d10 Armour Mechanics

TL;DR: AC is simple and useable, but it doesn't always feel like armour. Here are some alternatives.

Made by The Dungeoncast.

 
This post is brought to you by two thoughts. The first is: What options do I have when picking an armour mechanic for a new system? Which systems have some cool ideas I can steal?

What if I want a Dark Souls-like system where you can pick from many, many suits of armour and each is different, but ideally without the difference being just ±1 point of defence?

The second is: Weapons tend to be more interesting than armour. Especially mechanically, especially in D&D derivatives and especially when talking about non-magical gear. It's hard to make different suits of armour feel distinct and varied when they only scale to bigger defence numbers and maybe their encumbrance changes from one type to another.

But you can have resistances and buffs and such on your armour!

True, but weapons have damage dice (and even d8 versus 2d4 is quite different), to-hit bonuses, crit ranges and multipliers, bleeding and poison and other special effects - and we're still not in the realm of enchantments. The mechanical side of combat procedures is simply more shifted towards weapons. On the one hand, there's nothing wrong with a simple defence mechanic that gets the work done. On the other hand, it would be nice if the choice of armour mattered more, mechanically, and I don't mean just the choice of leather versus plate.

Why should all armours in a game protect you the same way, anyway? What if we had several protections to choose from, to mix and match?

I will not provide you with such a cool new system, sorry. I only have a list of armour mechanics.
 

From here.

 
1. Hit protection
Known as Armor Class in D&D, but other RPGs will most likely call it Evasion or Dodging. Hit protection makes it harder to hit you rather than decreasing the damage taken.

I think that D&D's AC seems weird and unintuitive at first, but once you have accepted it as an abstraction, it works very well within its rule system. In the absolute majority of RPG systems, though, hit protection will be a separate evasion score, leaving armour with some other type of defence mechanic. It is actually rare not to see one of the defence mechanics below combined with some form of hit protection, as the defence dichotomy of "evade the hit or decrease the damage" is pretty fun and thus ubiquitous. Hit protection might be the most popular defence mechanic.

Hit protection tends to apply against all types of attacks and damage, but does not necessarily need to. Starfinder, for example, differentiates between an Energy AC and a Kinetic AC.

As it is an all-or-nothing defence, hit protection has to be scaled against the accuracy of enemies. There is no fun in combat if you or your foe are impossible to hit, though having a small chance to hit no matter how high the evasion is (criticals, basically) can help with that. But frankly, this applies to all mechanics - don't let your numbers scale out of hand.

2. Flat damage reduction
The most simple damage decreasing defence, just take [amount] less damage from attacks. It might only work against a certain type of damage (slashing, fire, magic), or be bypassed by something (silver, +1 weapons, lawful good attackers).

It's big weakness is, in my opinion, that it requires a very careful balancing of enemy damage output versus the amount of damage reduction. If it falls behind the average damage, it feels useless. The damage you didn't take might still add up over time, but that doesn't help you feel better when you shave off 2 points from a 23 damage hit. If it's too high (heavens forbid if it can stack), it just makes enemies flail against you impotently and removes danger from combat. Even worse, it can result in a situation like in higher-level Tunnels & Trolls, where you have high damage reduction but still relatively low hit points. The attacks also get more powerful, with big variance in the damage output, where your damage reduction negates the vast majority of attacks, but those that get through might very well one-shot you.

Which is not to say it's a bad mechanic. One just has to make sure to keep both the damage reduction and the damage outputs grounded, and maybe have some armour-piercing criticals. Flat damage reduction is simple and feels like a protective armour, making it a popular mechanic to combine with hit protection. So many games use this dichotomy that it's actually more rare to see a game using only flat damage reduction - Into the Odd comes to mind thanks to its unique take on combat with no to-hit roll.

Some CRPGs derive both hit protection and damage reduction from a single score; in NetHack and POWDER, for example, high AC eventually starts giving you some damage reduction in addition to the hit protection it offers normally (though in POWDER, it is random damage reduction rather than flat one).

