7DRL 2020: More Reviews

A few more 7DRLs I played! This year has brought us a number of very lovely games.
 

Me as I arrived on the final floor...

...and me as I'm about to get killed,
while the boss has a single hit point left. :(

 

slime99

You are a precog sent on a mission to exterminate the source of slimes infesting the sewers. The game is quick, short and fun. You are given just the right amount of special abilities and unique enemies to test your tactical prowess.

What is different about it, though? It offers an interesting take on combat with no random rolls, making your every action a consumable resource. You see how much damage will each of your attacks deal and they are expended with use, so you need to collect new attacks to stay effective in a fight. You see how many defensive moves (Armour, Teleport or Revenge) you have left, so you can plan on when to take a hit and when to run away to find a new defense. You also see how many hit points the enemies have and what move will they take next, so you can consider your every step with complete knowledge.

As you delve deeper, you even get special commands for managing your resources - you will be able to stash powerful attacks for later, discard unwanted techniques or swap defensive moves depending on which you want. This gives you great control over the flow of combat, and you need to use these abilities cleverly to have a good shot at winning the boss fight.

Preparing for the boss is very important. Trying to fight all the slimes on the upper floors is nothing but a slow death of attrition. You need to build up some reserves, not spend all your resources before you even get to the final floor. I eventually ended up running through the five floors of the dungeon avoiding as many fights as I could, collecting some attacks, defenses and special techniques along the way, and conserving my powers for the final floor.

Once there, the real challenge begins. You have to combine all of your moves in a way that will get rid of the boss before it can flood you with the newly spawned slimes. All the tools are at your disposal, and it's great fun trying to figure out your next, most effective action.
  

Robots mining with landmines.

 

Typical bullet hell situation.

 
Cardinal Gun Prospector 

You are a droid prospecting for gold in a monster-ridden cavern. You will find various types of guns and equip up to four of them to fight nicely distinct enemies in a turn-based bullet hell. You have unlimited ammo, but can only move and shoot in cardinal directions, which makes positioning interesting when combating some of the more tricky monsters or navigating the deviously designed treasure rooms. You will also be constantly low on fuel, which can only be replenished by pushing further. The game captures the edge-of-your-seat gameplay of many shoot 'em ups quite well, despite being turn-based.

I don't have anything more to say except that you should try this one. It's good and short enough you can't even complain about wasting your time.
 

Yup, no way to survive this.

 
Super Normal 7 Day Roguelike
A very traditional Broughlike that seems to be intended as a mobile game, given its dimensions and mouse/touch controls. It may be ASCII, but it looks very nice and even has a soundtrack and sound effects.

Everything dies in a single hit, you included, so the game consist of figuring out how to survive the small floors using the limited abilities you are given. Even though there are only three types of enemies, it can get quite challenging with fireballs flying around and hordes of kobolds chasing you. Hilariously, the enemies are extremely prone to friendly fire, so you can bait them to slaughter themselves.

It could probably make a good coffee-break game, or something to play when you need to clear your mind.

Is that chest worth walking over the spikes?

Catacombs
Simple but well-polished dungeon crawler with a nice old-school feel.

You start as a skeleton who reclaimed its humanity with a potion of resurrection, and delve into the catacombs below your cemetery. You collect food, coins and extra hearts from defeated enemies and destroyed furniture. You have fun.

A few floors down, food started to become a problem for me, though you can stay ahead of the damage starving deals with hearts and healing potions for a while. And even if you die to starvation, you only return to your skeleton form and can eventually find another potion of resurrection. Skeleton doesn't need to eat, but I don't think it cannot have more than a single heart, which would be a big problem against some of the later, sturdier enemies.

I had to return to an early shop to buy the potion of resurrection.

 
Most enemies die in a single hit, but you should take care of your rather limited health. A little trick - you can walk into wall to skip a turn, letting the monsters come to you. Many creatures also have little quirks that distinguish them from other monsters - bats move randomly and unpredictably, zombies knock you back, etc. The rare 2 HP monsters can be a real problem, as they will always get a hit on you unless you can lure them through some trap first, softening them up.

Certain floors also have special effects - there is one where all monsters leave behind little flames when killed, forcing you to wait or take damage; another where invulnerable ghosts will appear and chase you for a little while before disappearing. There is also the occasional shop floor.

I like how you can skip some floors with a key, or take a peek
at a treasure room before you even know how to get there.

