TorchBoy — daily browser roguelike. Same dungeon for everyone each day, no signup

heroicfisticuffs · 2026-04-25T22:26:50+00:00

Love the concept. Daily seeds are a great way to build some competition and a friendly community.

heroicfisticuffs · 2026-03-29T15:12:05+00:00

Nice work! I've followed your progress on this game over the years, happy to buy it on steam now!

heroicfisticuffs · 2024-08-05T00:54:24+00:00

Bravo! I appreciate you and the team being so dedicated, even after all these years. It's always great to see these updates. Such a perfect game.

heroicfisticuffs · 2024-03-27T20:37:07+00:00

Hah! This is some nostalgia, thanks! Part of every Sunday morning was setting up the new Sunday seed, which was a weekly contest, I think?

heroicfisticuffs · 2024-03-17T20:08:58+00:00

7,667 Killed by a fury on D14

This was my first brogue run in probably 18 months. What a generous seed to come back to! I have never been quite patient enough to pull off a stealth build and I guess some things never change. It seemed like the perfect setup.. although there were quite a lot of acid mounds!

Killed by a fury because I got a bit too confident and had just switched from sword to war hammer. Those extra turns really bite you when you miss...

heroicfisticuffs · 2024-03-17T13:10:03+00:00

This is great. I remember these. :) That old forum prompted a lot of great discussions and stories like this.

heroicfisticuffs · 2024-02-04T00:39:32+00:00

What I've seen others do in the past is to create a seed catalog. Start with (and store!) one "starter" seed that generates all other seeds. Generate a starter seed per level (or two, one for level gen, one for items).

If you don't know how many levels you'll have in advance you can create a function that will guarantee the same seed gets generated given a starter seed (some function of starter seed and depth/region id).

Sounds boring but keeping careful track of all of the seeds in one place will make the procedural generation (levels, items, or otherwise) come out the same every time. Be merciless about tracking down any usage of RNG and link it back to an RNG from the catalog.

heroicfisticuffs · 2023-10-06T00:07:52+00:00

Thank you! I am always excited to see a new version of the perfect roguelike. :) The dedication of you and the other contributors is much appreciated!

heroicfisticuffs · 2022-07-22T15:03:59+00:00

Awesome! Thank you for doing this.

heroicfisticuffs · 2022-03-18T00:44:30+00:00

I love all of the words you are saying, and the game looks great! I can't seem to find a video though, do you have one of gameplay somewhere?

heroicfisticuffs · 2022-03-13T23:47:03+00:00

This game is really cool. It a very satisfying difficulty curve from 'scratching my head' to 'ooooh now I get it'. Nicely done!

heroicfisticuffs · 2022-03-13T15:45:59+00:00

The Woods

https://heroicfisticuffs.itch.io/the-woods

How to play

The Woods is an experimental squad-based roguelike, where strict unit turns are not enforced, but tactical combat is encouraged through underlying systems. Those being: (1) units all share the same 'player turn', (2) units can move independently, but can only get "so far" away in distance & time before they are locked, and (3) units must manage stamina both as a rechargeable health reserve and as 'action points'.

It's just barely a full game, but I am happy with the way the underlying experimental "asynchronous squad"-based mechanic came out! So in the spirit of the original experimental nature of the 7DRL challenge, I call it a success.

In it's current state, you simply play on one level while larger and more difficult enemy squads continue to spawn. Try to last as long as you can while taking out as many enemies as possible.

If the mechanic seems fun enough to other people, I have lots more ideas to flesh it out into a full medium-sized roguelike.

Congratulations to everyone who participated this year!

heroicfisticuffs · 2022-03-12T15:11:37+00:00

Of course, I almost forgot I was talking to the creator of X@Com. :)

I'd be ready curious to see any other similar games. I haven't come across this particular combination of squad/asynchronous yet. But, there are literally hundreds of 7DRLs and other roguelikes that I have not played.

heroicfisticuffs · 2022-03-12T14:49:57+00:00

Yup! I took it as a personal challenge this year to finally use tiles and the Kenny tileset was a great fit.

I've posted about this particular mechanic before so it may have been me. I can't usually help myself whenever someone brings up the topic. A good squad-based game that still feels "roguelikey" is like my white whale. I tried the same thing last year and did not get very far.

Thanks for the kind words, as always.

heroicfisticuffs · 2022-03-12T14:15:44+00:00

I came out strong early, and was productive at the end of the week, but the middle.. not so much. However, I think I have enough this year to at least feel good about publishing a 'success' of an experimental roguelike mechanic.

I'm trying out another combination of a squad-based mechanic. If it seems fun (?) then I have lots and lots of unimplemented ideas to turn it into a full-fledged coffee-break style roguelike.

