I know, I know. We had a million threads on "recommend me...", "what are the best..." and there are even a few threads about ToME itself, but what I'd like to go into based on the example of ToME, is an actual discussion about the actual features/mechanics and why it just.. works. I'd love to read your take on your favourite Roguelikes too btw, so let me know and write something if and why you feel strongly about a classic Roguelike that is actually "like rogue" (Not necessarily ASCII however):
I love FTL and Rogue Legacy like everyone else, but due to the core PC scene booming in the free sector during the 90's and some years after (Angband and its variants mainly) and their huge ASCII focus, these games never quite got the commercial or widespread success they deserved. Sure, there were some games here and there having decent success (Shiren series), but even after 20 years of niche popularity, these games still dont often get a spotlight, lately only because of RPG or Action hybrids like FTL and Rogue Legacy. So lets put these, admittedly fantastic, games aside for a second and talk about the appeal of the "classic" roguelike and why the hell I wanted to make this thread now.
Interesting Quote to start this thread off:
Considering the originality and massive amount of variety or features of the genre at any given point in gaming history, I am slightly flabbergasted that traditional roguelikes never took off. Huge worlds to explore or endless dungeons to conquer, massive amounts of enchanted (Diablo Style) loot, unexpected encounters, deep skill sets and diverse items to combine to use to conquer any given situation, a genre that is waaaaay easier and cheaper to work on than a 100 million 3D blockbuster shooter, the threat of permadeath and deriving game mechanics, and more. These games really should be more popular, and as the rising popularity of the hybrids shows, these design decisions actually can be appealing to a big group of gamers. I can only assume that the initial rejection of classic roguelikes had more to do with people not even touching those games (Yikes, ASCII!) instead of people not liking them after they tried one. That and an aversion for Permadeath.
Not everyone needs to like Ascii, that is a perfectly fine reason to not play a game in my opinion, but especially the Permadeath structure opens up for a game structure that is not found as pronounced in any other genre popular these days.Sure, you dont need to like that either, but people avoiding those games are missing out on a completely different game experience compared to other genres. Nonetheless, some games even offer additional game modes to alleviate those concerns entirely, and I was very surprised to see how GOOD Tales of Maj'Eyal is at easing players into that world, while still offering a huge amount of depth and content, which led me to creating this thread to share my impressions with you.
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Let me tell you some tales of a continent named Maj'Eyal
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Website Link: http://te4.org/
Steam Link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/259680
Price: Free for the basic version on the website, or 6 for the Deluxe version on Steam/Desura/whatever
Genre: Real Deal Roguelike
By now, you should have a vague idea what this game is, just based on the notion of it being a roguelike. You create your character, defeat monsters, collect loot and level up your skills to develop yourself into a turn based bringer of death. However, even within that genre there can be a huge gap between different games based on the general approach they were taking and Tales of Maj'Eyal made me think about why this game works so incredibly well compared to its cousins, so lets dive in.
1. Free, Accessibility, Mouse Controls, Graphics & UI!
ToME has proper graphics, basic animations, smart mouse over information for everything (items, skills, terrain..) and even mouse controls. Even though I dont have any issue with ASCII roguelikes, having a deep roguelike build around accessibility is still incredible refreshing. No need to dig through millions of menues. Technically, you could fully play the game with just the mouse, and even though using a combination of mouse and keyboard is more useful, it is still rather impressive considering the roots of the game.
Additionally, the game is one of the very few roguelikes which actually contains an fully realized optional tutorial, teaching the player how to move, use skills, collect items and fight. Not everybody is a fan of tutorials and so its good that its optional, but all of this makes sure that this is as accessible as it could possibly be, while still maintaining the depth of the game systems, meaning everyone should be able to dip his toes into game.
Oh and its free, no excuses!
2. Difficulty/Difficulty adjustment!
However, even if the game is hard, its rarely unfair. If you die, you were either not careful or not prepared enough and even a newcomer to the genre can play this game because every death will prepare you for similar situations on your next run.
3. Content and Game Modes!
Speaking of additional challenges, if you manage to finish the main campaign, you arent just restricted to replaying the main campaign over and over again. I don't want to spoil them here, but there are 2 more modes you can unlock in the main campaign that will allow you prove your skills in a variety of other ways. I cant remember many other Roguelikes, which offer those different gameplay variants (even though Dwarf Fortress comes to mind obviously), making this a very interesting addition for a longlasting appeal.
