UncleYar
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
 
 
Defeat scammer impersonators, check people's Steam permalink before trading keys. Mine is https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198014383949
Favoriete spel
Do you really know roguelikes?
A few turn-based roguelikes popped up recently on Steam and I see a lot of reviews mention things like "this roguelike is unique and different because it is turn-based". This can't but make me smile because, see, I was a fan of roguelikes before they became all the rage on Steam and before it was cool (yes, I'm a hipster :P).

And here's the part that I find funny: the original Rogue [www.roguebasin.com] and all classic Rogue-likes are all turn-based! The first game to translate the Rogue concepts of "randomly generated levels" and "randomly generated items you sometimes need to identify" into real-time was Diablo and its imitators, which strangely were not called roguelikes. The current wave which this time carried the name started with Spelunky. Here's a nice recap of roguelike history: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-gateway-guide-to-roguelikes

My best roguelikes before the whole craze started on Steam were (and still are):
- Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup [crawl.develz.org] (great balance, incredible content, great UI for advanced players)
- DoomRL [drl.chaosforge.org] (smooth play, feels like Doom despite the turns!)
- Nethack [www.nethack.org] (crazy interactions between all the game mechanics)
- IVAN [attnam.com] (horribly hard and funny: dismemberment, silly transformations)
- BRogue [sites.google.com] (cool dungeons, close to the simplicity of the original Rogue)

Classic-style roguelikes are starting to get on Steam, too:
- Jupiter Hell - spiritual successor of DoomRL with actual graphics! It's very good, although the original has some extra features such as destructible walls.
- Ananias - clean, stripped down design, great if you want something less intimidatingly complex to get into the genre.
- TOME - I can vouch for this one, it's fun and insanely complex but deviates somewhat from the formula, with the ID game gone and a static overworld.
- ADOM - great reputation, but I've not played it yet.
- Caves of Qud - up and coming and very popular, not tried yet.
- Cogmind - sci-fi, you play a robot that can replace its parts. Deviates a lot from the classic formula, but fun with better than average UI and slick looks.
- Dungeons of Dredmor - way too grindy for my taste, and crafting overload, but you might like the insane humor and classes.
- Golden Krone Hotel - vampire roguelike with mechanics based around light and transformations. Had a hard time getting into this one, want to try again.

So if you like the idea of a turn-based roguelike, just dive in! You're sure to find your match. There are thousands of hours of fun waiting.

More roguelikes in the traditional turn-based fashion are being made all the time and there's even an annual "7-day roguelike" coding competition.
Here's a good site to follow new releases and explore the existing ones: http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
By theme: http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=List_of_Roguelikes_by_Theme
Recensieshowcase
The successor to 2004's free and fun People's Tactics[www.vrdesigns.net]. (The latter is still playable even on Win10 by the way, and despite a bad UI can serve as a good intro to the concepts in this game, which has very arid tutorials.)

Advanced Tactics is a deep and unique wargame engine with an emphasis on supply and chain of command. You get to obtain resources from strategic points on the map, build your own units, organize them in formations, assign them to an HQ and send them to the front. It has a lot of included scenarios, but it's great fun to just generate a random map (use the "A New Dawn" mode to get the latest ruleset) and fight against the competent AI.

There's a scenario bank[www.vrdesigns.net] run by author available online, though be aware that not all scenarios on there are using the rules from the latest version of the game (but they should still run), and that not all of them are playable by the AI - you'll need to find opponents on the Matrix Games forum. Some of these mods are truly on an insane scale[www.vrdesigns.net].

The only things I feel it's missing is a long fictional campaign like in People's Tactics (sometimes I don't feel like playing historical stuff) and the ability to play in a window.

Caveat: the AI is competent on land (though not a challenge to very experienced players or if you exploit every flaw) but is game-breakingly bad on water. Maps with a lot of water are better played against humans. The AI does use transports and will attempt to use other naval units but will make very weird attacks where it has no chance to win, and doesn't know how to use carriers at all. If it is landlocked, it will waste a lot of time fortifying it's starting island before it starts sending transports to nearby islands, by which point it will be at a severe resource disadvantage. You'll also get quite a bit of immersion-breaking as it ignores unclaimed islands with Raw and Oil resources nearby, but that's because the AI has unlimited amounts of those resources to keep it simpler. IMO it should at least seize those to deny them to the player.

Technical downsides:
- The game insists on requiring admin rights on startup, likely for some custom DRM/key validation scheme. Bad from a security point of view and could be annoying for various use cases such as remote play. I can't remember another game that does that from my massive library.
- No windowed mode, no real way to play the game on a second screen.
- Loud sound effects with little control over the volume.
Harry 30 jun 2021 om 16:25 
Good to have you back Yar. Yeah, that hacker business was hellish. Tripled up with security, and even added family View, so hopefully it won't happen to me again. Not that Steam were any help. They never even answered my ticket! Anyway, hope you're doing well during this craxzy coivd time :cozybethesda::flyinghappy:
Tronedor 10 jul 2020 om 10:24 
Hope you have a great weekend!
Tronedor 10 jul 2020 om 10:24 
Hope you have a great weekend!
Aevoa 31 okt 2019 om 13:01 
👻👻 have a VERY spooky Halloween!! 👻👻 :eradtriangle:
Aevoa 14 sep 2019 om 14:49 
Have a nice weekend :eradtriangle:
Stefneh 1 jul 2019 om 12:01 
+rep good trader :)