 
Though obviously based on pre-made rooms, the dungeon generation is quite fun. Some treasure rooms require that you find a key, some have a trap in the entrance to make you pay with blood for anything gained. With the way you move between screens, you can often see where you are going and what waits for you in a room before finding the entrance, letting you make an informed choice to take it or leave it. You will also soon learn the general pattern of level generation, allowing you to make rather accurate guesses where the downstairs should be, so you can skip most of the level and just go down.

Which brings me to the only downside of the game - it's too big. It's really fun for a while, but eventually the monsters and rooms are all the same over and over again. I reached level 67 before the game unfortunately crashed on me, and I would have loved to see some final boss around level 50, if not a bit sooner. I'm not sure if there even is a boss, but all that said, the game is good and is worth a try.

This golem tried to knock me out of the map, killing the game itself!

 
Edit: Apparently, Catacombs are endless. I would still like to see a boss instead.

7DRL 2020: Ember Deep

Ember Deep is a mind-bending yet curiously traditional* roguelike with deep tactical gameplay. You will travel through time to cooperate with yourself, overcome impossible odds and eventually save your brother from poor planning. Unless the very same kills you first.

It can be played in browser, but for me at least that was really slow. If you download it, however, it runs just fine.

You didn't expect there to be three of me, you stupid monster!

 
The game looks beautiful - the isometric view, the terrain with animations and different elevation, the music - they just work well together. It somewhat reminds me of HyperRogue, likely because of the strange geometries. In addition to squares and hexes, the game uses warped pentagonal tiles that make for quite unusual aesthetics. They also make for quite unusual movement and positioning, though surprisingly I never found myself disoriented.

The tutorial might have contributed here. Yes, the game has a full-fledged tutorial and even two "challenges" that let you train your time-travelling tactics. And I recommend training for a bit, as the game really doesn't hold back once you start playing for real. You will immediately be swarmed by powerful enemies**. The game gives you the tools to survive, but if you don't know how to use them...

Squares...

...and hexes. The game really can't make up its mind. ;)

 

You will find the occasional piece of equipment, like magic staves imbued with spells or new weapons, but that's not the kind of tools I meant. Your biggest asset and the main draw of the game is chronomancy. Time travel is hard to grasp and implement in a game, so of course it's popular for 7DRLs to try. I remember for example Time to Die or The Only Shadow That the Desert Knows*** from previous years, and they each had a unique take on the player manipulating time. And no, I don't think the time-related abilities in ToME4 or Caves of Qud really count.

Anyway, Ember Deep gives you the power to rewind time. And there is no cost or limit to it, you are limited only by your own tactical acumen. And by the presence of your own time-clones, I guess, as you might end up with a crowd of yourselves that makes it hard to navigate the narrow passages. Remember how I mentioned poor planning? I often trap myself with time-clones, leaving me no escape route from the monsters. The other times, I die because I forgot to place a time anchor and now my situation is already beyond screwed. (Un)surprisingly, you need a lot of foresight for time travel.

 
Basically, you can place time anchors and "pre-record" your actions, then jump back in time and do something else, as many times as you wish. Even your other abilities complement and encourage time-travelling shenanigans, like Defy that makes you stand your ground, decreasing the damage taken and drawing aggro. You can make several scapegoats from your past selves and then slip by the monster hoard, or outflank the monster focused on your defiant self with several other selves and beat it to pulp. It's weird and entertaining and engaging, and the changing grids make it all that much more cool.

All in all, it's wonderful to see that the dev managed to balance unlimited time travel in a way that leaves the game a challenge. Contributing to that, of course, are the monsters. Each of them is different in a way, with varied behaviour and abilities. While you can slaughter some of the weaker enemies with nothing but careful positioning, you will soon encounter beasts like the ravagian trask, who is nigh unbeatable without chronomancy tricks. Then you descend another level and chronolisks will start to use some form of chronomancy against you - don't ask me how that works, my head hurts just thinking about it. And there are other monsters I know nothing about, as I just cut my losses and legged it out of there when they showed up, leaving my past selves to deal with them.

Nothing to see here but a massive horde of monsters.

 
BTW, there were some bugs and exploits, but the dev is already working on fixing them. I'm glad I could make the game harder for you all. :) I should also mention that the dev requested this mini-review, and now it's getting longer than any of my previous ones, so here is a TLDR:

It's a good game, very good one. I hope to see more of it.

 
*) That's a compliment, if you were unsure.
**) Once again, that's good in my book.
***) Best name ever!