3. Random damage reduction
An alternative damage reduction mechanic that works much better with stacking armour. When you take damage, cut it down by a random amount between a minimum and a maximum. No matter how high your armour is, some hits will deal real damage. Note that this can lead to the "rarely hits but one hit kills" effect mentioned above, so keep that in mind, and it will require extra rolling, so it might slow your combat down.

If you are willing to use digital rollers, then you can have a simple but effective system where you roll damage reduction from 0 to [armour value], but even if you only used physical dice, you can have a crappy d2 armour, basic d4 armour, excellent d8 armour, or a heavy 2d4 armour. As with other damage decreasing defences, adding a damage type/source limit (cold, ranged, inflicted by an animal) can spice it up.

Mörk Borg uses this type of defence, but it's much more common in CRPGs, given that you can easily generate random numbers with arbitrary min and max there. For example:

• Sil and Elona have dice-based damage reduction.
• DCSS and POWDER have "zero to armour value" damage reduction.
• IVAN reduces damage by a random amount between half and full armour value.

4. Damage division
A percentage decrease in damage taken. Usually half damage, though a one-third/quarter damage could also be reasonably easy to calculate on the fly for a TTRPG, while a CRPG can go wild with any percentage that strikes their fancy. As with other damage decreasing defences, it can be limited to a damage type/source - and it often is, representing elemental resistances. The big thing here is that this defence will be just as good no matter how much you scale the damage - you always take half damage, whether it's 10 or 10 000 damage hit. This can be good, as your armour will remain relevant, or bad, as you will still take damage from that 2-dmg-per-hit mook even in your sweet power armour.

One way to make a more consistent damage reducing defence is to combine damage division (so you are guaranteed a certain decrease in damage) with some low damage reduction (so you are protected from minor damage). Off the top of my head, City of the Damned combines damage division and flat damage reduction, Elona uses damage division and dice-based random damage reduction, while DCSS combines damage division and the "zero to armour value" random damage reduction.

5. Damage conversion
This type of defence depends on what kinds of damage the system uses.

• Example A: Lets say that a suit of plate decreases the severity of the damage taken, from aggravated to lethal to non-lethal, rather than decreasing the damage numbers.
• Example B: A power armour in a sci-fi game or an invulnerability power in a superhero setting might convert vehicle-scale damage that normally instakills a human to a person-scale damage.
• Example C: The resource targeted by the damage is changed, like a regeneration power that converts attribute damage to hit point damage, or a magic shield that converts hp damage to mana drain.

Overall, damage conversion doesn't decrease the amount of damage taken, but makes it less harmful or easier to deal with. I can't think of a system that uses it exclusively, you're much more likely to see it as a special effect or ability.

6. Damage threshold
Similar to flat damage reduction at a first glance, damage threshold negates any damage lower than (or equal to) the threshold. If the damage exceeds the threshold, though, you take it in full, no reduction. This accentuates the danger of big hits and the "rarely hits but one hit kills" effect, so make sure you like that and plan for it with your damage and hp values.

7. Damage cap
The damage one can take from a single hit is capped at some maximum value, normally either flat or percentage-based (eg. "You may not lose more than 50% of your maximum hp from a single attack."), though I wonder how well would a random damage cap would work. Anyway, this means that multiple small hits become more dangerous that a single big hit, an inversion of a damage threshold.

It might be interesting to differentiate two armour types by one offering a damage threshold while the other offers a damage cap, especially if the attackers can also specialize in either multiple attacks or one massive attack. Another possibly fun mechanic would be if there was no way to get an immunity to certain damage, but you could combine a high enough damage threshold and a low enough cap to fake it.