4. Persistent World, Dungeon Randomization and level styles!
The dungeons themselves however, are incredibly smartly put together and never feel like a collection of rooms or set pieces, which is an issue I have with some of the modern Roguelikes. Since these are relating to the different areas of the world map, they are also designed to look the part when you enter them, while also differentiating in how you will need to approach them based on their individual layouts. Icy mountains, forests, mountain caverns, sand caves, space-time warps and more. The first area you get into could be a forest, and forests rarely have concrete boundaries, dont they? You'll need to deal with lots of loop holes and stray trees there, whereas dwarven caverns have a very rigid structure with long halls, giving each dungeon a small touch of "identity" in itself.
5. Quest, Events and Lore!
What I do like currently though, is the good amount of diary entries and lore spread throughout the game as random drops and descriptions. Not quite comparable to the massive amount of generated lore that Dwarf Fortress produces, but I enjoyed reading through the diary entries of an expedition challenging a certain dungeon for example.
6. Ingame progression, skills & loot!
7. Meta progression, unlockables & player skill!
Part of this is inherent to Roguelike game design, which focusses a lot on learning the ins and outs of every game mechanic (which I absolutely love <3). You can usually play these games and still doing fine while not learning how to perfectly use every single game system. You die, learn how to prepare for certain situations and therefore improve your own skill of playing the game. This game has 2 more aspects which play into that though, a persistent map and overall unlockables. Having a persistent map might not be to everyones taste, but it plays nicely into how much you can learn about this game. The way you approach the map, where you can find certain goodies and learning the secrets of the overall world layout.
On top of that, you can unlock more races, character classes and skill trees, which also give you a steady stream of unlocks over dozens of hours, making this a successful way of offering progress over across multiple play sessions and dozens of hours.
8. Achievements!
9. Press Y (or Z) for AWESOME!
I am not a friend of "win"-buttons, but Y is pure awesome. ToME is accessible, but once you learned how to play the game, Y offers an option to shortcut most movement in a dungeon until you meet another enemy. This doesnt make the game any easier, but cuts down the time until your next encounter drastically, making me wonder why not every Roguelike has this feature. So, so, sooo good. Its a small thing, but actually one of the biggest reasons why I keep playing this roguelike instead of any other. Quick to get into the action, plenty of depth, a neverending amount of content and a big variety of gameplay styles.
10. Still in Development & fully moddable!
So there you have it: accessibility, depth and an almost endless amount of content. A game that is easy to learn, yet almost impossible to master in a genre that undeservedly doesnt get as much attention as it should and I dont think I ever saw a more "complete" package in the genre than this game. Considering the quality and that the game is FREE, only 250 active players at any given time is quite disappointing. Check out this game if you haven't yet, play some more if you already checked it out and if you have any other traditional Roguelike that is fascinating you as much as ToME fascinated me, let us know why!
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Some quick play hints
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. If you are somewhat new to the genre, start with a warrior.
2. Use the mouse cursor to hover over spotted enemies to check their skills and level.
3. Not every dungeon you can access can be beaten at your current character level.
4. Check all start areas for the different races, and always play these dungeons first in any playthrough.
5. Make sure to always have a skill to quickly get far, far away (teleport, walk through walls..)
6. If you want to unlock more classes/skills/features, visit all the optional dungeons.
7. If the game tells you to be afraid, then... be afraid.
I love FTL and Rogue Legacy like everyone else, but due to the core PC scene booming in the free sector during the 90's and some years after (Angband and its variants mainly) and their huge ASCII focus, these games never quite got the commercial or widespread success they deserved. Sure, there were some games here and there having decent success (Shiren series), but even after 20 years of niche popularity, these games still dont often get a spotlight, lately only because of RPG or Action hybrids like FTL and Rogue Legacy. So lets put these, admittedly fantastic, games aside for a second and talk about the appeal of the "classic" roguelike and why the hell I wanted to make this thread now.
Interesting Quote to start this thread off:
Daniel Cook said:
Considering the originality and massive amount of variety or features of the genre at any given point in gaming history, I am slightly flabbergasted that traditional roguelikes never took off. Huge worlds to explore or endless dungeons to conquer, massive amounts of enchanted (Diablo Style) loot, unexpected encounters, deep skill sets and diverse items to combine to use to conquer any given situation, a genre that is waaaaay easier and cheaper to work on than a 100 million 3D blockbuster shooter, the threat of permadeath and deriving game mechanics, and more. These games really should be more popular, and as the rising popularity of the hybrids shows, these design decisions actually can be appealing to a big group of gamers. I can only assume that the initial rejection of classic roguelikes had more to do with people not even touching those games (Yikes, ASCII!) instead of people not liking them after they tried one. That and an aversion for Permadeath.