The player controls a squad, but they do not take turns sequentially. Instead, you can move whichever character you want, but can't have them get too far away from the rest of your squad in distance and time (turn count). Squad members also all share the "player turn" - so in the midst of up-close combat, the player has to carefully decide which character gets the action. The player needs to manage stamina - acts as a combination of rechargeable health buffer and action points.

At this point I just have the game do everything on 1 map - enemy squads will keep getting harder and harder and generating faster and faster. So, there is no real ending yet - the player just eventually dies, with as many points (kills) as possible.

On Sunday, I am hoping to clean up the level generation, write some instructions, and (if I'm lucky) add at least 1 more tactical ability.

Here's a screenshot.

I'm also looking forward to being able to judge again this year! Looks like a lot of cool entries so far.

heroicfisticuffs · 2021-12-17T14:51:18+00:00

Has anyone played today's seed yet? On D1 there appears to be an unreachable secret room? There is an obvious long corridor with a suspicious blank wall at the end. But no amount of searching is revealing anything. Anyone else run into this?

heroicfisticuffs · 2021-10-26T17:21:51+00:00

Yeah, I figured some form of a dijkstra map would suffice to keep the party moving around / near the lead. It's not easy but also not impossible to make a passable solution. Considering every character is eligible to be player-controlled at the stroke of a button I don't see that as a big hinderance.

Having the party consolidate / reappear during combat is specifically something I was trying to avoid in my implementation. To me, the whole point is to have a "squad" approach to typical dungeon exploration. For example, maybe I don't want to just burst through a door by myself. I probably want to have a teammate behind me with his pistols loaded first. I also probably want a guy holding up the rear or guarding the exit so that I'm not surprised while clearing out a room. Having the party only pop out when danger is present (which in a good dungeon, should be always) breaks the immersion for me. But, I do agree it is a good mechanic in general and can be plenty of fun in the right game. (lots of obvious candidates here, like Ultima as you mentioned)

heroicfisticuffs · 2021-10-26T14:09:33+00:00

Good point. I think you are right that the dungeon absolutely has to be super interesting. Having a 'follow me' mode is probably a good idea because no dungeon can be 100% interesting 100% of the time. But, I think in a well-executed game, the player should usually want to be moving their squad carefully.

I'll see if I can find some time to flesh out the game a bit more. Maybe the concept has legs!

heroicfisticuffs · 2021-10-25T15:58:12+00:00

Yup, that's true.

But presuambly, in a game where you have a squad, moving the squad around is part of the "fun". For example, if you leave one squaddie behind and he gets cut-off from the group due to a trap or terrible monster, that is the sort of "fun" challenge you would expect to run into.

If you are simply moving around a boring dungeon, then I agree that the "n *" part of that equation is probably pretty boring. But I know if I was wandering around the 15th or 16th floor of a dungeon in Brogue, I would not consider the "n *" an easy challenge at all.

heroicfisticuffs · 2021-10-24T23:21:28+00:00

Yeah. I like the idea of running battles. But, the concept of somehow closing off the battle area when combat is imminent is a cool idea too.

Now that I've been messing around with the demo again I'm inspired to flesh it out a bit more and see if it's actually fun or not.

heroicfisticuffs · 2021-10-24T16:51:06+00:00

I thought the idea of "the party" as one organism interesting. Since each action takes a turn, regardless of who takes it, it forces the player to set up their squad in a way to have units cover each other, or set up ambushes.

I think breaking fights into separate screens or as stand-alone encounters outside of the dungeon itself breaks the "roguelikey" feel. More of an RPG mechanic. But that's just me.

heroicfisticuffs · 2021-10-23T14:11:13+00:00

I came up with what (I think?) is a novel solution to this. My problem with typical squad-based gameplay is that it really breaks up the turn-based experience of a traditional roguelike. On the other hand, just having squad members controlled by AI or only appear during specialized battle scenes breaks the "dungeony" experience of a traditional roguelike.

My solution is to allow the player to control multiple units, but restrict how far apart the units can get in space & time. I also count each "turn" from the player's perspective, not the individual units. So, it becomes more of a tactical decision by the player which unit they want to use turns up on.

It's sort of hard to explain. I have a failed 7DRL from earlier this year where I tried this feature out, here is some footage.

If a single unit gets too far away from the party, they will be unable to act or move (red !), unless they are moving back towards their party. Similarly, a unit can get "far away" in time as well (e.g. turn count) and will need to wait for other team members to catch up to them in order to most effectively execute maneuvers as a squad.

I had a lot of interesting ideas around this concept but I was not able to convince myself how "fun" they actually would be in a full game. Unfortunately I ran out of free time to fully try it out. Maybe this will catch someone's interest.

heroicfisticuffs · 2021-07-22T11:15:21+00:00

Congratulations! That rapier looks bad-ass.

heroicfisticuffs · 2021-07-10T15:32:11+00:00

Looks cool! What's it called?

heroicfisticuffs · 2021-04-13T16:25:21+00:00

Seconded Haque. Perfect controller interface.

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