8. Ablative armour
Armour either directly adds to your hit points, or grants a secondary hit point pool. You only have to work out whether it's:

• Hardcore: The armour needs repairs afterwards and grants no protection until fixed.
• Temporary: The "armour" is not a real armour but temporary hp that doesn't come back once used up.
• Soak: A small hp pool that can soak a certain amount of damage each round, recharging completely at the start of each round.
  
• Abstract: The hit points are abstracted completely and you have a combined pool of flesh and armour hit points that both come back after combat.

The original Tunnels & Trolls had hardcore ablative armour rules where your armour offered an extra hit point pool, but once these were gone, your armour was broken and useless. This was supposedly an intentional design choice to give fighters a money sink, but was dropped in later editions in favour of flat damage reduction. Many games these days go the abstract route or have some abilities that provide temporary ablative armour, but for example Cogmind is designed around various robot parts serving as your hardcore ablative armour, where you need to replace destroyed pieces as you take hits.

I particularly like soak, as it plays out similarly to damage reduction without making weak attacks inconsequential. Enough attacks in a single round can still bring you down, even if you stack soak. It's also relatively easy to keep track of, because you just reset one number each round.

In any case, ablative armour is simple to use and works very well with stacking armour pieces, as it builds on the already existing hit point mechanic. Technically speaking, hit points themselves are a form of abstract ablative armour preventing your character's death, so I guess I was wrong that hit protection is the most popular defence mechanic - ablative armour is, given all the games that have some form of hit points.

9. Immunity
Completely negates damage of a certain type or source. Most often seen as an enchantment that grants affliction or elemental immunity, but could also be an immunity to non-magical weapons (whether from being intangible or invulnerable), normal missiles, summoned creatures, spells, etc. In a sci-fi game, this could be reflective armour that confers immunity to lasers, or Dune-style shields that prevent damage from firearms but don't stop slow-moving melee and thrown weapons. It could be interesting to see an immunity to all melee attacks.

Given that this type of defence completely shuts down a certain kind of threat, it requires some planning around in the rules and shouldn't be too easy to obtain or pile up multiple types of, lest the character becomes untouchable. On the other hand, immunities can lead to some fun strategies, especially with area attacks or environmental threats.

If you want to have an immunity-based defence, consider some further restrictions than just a damage type. I will discuss several types of limitations in just a paragraph or two.

10. No protection
Mostly relevant to one page RPGs and other super-light systems, or systems that de-emphasise combat to oblivion - there is nothing the defender can do to prevent a hit or reduce damage, therefore armour is by necessity useless. Don't get me wrong, it can work well if combat is the ultimate fail state, it just cannot result in interesting armour mechanics, so I'm including it here only for completeness' sake. If there are any armour mechanics at all, it is no longer this, but one of the above types of defence.

See the Mosaic Strict version of these rules for a TTRPG example of no protection combat, but it is much more common in CRPGs, where combat can more easily be presented as a positioning puzzle (like in HyperRogue or Hoplite). Bonus points if all creatures also die in a single hit - then we can't even object that hit points are a kind of defence.
 

Could be especially relevant in a game
where you build your own humongous mecha
and can decide between multiple defensive systems.
By Hikaru Kanefusa.

 

Sometimes, you might wish to impose an extra limit on one of the defences from above, to curb some of the more powerful ones or the other way around, to let a defence be powerful without unbalancing combat. I think these three options cover most of the commonly seen mechanics:

A. Charges
You have a limited amount of "defence charges" and can decide when to spend them for your protection.

As an example, the shields shall be splintered rule lets you expend a charge (by destroying your shield) to either completely negate a weapon attack (immunity) or decrease damage taken by a die roll (random damage reduction), depending on which rule set are we talking about. In Broken Worlds, you can spend an armour charge to decrease damage taken by 3 (flat damage reduction). You could also spend a charge to reroll/get bonus to hit protection, or for half damage, for damage conversion, etc.

B. Saving throw
Unlike hit protection, which is a passive number your enemies roll against, you roll your saving throws when exposed to damage and apply a linked defence only if the roll succeeds. A saving throw is nearly always limited to a damage type/source (poison, breath attack, weapon attack) or a certain situation.

