the little quirks of the XP system, the spells, etc. all work lets you squeeze in those early kills worth huge amounts of XP and will let you turn an early level advantage into a sure win.

This is the single biggest bit of advice I'd give anyone re: Desktop Dungeons. The power of quite a few of the game mechanics isn't immediately obvious, but these mechanics can make a huge difference in gameplay, and learning how best to use them is pretty key to getting past tough spots.

aas Bandit
Sep 28, 2001
Oompa Loompa
Nap Ghost
Not sure if anyone in here is a Legend of Grimrock fan, but if you have the second game, there's a dude working on a LoG roguelike as an addon. It can be grabbed from the Steam workshop and played via LoG2.

Grimrock Unlimited

(The LoG games are nicely old-school in feel and Really loving Good, so if you don't have them, you're missing out.)

So far I'm fairly impressed with GU. He's procedurally generating the dungeons and they feel very much like regular Grimrock dungeons. There's are options for game length/number of floors, and Grimrock itself has options upon starting a new game for random party or not, ironman/permadeath, and various other things, so you can go as hardcore as you wish.

aas Bandit
Sep 28, 2001
Oompa Loompa
Nap Ghost

ProfessorProf posted:

Does GU have procedurally-generated puzzles of any sort, or is it just a monster crawl?

I only played a couple of short games, but so far I'm not seeing puzzles (other than find-key-open-chest) or secrets.
I had fun but yeah, don't expect a lot of complexity.

aas Bandit
Sep 28, 2001
Oompa Loompa
Nap Ghost
Just in case anyone here might be interested, I picked up Slasher's Keep today (Steam or Humble), and I'm really enjoying it.

It's a first person dungeon crawler with a really slick cel-shaded look to it, and includes melee combat (complete with block/riposte), ranged pew-pew with wands, shops to buy/sell stuff, a nicely done inventory, and even a relatively simple crafting system. The dungeon floors are entirely procedural, and seem to work really well; I haven't seen any terrible ugliness or broken things yet, after about 6 hours of play.

http://www.slasherskeep.info/screens/1.jpg
http://www.slasherskeep.info/screens/2.jpg
http://www.slasherskeep.info/screens/3.jpg
http://www.slasherskeep.info/screens/4.jpg

It's more a roguelite, since death means getting dragged back to your starting cell and losing all your possessions and money, but you keep the majority of earned attributes/levels (and you have an option to drop items down a trash chute from time to time, so that they'll be available to your newly-risen self).

The gameplay seems pretty well balanced, and careful resource management and equally careful play are both rewarded. There are a variety of sneaky/clever tactics you can use from traps and thrown bombs to sneak attacks and just generally using the environment (e.g. dodging behind geo to block enemy shots). You can also use the ever-popular exploding barrels, or swing your weighty inventory sack into enemies to send them flying into handy spiked walls.

And there's nothing like desperately eating tiny crawling bugs off floors and walls to regain an extra sliver of health. :spiderguy:

The game is made by one dude, who does programming, art, animation...everything. And it's way better than I was expecting.

Edit: It *is* currently in early access, but has been for quite a while, and seems pretty drat polished at this point.

aas Bandit fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Aug 12, 2019

aas Bandit
Sep 28, 2001
Oompa Loompa
Nap Ghost

OutOfPrint posted:

the gentlemoleman shopkeeper and orc pinup posters

Yeah, the one poster with the orc swinging his generous scabbard made me laugh the first time I saw it on the wall. It's a weird place.

The crafting system took me a bit to grok, and then once I did, I realized it added a whole new layer of risk/reward to the game (i.e. "Do I stuff my limited inventory full of immediately valuable things that I can sell, or do I load up on crafting components hoping to find enough to make a Weapon Of Death?").

One lesson I learned last night is to scour the floor you're on for components before actually committing to creating something. I made a pretty decent firey shortsword, and then found a mace head that was literally 4x better a couple of rooms later after I'd used everything up. :cripes:

aas Bandit
Sep 28, 2001
Oompa Loompa
Nap Ghost

goferchan posted:

a penalty for spending too much time

This would seriously kill it for me.
I'm one of those people who likes finding all the things, so hopefully that won't happen in favor of the Dead Cells approach.

aas Bandit
Sep 28, 2001
Oompa Loompa
Nap Ghost
Edit: I'm a dumbass and posted this in response to someone looking for Switch games and misread. Leaving it anyway, since more people need to play these.

I'm sure I've mentioned both of these before in this thread, and I really don't understand why they don't get more attention because they're both kind of awesome, especially if you're a first-person fan.
Both of them are old-school dungeon crawlers and also basically created by one person, which kind of blows my mind every time it happens. Both of them are also procedural, and the procedural part seems to be done pretty well, without a lot of the jank you often see when you go down that road.

Delver is no longer in early access, but I believe (?) the dev is still tweaking things. It has an old-school crunchy pixels kinda feel to it. I managed to beat it a couple of years ago, but it's had a lot of lovin' since then and I need to get back into it again.



Slasher's Keep is still early access, but very playable right now--there's a bit of min/max metaprogression that you can do, and the first real sticking point (for me at least) is the boss a few levels in. I've gotten nuked so far upon reaching that boss, but I'm getting closer to taking it down. The graphics have a cool cartoon animation feel to them and are more modern feeling than Delver.

aas Bandit
Sep 28, 2001
Oompa Loompa
Nap Ghost

William Henry Hairytaint posted:

I picked up Delver when it came out of early access, but it kept crashing on me so I refunded it. Didn't even get to play it long enough to really get a feel for it.

I've never had any crashing issues? :shrug:

aas Bandit
Sep 28, 2001
Oompa Loompa
Nap Ghost

OutOfPrint posted:

I get your point, but it's absolutely not trying to be a Darkest Dungeon clone. The game has a weird, surreal sense of humor, like the well-dressed moleman merchant, the talking faces that prattle on endlessly about meaningless lore, and the orc pinup model posters.

This--it feels and plays nothing like DD, and Slasher's Keep also has a somewhat minimal but interesting weapon crafting system plus the ability to drop things down the garbage chute to You-Of-The-Next-Game, and it causes me a weird kind of internalized FYGM toward myself. ("I found/made this cool thing; I don't want to give it to future me because I had to work hard for it and I'll probably just die next time and I'm doing okay so far this time!" *dies five minutes later*)

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aas Bandit
Sep 28, 2001
Oompa Loompa
Nap Ghost

This looks pretty cool. I am intrigued and wish to know more (and tossed them my email).
Website: https://www.ironwoodstudios.com/
Vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN1I_znpzrk

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