Not everyone needs to like Ascii, that is a perfectly fine reason to not play a game in my opinion, but especially the Permadeath structure opens up for a game structure that is not found as pronounced in any other genre popular these days.Sure, you dont need to like that either, but people avoiding those games are missing out on a completely different game experience compared to other genres. Nonetheless, some games even offer additional game modes to alleviate those concerns entirely, and I was very surprised to see how GOOD Tales of Maj'Eyal is at easing players into that world, while still offering a huge amount of depth and content, which led me to creating this thread to share my impressions with you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let me tell you some tales of a continent named Maj'Eyal
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Website Link: http://te4.org/
Steam Link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/259680
Price: Free for the basic version on the website, or 6 for the Deluxe version on Steam/Desura/whatever
Genre: Real Deal Roguelike
By now, you should have a vague idea what this game is, just based on the notion of it being a roguelike. You create your character, defeat monsters, collect loot and level up your skills to develop yourself into a turn based bringer of death. However, even within that genre there can be a huge gap between different games based on the general approach they were taking and Tales of Maj'Eyal made me think about why this game works so incredibly well compared to its cousins, so lets dive in.
1. Free, Accessibility, Mouse Controls, Graphics & UI!
The biggest hurdle these games usually need to deal with is to actually be played. The perception might have shifted a bit on that during the past few years, but when asking people about their opinion on Roguelikes, I often got a reply which contains something along the lines of "I cant deal with ASCII". I understand where this perception is coming from (Angband and friends), but no one needs to deal with ASCII if they want to play a roguelike. Many Ascii based roguelikes even have optional tilesets that you can use (see Dwarf Fortress), not to mention there are quite a few good graphical roguelikes as well (Dungeons of Dredmor, Sword of the Stars: The Pit).
ToME has proper graphics, basic animations, smart mouse over information for everything (items, skills, terrain..) and even mouse controls. Even though I dont have any issue with ASCII roguelikes, having a deep roguelike build around accessibility is still incredible refreshing. No need to dig through millions of menues. Technically, you could fully play the game with just the mouse, and even though using a combination of mouse and keyboard is more useful, it is still rather impressive considering the roots of the game.
Additionally, the game is one of the very few roguelikes which actually contains an fully realized optional tutorial, teaching the player how to move, use skills, collect items and fight. Not everybody is a fan of tutorials and so its good that its optional, but all of this makes sure that this is as accessible as it could possibly be, while still maintaining the depth of the game systems, meaning everyone should be able to dip his toes into game.
Oh and its free, no excuses!
2. Difficulty/Difficulty adjustment!
The game is hard, and certainly embraces the genre inherent ideology of "Losing is fun". You will likely die eventually, but to ease you into the experience, the game has a way less punishing easy mode (which will deactivate achievements though) and a plethora of options to make your live harder than normal. I played the game on normal for 50-60 hours and I am still sticking to that difficulty level because the game eventually kicks me in the nuts. If I ever felt confident enough, there are 3 increasingly more difficulty levels to raise the stakes.
However, even if the game is hard, its rarely unfair. If you die, you were either not careful or not prepared enough and even a newcomer to the genre can play this game because every death will prepare you for similar situations on your next run.
3. Content and Game Modes!
Speaking of additional challenges, if you manage to finish the main campaign, you arent just restricted to replaying the main campaign over and over again. I don't want to spoil them here, but there are 2 more modes you can unlock in the main campaign that will allow you prove your skills in a variety of other ways. I cant remember many other Roguelikes, which offer those different gameplay variants (even though Dwarf Fortress comes to mind obviously), making this a very interesting addition for a longlasting appeal.
4. Persistent World, Dungeon Randomization and level styles!
This is a bit more dependant on personal taste, but ToME generally has a persistent overworld with some set main dungeons that have randomized content and a few random events/extra dungeons that wont pop up during every playthrough, which is... interesting. Compared to games like Dungeons of Dredmor, which only focus on the dungeons themselves, having an overworld at all makes a huge difference for making a game actually come to live. Traversing mountains, defeating bosses in dungeons that were harassing neighbouring villages and just generally the feeling of taking on all the Evil that is harassing the world. However, I am usually used to that being an actual randomized world layout as well in other roguelikes. Even though this might sound negative at first, this structure allows the game to be very meticulously balanced for the progression of each character and which dungeons you should tackle. I'll go into that a bit more in 7. Meta progression.
The dungeons themselves however, are incredibly smartly put together and never feel like a collection of rooms or set pieces, which is an issue I have with some of the modern Roguelikes. Since these are relating to the different areas of the world map, they are also designed to look the part when you enter them, while also differentiating in how you will need to approach them based on their individual layouts. Icy mountains, forests, mountain caverns, sand caves, space-time warps and more. The first area you get into could be a forest, and forests rarely have concrete boundaries, dont they? You'll need to deal with lots of loop holes and stray trees there, whereas dwarven caverns have a very rigid structure with long halls, giving each dungeon a small touch of "identity" in itself.