D&D already has such saves: Fortitude negates (saving throw + immunity), Reflex for half (saving throw + division), or fortification (saving throw + conversion). Mutants & Masterminds have a Toughness save against damage to prevent injury, while Mothership has an armour save for half damage. Encounter Critical also has an armour save, but it adds a little extra brilliance by making the normal save for half damage, but if you roll under half the armour save, you take no damage at all. While the new versions of TGGW use damage division, older versions had an armour save applied point by point; for example if you had Armour 60% and took 3 points of damage, each of those points had a separate 60% chance to be ignored.

C. Cooldown
Your defence is limited by a certain interval before coming back after you use it. There are basically three types:

• A set recharge rate of X rounds (or some other time unit). Probably best when the rate depends on some attribute or skill and thus can be lowered as you get better. Could also be used for a temporary defence buff, as long as the buff duration stays shorter than the recharge time.
  
• A randomized recharge rate, either useable every dX rounds, or with a chance to recharge on each turn. In D&D 4e, you might see some abilities with [recharge on ⚄, ⚅], but it could just as well be a 2-in-6 or 33% chance.
  
• An automatic defence that triggers every X rounds (or some such). For example, a flux field belt that deflects every third attack against you.
  

Note that a 33% chance to deflect every attack is an example of a saving throw, not cooldown, but then again there will always be overlap in these artificial categories I made up here.

Cooldowns are ubiquitous in video games, because they are a simple, effective and scaleable limit, plus the computer can keep track of them for you. In TTRPGs, it might be easier to use the "chance to recharge each turn"-type cooldown, but the automatic defence could prove quite interesting in gameplay, especially if paired with outright immunity. How would your combat decisions change if you knew that you cannot be harmed on every third turn?
 

From Dark Souls.

And how could a selection of armour in this hypothetical system of multiple armour types look like? What about:

• Helmet or gorget can be cracked to reduce a critical hit to normal.
• Shield increases evasion and can be splintered to block a random amount of damage.
• Cloak and boots increase evasion.
• A fighter's skill of parrying gives a saving throw to negate weapon damage.
• A rogue's skill of dodge roll gives a saving throw to negate area damage.
  
• Padded jacket converts bludgeoning damage to non-lethal.
• Leather armour is ablative and needs to be repaired. Better hides give more bonus hp. Hunt for better hides.
• Mage armour is also ablative, but offers soak instead.
• Hauberk grants half slashing and piercing damage.
• Disc armour grants flat damage reduction.
• Battledress grants a damage threshold.
• Flagellant's tunic grants a damage cap.
• Ioun stone of protection intercepts every third attack against you.
  
• Pauldrons offer no protection at all, but they look really cool.
  

Wanderer

Some time ago during a boring meeting, I happened upon Spwack's old mini-game called Wanderer and got caught up in playing it. There were some occasional bugs, so I fixed them, then ended up making adjustments and additions and introducing new bugs, until I had a whole new version of the game.

And with Spwack's kind permission, I present to you this Wanderer Next, Wanderer++, Wanderer 2.0 that can be played right
 

>HERE<

Unlike the original, which was a score-based exploration game, my version is more roguelike-ish. You can find armour, cast spells, fight, die, and maybe even uncover secrets. There's also a boss and one other way to win the game.
  

Click to embiggen.

The source code can be found on GitHub, though I would like to warn anyone who works with JavaScript that I never used it before, plus I was just piling new additions on old code without much forethought or refactoring, until I ended up with the player being represented by an assemblage of global variables... Yeah, you can stop laughing now.

Anyway, feel free to post any comments or criticism, and please report all bugs you find so that I can squish them.

Happy hacking and don't die!

IVAN: Aslona Release

It's been a while since I mentioned starting the work on a new quest line featuring the civil war in Aslona, but we finally finished and tested everything. Explore five new locations, meet new NPCs, fight new monsters, and enjoy various other new bits and bobs.

