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Rogule: A dungeon a day keeps the Balrog away

rogule.com

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Re: Rogule: A dungeon a day keeps the Balrog away

#13
I've been playing this daily for a while. The issue I've found with it is that your health recharges every 100 steps. This creates a divergence between the fun way to play and the way most likely to win. The optimal strategy is to spend a long time button mashing between enemies, and to run back and forth for ages when facing a powerful enemy. I think it would be better if your health didn't recharge (with the enemies rebalanced to accommodate this). This would force the player to actually make smart decisions.

Re: Rogule: A dungeon a day keeps the Balrog away

#14

Clojure - cool, I haven’t seen this in the wild for ages! https://github.com/chr15m/rogule.com/tree/master/src/rogule

That is wild! I've always wondered with functional programming what it would actually look like to have a game written in it- guess this is my answer.

Re: Rogule: A dungeon a day keeps the Balrog away

#15
post #3

With the caveat that I do play a good amount of roguelikes, this one was far too easy. It needs better levels. You should add some algorithms that reject bad level generations. This one was beatable by killing the first two monsters and walking to the exit. Try generating levels until you get one where you need a strategy that is not that simple? Idk.

You can actually just walk straight to the exit, no need to fight anything.

Agreed. This isn't quite like the classic roguelike in which it's a struggle to survive and a miracle to win. In fact it may be unrealistic to expect a "daily" game to have that. This is more about getting a high score and sharing with friends how you approached the same dungeon.

Re: Rogule: A dungeon a day keeps the Balrog away

#16
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can actually just walk straight to the exit, no need to fight anything.

Agreed. This isn't quite like the classic roguelike in which it's a struggle to survive and a miracle to win. In fact it may be unrealistic to expect a "daily" game to have that. This is more about getting a high score and sharing with friends how you approached the same dungeon.

> In fact it may be unrealistic to expect a "daily" game to have that.

Why? Plenty of roguelikes and -lites have daily seeded runs. The genre is pretty much optimal for a "daily" format.

Re: Rogule: A dungeon a day keeps the Balrog away

#18
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can actually just walk straight to the exit, no need to fight anything.

Agreed. This isn't quite like the classic roguelike in which it's a struggle to survive and a miracle to win. In fact it may be unrealistic to expect a "daily" game to have that. This is more about getting a high score and sharing with friends how you approached the same dungeon.

> This isn't quite like the classic roguelike in which it's a struggle to survive and a miracle to win.

Most classic roguelikes are reasonably easy to win provided you know and follow the obscure, nearly impossible to find by yourself and very rigid optimal way to go. That’s why I like to call checkbox ticking games.

Re: Rogule: A dungeon a day keeps the Balrog away

#19
post #3

With the caveat that I do play a good amount of roguelikes, this one was far too easy. It needs better levels. You should add some algorithms that reject bad level generations. This one was beatable by killing the first two monsters and walking to the exit. Try generating levels until you get one where you need a strategy that is not that simple? Idk.

You can actually just walk straight to the exit, no need to fight anything.

Or you can walk up to a random monster and get beaten to hell and back. I dunno, that wasn’t exactly a fun experience either.

Re: Rogule: A dungeon a day keeps the Balrog away

#20
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This isn't quite like the classic roguelike in which it's a struggle to survive and a miracle to win. In fact it may be unrealistic to expect a "daily" game to have that. This is more about getting a high score and sharing with friends how you approached the same dungeon.

> This isn't quite like the classic roguelike in which it's a struggle to survive and a miracle to win. Most classic roguelikes are reasonably easy to win provided you know and follow the obscure, nearly impossible to find by yourself and very rigid optimal way to go. That’s why I like to call checkbox ticking games.

You're just playing them wrong. The optimal way to appreciate rougelikes is to spend days reading the source code and constructing a set of spreadsheet models, simulators and research collection of obscure forum posts. Then grind patiently along the extremely boring, very rigid optimal way to go.

No checkboxes ticked.

It is exhilarating.

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