5. Quest, Events and Lore!
This part is still massively lacking, but compared to other entries in the genre, ToME gets a bonus for having it at all. You have a small number of quests and events that you can take on, unfortunately, those get repeated quite a lot (characters wanting to be escorted to the exit, arena fights, collect monster items to brew potions), but they still offer a way of giving players some extra tasks that they WILL want to take on for their quite significant rewards. I wish these were more varied and more randomized with different type of quests that you might need to fulfill, but its still good to have them in at all, hoping that the dev will eventually expand on that aspect of the game.
What I do like currently though, is the good amount of diary entries and lore spread throughout the game as random drops and descriptions. Not quite comparable to the massive amount of generated lore that Dwarf Fortress produces, but I enjoyed reading through the diary entries of an expedition challenging a certain dungeon for example.
6. Ingame progression, skills & loot!
One thing this game absolutely nails, is the feeling of character progression. You start out with a simple set of skills, which should be manageable even for beginners of the genre, though I should mention that some classes are inherently easier to learn than others (like the warrior), and then gradually develop your possibilities and flexibility to any given situation. The way that items and their powers scale up during a playthrough (or add completely bonkers abilities in the second half of the main campaign) and every single skill being a very noticeable bump in your fighting powers, makes for one of the most rewarding progression curves I've ever had in any game. Basically every playthrough gives me several awesome items that I am really glad about. Sure, some items repeat themselves after a few playthroughs, but the randomized stats mean that there is always room for improvement or surprises. All character classes also feel fundamentally different and by allowing different skill combinations you always feel like you are in control of planning your own survival, once you got a grasp on a certain character class. This also marks a big difference to many other Roguelikes with a rare amount of tactical possibilities that you always have at your disposal, compared to Roguelikes which more focus on the proper usage of single use items, allowing for a reliable planning of the combat strategy.
7. Meta progression, unlockables & player skill!
Part of this is inherent to Roguelike game design, which focusses a lot on learning the ins and outs of every game mechanic (which I absolutely love <3). You can usually play these games and still doing fine while not learning how to perfectly use every single game system. You die, learn how to prepare for certain situations and therefore improve your own skill of playing the game. This game has 2 more aspects which play into that though, a persistent map and overall unlockables. Having a persistent map might not be to everyones taste, but it plays nicely into how much you can learn about this game. The way you approach the map, where you can find certain goodies and learning the secrets of the overall world layout.
On top of that, you can unlock more races, character classes and skill trees, which also give you a steady stream of unlocks over dozens of hours, making this a successful way of offering progress over across multiple play sessions and dozens of hours.
8. Achievements!
You see that right. One thousand, three hundred and six achievements currently. If you need a game to keep you busy for an undefined amount of time, this game not only offers content, but also challenges via achievements, TONS of them.
9. Press Y (or Z) for AWESOME!
I am not a friend of "win"-buttons, but Y is pure awesome. ToME is accessible, but once you learned how to play the game, Y offers an option to shortcut most movement in a dungeon until you meet another enemy. This doesnt make the game any easier, but cuts down the time until your next encounter drastically, making me wonder why not every Roguelike has this feature. So, so, sooo good. Its a small thing, but actually one of the biggest reasons why I keep playing this roguelike instead of any other. Quick to get into the action, plenty of depth, a neverending amount of content and a big variety of gameplay styles.
10. Still in Development & fully moddable!
Pretty self-explanatory, but there are not exactly many Roguelikes that are already in development for years, still getting updates and being fully moddable. If you are ever bored of the standard selection, you can still look into a plethora of more classes and races to spice up your live in Maj'Eyal.
So there you have it: accessibility, depth and an almost endless amount of content. A game that is easy to learn, yet almost impossible to master in a genre that undeservedly doesnt get as much attention as it should and I dont think I ever saw a more "complete" package in the genre than this game. Considering the quality and that the game is FREE, only 250 active players at any given time is quite disappointing. Check out this game if you haven't yet, play some more if you already checked it out and if you have any other traditional Roguelike that is fascinating you as much as ToME fascinated me, let us know why!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some quick play hints
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. If you are somewhat new to the genre, start with a warrior.
2. Use the mouse cursor to hover over spotted enemies to check their skills and level.
3. Not every dungeon you can access can be beaten at your current character level.
4. Check all start areas for the different races, and always play these dungeons first in any playthrough.
5. Make sure to always have a skill to quickly get far, far away (teleport, walk through walls..)
6. If you want to unlock more classes/skills/features, visit all the optional dungeons.
7. If the game tells you to be afraid, then... be afraid.