Download the release here.
 

Meeting Harvan Black-cloak, the rebel leader, ...

...and Efra Peredivall, the lord regent of Aslona.

Changes:

• Add Aslona!
• Add many new sound effects.
• Add some new monsters, items, artifacts, materials and crafting recipes.
• Change structure of quests. Petrus now takes the encrypted scroll and gives you some alone time. If you chat with him again, you will receive the GC quest, or you can find other people to chat for other quests.
• Add new ROOM_OWNED_AREA type for generic owned rooms. Uses code similar to the Cathedral or Decos' house.
• Hotness can now be used to define materials that deal fire damage on contact, just like Acidicity for acidic materials.
• Use GitHub app for LGTM.
• Cats can be tamed with fishes.
• Orcs have black blood.
• Lobh-se is a bit more fun.
• Make amulets easily recognizable by color.
• Land mines can now be sometimes defused if you levitate over and pick them up.
• Willpower now protects against some hostile magic.
• Add autopick regex.
• Add an option to show info about gods, displaying their last reaction to prayer.
• Better 'F1' command in menus.
• Some items now have descriptions.
• Better help for crafting actions.
• New help for config options.
• Add options to start with no pet and to use health descriptions.
• Add alternate door traps.
• Prevent very dumb creatures from using wands.
• You cannot unequip locked chastity belt.
• Update README and add MANUAL.
• A wise player can look at an enemy for a rough estimation of their health.
• Add day/night cycle to all above-ground locations.
• Enable weather effects for more above-ground locations.
• Let monsters also benefit from Detecting status effect.
• Coffins now generate with grave goods and do something when you steal from them.
• Hammers are good with the undead.
• Some monsters now have different diets.

Fixes:

• Decos no longer lets you steal from him.
• You can no longer leave the Black Market through walls.
• Slightly nerf Black Market.
• Display Willpower in wizard mode secrets.
• Running in wilderness now correctly takes stamina.
• Fix some quest messages not being saved as already displayed.
• Reveal gas traps when you step on them.
• Fix several places where panic immunity or disease immunity was not respected.
• Fix several crafting bugs, hopefully preventing crashes.
• Fix Terra not offering priestly services after you killed Lobh-se.
• Spill more water over a burning player when they pray to Silva, so there's a better chance to be extinguished.
• Prevent long strings in config options from overflowing when displayed.
• Prevent building features in owned rooms.
• Explosive liquids can no longer be used to douse flames.
• Wands of webbing were not causing hostility.
• Fix horns of fear causing panic without checking the panic resistance of the victim.
• Remove redundant messages from auto map notes.
• Fix sitting on fountains and drinking from non-water fountains.
• Fix AI not using equipped zappable items.
• Make taming/possessing more powerful creatures scale correctly.
• Fix a bug where boots were not correctly considered for kicking effects.
• Fix teleport lock from non-equipment sources never timing out.
• Assorted minor fixes and balancing.

Aslona:

• A new main quest will see you trying to bring peace back to the kingdom of Aslona, currently in the middle of a civil war.
• Add five new locations.
• Player can now have a ship to sail the oceans of worldmap. This also means that they can now bring pets that would normally be unable to cross the ocean with them.
• Moving over the ocean is slightly slower than on dry land.

 

Itsy bitsy golden spider.

  

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.

IVAN: Release 0.57

New IVAN release is out! Get it here.
 

Changes:

• Add Black Market, an end-game shop to spend all your excess gold in.
• Add game lore and fiction to the Doc folder.
• Magic helmets spawn with random material.
• Switch some helmets from full to normal helmet.
• Keys very rarely break when used.
• NPCs will sometimes talk to you on their own.

