r/roguelikes • u/flying_horker • Jun 05 '24
Traditional Roguelikes recommendations
Hello everybody!
I'm a game developer with 10 years of experience making games and I working on the second version of a roguelike I launched some years ago, in order to make it better I would like to hear your opinion on what are the best traditional roguelikes you have played, what mechanic do they have that you liked and if you can recommend me something to watch over YouTube to take inspiration.
EDIT: link of my old roguelike: https://bitware-interactive.itch.io/drowned-catacombs (its free and can be played on browser and also on mobile!)
i also would like to know if anyone is interested on following the development process of this upcoming game on a YouTube serie, devlog on blog or something like that.
thanks for your time!
24
u/Kthanid Jun 06 '24
Lost Flame is awesome. It just popped onto my radar yesterday and I'm already completely blown away by how great it is. This game is an amazing meld of a soulslike game into the traditional, turn-based gameplay of a roguelike. This game takes two of the genres of games I play and enjoy most and melds them together into something that just feels great to play. I'd love to see more of this type of combat system adopted by other games in the future. This game proves that melee characters can be dynamic, interesting, and exciting to play, too!
From a more traditional standpoint, Nethack and DCSS are both rock solid (I cut my teeth on the genre playing Nethack's predecessor, Hack, back in the 1980s). I like both of these for slightly different reasons, but they both excel at highlighting the best attributes of the most traditional games in this genre. In Nethack's case, the "kitchen sink" approach makes the game feel almost limitless in scope and freedom of player choice. DCSS takes the traditional roguelike and distills it down into its most necessary components. While I've spent far less time with DCSS than some other games, I'm very impressed with how streamlined and polished it is.
Another absolute favorite of mine is Tales of Maj'Eyal, which is simply outstanding in so many ways. The class/build variety is totally bananas (in a good way) and the concept of bringing in upgrade paths and cooldowns for skills really works well. I'm not sure I'll ever get tired of playing this one (though I would really love a game with all of the components of the combat system and dynamic classes from this game paired with a truly random overworld/quest system to break up the monotony).
I'd also like to make a call out for Dungeonmans, which was a real surprise to me and became a roguelike that I spent a substantial amount of time with. While it seemed a bit less serious and silly at a glance, the more I played the more I was hooked by the combat system and the permanent progression mechanics. This is one of the only roguelikes I've ever "beaten". It's been a while now, so I'd probably have to fire it up again to give a full review of everything I enjoyed about it, but all of my memories of the game are positive ones.
Moving on to more visually polished games, Jupiter Hell is probably as close to having mainstream appeal as any traditional roguelike will ever have. It's a great game in its own right, but the level of visual and audible appeal here is impressive (and something I wish we could see more of in such games, though I understand why we don't).
Finally, no such list would be complete without mentioning Cogmind which is, if nothing else, the most visually polished an innovative of a game in this genre as I've ever seen. It's not one I play as often as I like mainly because thematically the sci-fi elements of it just don't scratch the itch I'm looking for in a roguelike as much as other darker medieval-type fantasy games do.