7DRL 2020: Mini-Reviews

The last week was this year's Seven Day Roguelike Challenge, which I didn't have time to partake in, unfortunately.

However, I do have a bit of time to try out some of the cool little games that people submitted. Many of them are even playable directly in the browser, so you really have no excuse not to check them out, too.
 

The submission button overlapping the game window is annoying.

  
Beneath Faelin Wood
You are a shape-shifting druid delving in the caves beneath your forest to rescue another druid.

First of all, the game is beautiful. It was made by the same people as Haque, and it has similarly amazing art.

Second of all, there's a lot to find in this game. There are multiple animal forms with different abilities. There are NPCs with side quests and dialogue trees. There is item crafting. There is music and cutscenes.

This seems like a more or less finished game, and you should go play it yourselves, as I don't think I have seen more than a sliver of it.

the strigoi
You fell down a random hole to the very bottom of a dungeon and found the fabled Orb of Zot! Unfortunately, the fall left you severely wounded. You can only hope to get out before your blood attracts monsters that you are too weak to defend against.

This game makes you unable to fight, so your only option is to run and hide. You will have to carefully navigate the small levels, trying to avoid the monsters while constantly dripping with blood that acts as a monster lure. You will cower in fear as monsters stalk around the corner, praying that you don't draw its attention. You will dive in water to wash off the scent. You will sprint towards the stairs with monsters just behind your back. There will be many evocative messages describing your horrible injuries and the hideous monsters.

Maybe you will get up a few floors before the monsters tear you apart.

Facing monsters with a fireball ready.

 

This time with a more wizardly outfit.

Runelite
You are a runecaster, a mage capable of crafting their own spells from six elemental runes. You got lost in a dungeon and seek the portal rune that would let you return back home.

The spell mixing is very fun. You can prepare up to three runes for casting - the number, element and order of runes all matter for the resulting spell. For example, three fires would cast a short range, powerful explosion; mana and two fires would make a fireball that can be thrown over the whole room; while mana, fire, mana would create a single target fiery projectile. It might seem easy to fry all the early game monsters, but just a few floors down, monsters resistant to some elements or with other tricks start to appear, so don't become complacent too quickly!

Me wanna play with your innards!

Baby World Eaters
Iä! Iä! Me eat hoomans to fill me belly full!

You control a baby Cthulhu as they invade small, randomly generated towns and try to trap fleeing civilians to eat them, while avoiding unintentionally slaughtering their idiotic cultists. The cute abomination cannot be damaged and kills everything in a single hit, but their time in this world is limited and everyone moves at the same speed, so you need to make sure they can corner the humans swiftly. If any civilians survive when the time is up, papa Cthulhu will be angry and the little eldritch horror will go to the bed hungry. :(

And I'm dead again...

  
There are SLIMES in this DUNGEON
This little Broughlike has you survive against magical slimes. Each colour of slimes has a different special power, and as you die in a single hit, you need to take great care to avoid them. On the other hand, you will be able to steal magic crystals that allow you to use the slimes' powers against them!

The game is quick and fun. Unfortunately, it seems that you can get trapped by the blue slimes in a way that prevents anyone from taking another turn, forcing you to reload. Fortunately, the game is short enough that restarting doesn't hurt too badly.

I Finished My First 7DRL

Endless Descent Into the Dark and Dangerous Dungeons of the Most Reprehensible Alphabetical Overlord: Quest for Gore and Vengeance is my contribution to the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge 2019, and also the first 7DRL I made. It is a simple, silly terminal-based roguelike where you slay letters and try not to get swarmed to death.

It can be found here. Windows release will be added once I persuade mingw to cooperate with ncurses.
 

  

Descend into the terrific - no, wait - terrifying Vault of Writing and use your ancient sword and mighty magic to avenge your beloved potted plant and destroy the Dark Alphabetical Overlord. You will probably just die, though...

I wanted to finally take part in 7DRL this year, but come this Tuesday, I didn't have any good idea for a game and knew I won't have much time anyway. I also never worked with ncurses, so this game became a little experiment in what can I learn in the time I had available.

It actually turned out quite well, if I may say so. The player is given several spells to work with against the hordes of enemies, and because you only gain mana by killing monsters, you will have to be clever and use the spell wisely to survive. Monsters have multiple special attacks, but they are dumb by design to prevent them from easily swarming you to death. I rather like the gameplay, and hopefully you will too.