Fixes:

• Clean up code.
• New "expansive terrain" can help prevent blocking important entrances.
• Improve item search algorithm.
• Fix ring detection to work same as scrolls.
• Enable wishes for empty containers, make empty cans and empty bottles wishable.
• No rotated pictures for equipments and newly-spawned items.
• Do not aggressively upgrade dependencies for mac build.
• Mirrored items cannot be dismantled into permanent lump of material.
• Stop weapon swap from auto-stealing items in shops.
• Possibly fixed the window context glitch in Windows.

IVAN: New Dungeons

Here is a sneak peak on what I'm currently working on for IVAN.

(Click on the pictures to enlarge them.)
  

If you ever survived to the late game with a purse
full of gold and nothing to spend it on, this new area
should be a godsend for you. Black Market will have enough
goods to stump and shopaholic, at very (un)reasonable prices.

The old king is dead, long live the very young king.
You will be able to explore the royal castle of Aslona and
take up a quest to save the kingdom from a civil war.

You may try to talk to the emissary of Aslona, who is
already present in the current version of the game
in the grand hall of the Cathedral of Attnam.

My NetHack Anniversary

I don't have any screenshots of my own, so the
pictures here are some random NetHack stuff.

Today is the fourth anniversary of my first NetHack win in 2015, and about eight years since I started to play the game*. Since then, I won three times more, so I sit at a comfortable one win per year. I should probably start to try getting a new character through the dungeon soon if I want to meet my quota of wins in 2019, because I'm an extraordinarily slow player of NetHack.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, NetHack is the greatest game you will ever play. Much has been written about it.

It's old and has a huge fanbase. It was inspired by the original D&D, one of the first attempts to take a tabletop RPG and make a computer game out of it. Its direct predecessor Hack was first released in 1982 and since then, NetHack never stopped growing and evolving. The last version, 3.6.1, was released on the 27th April 2018.

It has a public github repository. It can be played in browser. It has a very good Android port. It has many variants and some even have great let's plays.

Android port by Gurr.
It is surprisingly easy to play on your phone.

It has many, many faults, but it's still an incredible game and one of the really big names among roguelikes. And so I thought - why not post the story of my first winning character, this being an anniversary and all?

For the nit-pickers, I actually won UnNetHack, a variant that fixed a few bugs, reworked the most glaring issues and added some minor features, making the game a bit harder. I never won vanilla NetHack, even though I played it quite a bit, mostly because death-by-inattention in the more boring parts of Gehennom. I also played dNetHack and a little bit of SLEX and GruntHack, though never even getting close to a win.

But I digress...

Starting is always fun. Killing lichens and running from cats,
because cats will murder you without breaking a sweat.

I was playing a female orcish barbarian and reached the Minetown in Gnomish Mines without trouble, but also without anything exciting in the shops. Returning to the main Dungeon, I found Sokoban and messed it up. I eventually had to squeeze onto the boulders to fix the puzzle and get to the rewards. Then I got crowned with Cleaver after some sacrificing on a conveniently placed altar, but refrained from using it as I already had +5 two-handed sword.

Final Sokoban level with a monster zoo.

I returned to Gnomish Mines and got the luckstone from the Mine's End, then started clearing deeper Dungeon and arrived on the Nymph Level. Here I was nearly killed due to stupidly letting Aphrodite close enough for her to steal my wand of lightning. I barely survived her zapping and blinding me, but survive I did, and then proceeded to kill all the nymphs with extreme prejudice. I hate nymphs.

Gnomish Mines in all their glory.

I used a wand of cold to get to the Town and robbed its ring shop blind, finding a ring of levitation. I also found entrance to Moria. Durin's Bane put up quite a bit of fight, but I managed to beat it to death, then ascended to the halls of Moria. Funnily, all the starting orcs were hostile, but all the respawns were peaceful to my orcish PC, so I killed them anyway and took their wands, potions and scrolls.

