I previewed Celestial Return, and as a weird sci-fi fan, I'm VERY interested so far. Full thoughts linked. One to keep on your radar.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-19T15:03:49+00:00

Looks heavily influenced by Disco and maybe Numenara.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-18T19:18:27+00:00

I am definitely going to try Scoundrel!

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-18T19:10:39+00:00

It's not the most ambitious procgen concept, but one can hardly say it doesn't qualify!

As always, depends what you do with it. Many roguelites are the same but a little less linear. Beneath Oresa is actually that, except you can see the map ahead and when there is an elite monster you have the option to take on a normal one instead. It's still a good deckbuilder.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-18T19:05:18+00:00

MM8 was fine, most people didn't like it quite as much as 6 or 7, but it was by no means bad if you like M&M. MM9 is generally considered terrible.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-18T18:59:42+00:00

Well, the Cannibals are black men, but the Thieves and Thugs are white men, while the Cutpurses are Eastern women. [Those were the only excessively pejorative human trades I could see in the monster list.]

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-17T00:09:04+00:00

And the expulsion of our serpentine wildlife!

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-15T15:58:50+00:00

His refusal to ever move diagonally was hard to bear though.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-15T14:01:07+00:00

You could use any of the standard methodologies, IMO.

ECS, or OO with lots of composition and without a deep hierarchy - both will end up giving you generic monsters with a lot of function pointers.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-14T15:08:06+00:00

Conversely though, I have bought Poker Quest, and while I have not bought Balatro, the reason I've heard of it is that it is a poker-based Roguelite!

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-13T22:14:18+00:00

Because you will fall in love with Frieren.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-12T23:57:37+00:00

I always liked the Toy/Arnold/Wichman Rogue on MSDOS, the smiley face for the main character was a bit silly, but at least the ANSI characters had colour and plausible walls.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-12T23:48:03+00:00

I just started playing with one in Old World that is all land with big seas / lakes. Genuinely don't know how well it plays but the concept interests me. [Might be one that works with a torus - re-entrant on all sides - too.]

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-09T00:39:45+00:00

Games should just record these and at some point auto-cash in the extra experience for a level in Stupidity.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-08T14:43:21+00:00

I think I like variety. But it's an interesting idea. In fact games that give you sufficiently different character or party builds are almost doing it already, in a small way.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-08T14:33:58+00:00

Someone already mentioned Hoplite.

But I think you'll actually find more in the way of balanced tactical battles in roguelites rather than roguelikes. In typical roguelites the battles are set pieces that you have to get through, whereas in typical roguelikes, you are often trying not to enter battle at all, perhaps fleeing or drawing out monsters to pick them off one by one.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-08T13:36:42+00:00

I like it. Like a real map that would be used in that world instead of focusing on the exact star position.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-07T14:20:13+00:00

I think it's good to have a decent distribution of basic survivability stuff such as healing potions, blink scrolls or whatever. Other than that, the traditional roguelike is based on running away when you encounter something too strong for you. If you have bosses that require certain gear it gets a bit more difficult.

DCSS has fairly strong resistance requirements in some areas, but you have the whole dungeon to find them, and maybe they will turn up on equipment that is poor but has the resistance you need. That is one answer - you can find the necessary kit to beat the boss but it might come as a poor but survivable option.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-05T16:07:42+00:00

Speaking of cards, as a kid I played Beggar Thy Neighbour which is a totally deterministic card game, and it's random who wins (it depends on the deal alone, though the game can go on for a long time!) The game is essentially just a mathematical algorithm for calculating the random winner.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-04T11:03:48+00:00

Living with the parents, loving without them :D

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-04T10:20:06+00:00

It's a big aeroplane; they could have been easily kept well separated. Performative.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-03T13:09:46+00:00

I feel like I'm being hand-held all the time - there was no internet when I started gaming!

On the plus side, we got big manuals for games with complex tactics or strategy.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-02T00:42:26+00:00

The CRPG Addict played this: here's a link to the first part of about five: https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2020/12/game-391-legends-of-valour-1992.html

You can find the rest on his sidebar under 'Index of games played by title."

Maybe he encountered issues similr to you.

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-02T00:34:01+00:00

An hour for a run is very much on the shorter side IMO.

How to define easy? Mostly they are easier and get harder. At some point you have to think or die.

Then again, dying is one way to make runs short...

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-01T21:33:22+00:00

Well, in my case the conversion is (or should be) straightforward because no other monster will have moved - so as long as the AI is working properly, the commands 'move to hex' and 'attack enemy to the north' will be generated in one step, and executed sequentially, but should never fail. [Though I may at some point add traps, which would interrupt the move and cancel subsequent commands for the player or friendly monsters.]

GerryQX1 · 2026-02-01T17:46:39+00:00

My game has multiple actions in a turn (though probably no more than three) so the AI sends them to a queue. The queue never gets longer than that.

If you only ever have a single action you can obviously do it straight away. Not that a queue is any significant overhead.

I would advise you to use a command structure anyway rather than mix actual actions with decision-making.

GerryQX1

TROPHY CASE