ORJ: Hero Trap

With the resurgence of the roguelike genre, many of the classics (NetHack, ADOM, Angband) and newcomers (Caves of Qud, TGGW, Golden Krone Hotel) are gaining in popularity and renown. But there are so many hidden gems, obscure roguelikes few people know about and play, even though they would deserve much more attention. Here is one of them.

Floor 2, full of krakens. Only in Hero Trap.

Hero Trap is another browser roguelike that can be played here. It was created as a contribution to the Seven Day Roguelike challenge in 2017, taking up the ninth place on the overall ladder. It has a pretty cool design goal:

Make a traditional roguelike, but the very first monster kills you if you try to melee it to death.

It was successfully completed in the seven days, and later received a few more updates to fix minor bugs and add some new features. I love it.

Fighting a graveyard full of zombies. The game has
four-directional movement, so thankfully the kraken
cannot attack me.

The game is true to its design and throws monsters way too strong at you. Fight and you will die. However, clever rogues will survive, and you are playing as a (soon to be legendary) rogue!

The game also does a very clever thing with its monsters - the monsters are split into uppercase (next to unbeatable) and lowercase (hard but beatable). It's so intuitive and simple idea, yet I have not seen it in any other roguelike. It offers the most important information the player should care about and requires no spoilers or memorization. And this is still not the last clever thing about monsters Hero Trap has to offer.

Soon, you will have inventory full of unknown magical items.
Don't horde them, use them. You really, really need them.

While uppercase monsters are mostly unbeatable by conventional means, every one of them has a weakness you can exploit to overcome them. Golems are powerful killing machines, but much slower then you. Krakens cannot leave water. Faceless cannot sense you if you don't move. Saws only move in straight lines, no matter what you do, and dancing between them is really fun. Unicorns are peaceful unless you disturb them. Jabberwocks are... jabberwocks will kill you no matter what you do, so don't even try. On the plus side, they only appear very late in the game, when you have magic items are your disposal.

Quaffing unknown potions and reading unknown scrolls
is not a bad idea in this game. There is nothing that
would directly kill you and no other way of identification.

Even the lowercase monsters (or "you can kill those, but still be careful" monsters) have unique quirks and gimmicks. Monkeys steal your items and run away. Harpies come in groups and try to fly over your head to surround you. Dwarves will dig to get to you. Zombies are weak and slow, but there is a nigh endless horde of them. Fungi grow constantly, quickly filling the dungeon. Bloats cannot attack, but they will explode if you hit them. There is one monster for every letter of the alphabet, and every monster has a unique power. You won't find boring monsters in this game.

Damn you, mimics!

What's more, monsters have nice short descriptions that will hint at their behaviour and weaknesses, so you can be prepared even if you never encountered this type of creature before. Once again, no spoilers required to make informed decisions about the way you play, and clever play will get you further than mindless hacking. You will feel as a genius the first time you find a way to abuse a monster's power to your advantage.

This is my equipment for most of the game.
While it's better not getting hit, it still helps if
your enemies kill themselves as they attack.

No, it is pretty badass. In a game where stealth
will save your life, releasing clouds of impenetrable
darkness from you sword is very cool.

As if this was not enough, Hero Trap offers an interesting take on magical items. There is a set of enchantments, but they can appear on different item types. Every game, an item type is assigned to each enchantment - so you may have potions of healing in one game, but only armours of healing in another.

Discoveries at the start of the game. Here you
can see all the different possible enchantments.

And this is an end-game Discoveries screen.
That armour of death might sound strange, but
it was crucial to my survival at one point.

The item type also influences in what way you can use the enchantment. Wand of teleportation can be zapped at any creature you see. Potion of teleportation can be drunk to teleport yourself, while a scroll of teleportation will teleport every adjacent monster. Sword of teleportation will sometimes teleport struck enemies away. Armour of teleportation will also sometimes teleport attackers away, but may also randomly teleport you. Some items are very useful, some are double-edged or situational, but you will need them all to survive.

Ogres, giant beetles, lizards and pixies?
I'm sure this floor will be alright.

Or not? Whew, that one was really close.

Anyway, you can read the development and release thread of this game here, if you're interested, and once again, play it here. And if you win, let me know, because I keep dying just short of the final floor.

Yeah, floor 23 of 26. It went so well until the nymphs
stole my sword and wands, then surrounded me
without a way to escape or kill them fast enough.

Happy hacking and don't die!