The last level of Moria had an altar of Set and an ice box full of monsters, so I sacrificed a bit. I got the Frost Brand from my god and then sacrificed some fellow orcs, summoning peaceful Juiblex and Yeenoghu. I let them rot in there, never to be a bother again, and returned to the Dungeon. I didn't mess with the Watcher in the Water, because I have a very bad track record of being drowned by various monsters...

Minetown

I decided to try the Quest and it was surprisingly easy, so I took the Bell of Opening and the Heart of Ahriman, and discarded my old luckstone. As the Heart gives displacement instead of stealth in UnNetHack, this was the first time in all of my games I was invisible and displaced at the same time. Later, it actually proved quite nice to have for all the monsters with see invisible in Gehennom.

Medusa has a nice lake-view house full of statues.

Medusa was a piece of cake, but only now I realise I never found the Black Market. I was wondering why I had so much gold and nowhere to spend it.

I got to the Castle and with my brand new ring of conflict got it cleared. Only two wishes for me, as in UnNetHack the wand of wishing is already recharged and with random amount of charges. Still, I got a cloak of magic resistance and a magic marker, so I was rather satisfied.

The Castle

Valley of the Dead was a pain in the arse with the sheer amount of monsters, plus dark angels constantly summoning more. Even with conflict it took ages to more or less clear. This time, I remembered to take off the ring of conflict before entering the Temple of Moloch, as that was how my last character died.

I found the Wyrm Caves and they proved to be quite rich, with the dragons generating tons of stuff for me as death drops. Then I took a look at Sheol, found out crystal ice golems are really badass and stayed the hell away from them. Still, I reached Vlad's Tower and this time, Vlad actually put up a fight, draining two levels from me. Good work, Vlad, I will still take your Candelabrum of Invocation.

The top of Vlad's Tower. Also pictured:
NetHack actually can be played with graphics!

I decided to go and see the Ice Palace at the bottom of Sheol and nearly died there, as I stupidly decided that the Executioner cannot be that bad and melee'd him. He punches through AC -36 as nothing! He got teleported and shot down with wands. I also found another magic marker in there, so not bad.

Sheol - the light blue floor means everything here is ice.

The whole of Gehennom wasn't really that bad, with most liches genocided and +7 Frost Brand dual-wielded with +6 long sword. I found the Wizard of Yendor, used up a charge of Orcus' wand of death and took the Book of the Dead. Invocation artifacts assembled!

The Sanctum was completely different from vanilla and had thrown hordes of monsters at me like crazy, plus there is Cthulhu in the High Temple of Moloch in UnNetHack, instead of the vanilla high priest of Moloch. The only bright side of this was that Cthulhu teleported to me and as it carries the Amulet of Yendor (aka MacGuffin), I didn't have to to traverse the whole level.

Moloch's Sanctum in UnNetHack is full of lava. The room
in the centre of the right half is the High Temple of Moloch.

I had to burn through one of my two wands of death escaping from the Sanctum; thanks Set that Cthulhu is not a demon in UnNetHack, thus being vulnerable to death rays. It hits like several trucks at once, plus it has mind flayer's brain-sucking attack. It actually got two melee attacks at me while I killed it five times total (no, it will never stay dead), and of course the grease on my helmet worn off and I got my memories erased. Stupid amnesia!

At least UnNetHack does not have
half the game made up of mazes.

Escaping from Gehennom and the Dungeon was rather smooth, even though I got surrounded by nasties several times. Conflict and two-weaponing took care of it. Actually, I was just bashing things to death so much I missed a vorpal jabberwock and let it take a swipe at me. So it beheaded me. Oops! That was my first death, thanks Set again that the amulet of life saving does not fall off the stump of your neck in NetHack like it does in IVAN (but IVAN is just brutal).

Anyway, I was so excited for the Elemental Planes that I forgot to stop at my stash, where I had Cleaver, Stormbringer, Werebane and Sunsword from sacrificing and lucky finds. Oh well, no bonus score from artifacts for me.

Don't worry about him, he got better. Repeatedly.

I got stuck a bit in the Elemental Planes, as confused scrolls of gold detection work in some mysterious way in UnNetHack, not actually detecting portals and traps. But they work just fine while cursed, so I found the portals after some struggle. Also, the Wizard depleted my second wand of death due to him constantly respawning.

By the way, the Plane of Water just plainly does not make any sense! How can I breathe on an elemental plane filled to the brim with water, wearing just a ring of levitation?

Elemental Plane of Air

And then the Astral Plane! My first time there! And I messed up terribly.

I fought Pestilence as the first Rider, killed it after a really annoying fight of being stranded by insects summoned by the horde of hostile priests and forced into melee, constantly infected with illness and stunned by spells. I hate illness (I hate quite a lot of things, don't I), but I still managed to kill the damned Rider. The altar was of Set, so I was so close to Ascension!

Than I fat-fingered and dropped the Amulet instead of offering it! And for some reason, dropped Amulet of Yendor in UnNetHack teleports elsewhere on the level! Yes, I was really pissed.

This is rather accurate depiction of how the win in NetHack feels.
Picture from here.

So, I had to massacre my way through the Astral Plane to find the Amulet. At least I had named it "real" beforehand, so it didn't end up mixed with all the fakes the other monsters are carrying. I eventually found it in the hands of a random tourist (Astral Plane, your best bet for unforgettable holiday!), but picking it up I let both Pestilence and Famine gang up on me and I was killed the second time. (I love amulets of life saving.) Then it was a mad rush for the altar and I threw the Amulet in the face of Set.

Immortality!

The Astral Plane with three temples of Law, Balance and Chaos.

It's hard to describe the feeling of winning a game such as NetHack for the first time. You keep hearing how hard the game is. You have been playing it for a while and know that it can be pretty unforgiving and that dying is easy.

And then a game comes where you find yourself farther then you have ever been and keep going, where you manage to survive against all odds and don't make too many mistakes. You start to believe that this could actually be the game, because you have overcome everything that killed you before. You are standing on the Astral Plane and still don't really believe it, because you have never came so close. You win and it's awesome and unreal, you're still nervous but also really, really happy.

This is the reason I love roguelikes, because only a few games reward your time and patience with such a feeling. It's a feeling of accomplishment, because you were not expected to win like in the modern games. Yes, the game is winnable, but many people give up before they learn enough tricks to survive. Many people keep dying. You have won.

by Dinosaur Comics

As a bonus here are three of my stupid deaths that make me the most proud (and salty):

• Playing as a dwarven valkyrie, I conquered the Sanctum and was escaping Gehennom with the Amulet. I was strong enough that even the dreaded cockatrice was killed in a single hit, before it could touch me. However, NetHack monsters are clever and a yendorian soldier picked up the dead cockatrice and used it as a bludgeon, petrifying me.
• As an orcish wizard, I survived the descent through the Dungeon and Gehennom, attained great arcane power and found Vlad's Tower. Funny thing, though - undead are immune to finger of death. To this day, I had no other character die to Vlad the Weak.
• Demon lords in NetHack are not as awe-inspiring as in other games. By the time you fight them, you are well-equipped more than enough to handle them. Still, there is Demogorgon, but he is only very rarely summoned by other demons and never appears otherwise. Of course I had a game where my poor samurai fought Orcus and suddenly had Demogorgon appear behind her. She was torn to shreds.

This fanart is absolutely awesome. I can see the player, an elven wizard
wearing an elven mithril-coat, a robe, a pair of gauntlets of power,
a helmet (of brilliance?), a small shield, Magicbane and a pair of boots of
water walking. He's using magic missile to kill the clone of the Wizard
of Yendor, while the real Wizard is preparing to cast finger of death and has
the Book of the Dead floating in front of him. There is a vampire (lord?),
a gremlin, a cockatrice, a minotaur and a gold golem in the background.

*) Not the Game. You just lost it, by the way.