100 Rogues - a sweet new roguelike for the iDevices
May 5, 2010 6:38 PM Subscribe
100 Rogues - a sweet new roguelike for the iDevices
Hi Metafilter! Just wanted to announce that my roguelike (which is sort of like an RPG, but with permadeath, randomly generated maps/loot, and it's entirely turn-based - think turn-based Diablo), 100 Rogues has been released on the App Store!. Here's the review from TouchArcade!
Some videos of "100 Rogues": How to Play, Crusader Preview, Short Preview. Our Facebook Page and our Twitter page.
Hi Metafilter! Just wanted to announce that my roguelike (which is sort of like an RPG, but with permadeath, randomly generated maps/loot, and it's entirely turn-based - think turn-based Diablo), 100 Rogues has been released on the App Store!. Here's the review from TouchArcade!
Some videos of "100 Rogues": How to Play, Crusader Preview, Short Preview. Our Facebook Page and our Twitter page.
This project was posted to MetaFilter by Artw on April 17, 2011: How many souls has the dungeon stole?
Hey! I don't own any of the devices you've released on, but I remember watching the demo videos way back when. It's a nice looking game you've got there.
Here's hoping that this is a big success and eventually gets ported to DS!
posted by 256 at 7:58 PM on May 5, 2010
Here's hoping that this is a big success and eventually gets ported to DS!
posted by 256 at 7:58 PM on May 5, 2010
I was a beta-tester for a little while (then my phone got stolen) so, congratulations!
posted by Memo at 8:14 PM on May 5, 2010
posted by Memo at 8:14 PM on May 5, 2010
This is one of those things that I would be playing no matter who made it, but I am especially happy it's a MeFite. Going to run home and steal the iTouch from my brother!
posted by yaymukund at 12:35 AM on May 6, 2010
posted by yaymukund at 12:35 AM on May 6, 2010
I just downloaded it. This game is a blast! Also, I really have to compliment you on the soundtrack. It makes me nostalgic for a game that I feel like I should have played even though it didn't exist.
posted by MidAtlantic at 9:34 AM on May 6, 2010
posted by MidAtlantic at 9:34 AM on May 6, 2010
This looks impressive. (Any plans to port it to PC and put it on Steam?)
posted by cog_nate at 11:28 AM on May 6, 2010
posted by cog_nate at 11:28 AM on May 6, 2010
No plans to port it *yet*, but I sure would love to!
posted by keithburgun at 12:11 PM on May 6, 2010
posted by keithburgun at 12:11 PM on May 6, 2010
I would also vote for a port of some form. It looks awesome.
posted by lizarrd at 9:26 AM on May 8, 2010
posted by lizarrd at 9:26 AM on May 8, 2010
This looks excellent and I'm so sad I don't have a compatible piece of hardware. I would buy a PC port in a heartbeat.
posted by magnificent frigatebird at 9:04 PM on May 8, 2010
posted by magnificent frigatebird at 9:04 PM on May 8, 2010
Me too magnificent frigatebird. Not having an iThing I can't even review it for @Play.
posted by JHarris at 1:15 AM on May 9, 2010
posted by JHarris at 1:15 AM on May 9, 2010
So, woo! I am liking this. I spent about a couple hours playing today, and overall it's good stuff. I'm reminded particularly of Shiren in the constrained instruction set and the overall graphical feel. I haven't spent enough time with it to get any real feel for whatever amount of complexity is laying under the surface but I look forward to getting further into that nitty gritty now that I'm feeling like I've got a decent handle on your basic not-dying.
Execution in general feels really solid, this is far more playable on my iPhone than is the Nethack port.
And so of course, things I can criticize at this point:
- Navigating the challenge stuff feels a little bit clunky. I've completed challenges one and three, tried and failed at number two, and am presuming that clearing all four will bring up a new screen of challenges but don't really have an explicit reason to expect that; I can guess that something like that will happen based on the "If you beat ten, you start with a bonus energy potion!" loading text I've seen a couple times, but don't really know!
- That finishing a challenge seems to leave me able to "continue" a new game that starts with that challenge character was confusing to me. It has also led to a quick ass-kicking both times I tried that out; I don't know if the intent is that you can use a Challenge character to jump into a somewhat-nastier game or what. It seems like a potentially interesting mechanic, but the lack of any guidance or prompting there is a little jarring.
- My finger isn't transparent, so I can't always easily see what's coming when I'm walking along (particularly left or right) except by doing a poke, move finger, return finger, poke... cycle. Not terrible, and I have no suggestion for how else to deal with this, but it's an interesting (and, at least until I get really used to it, annoying) result of the otherwise nicely intuitive tap-a-quadrant-to-walk control scheme.
- My finger is fat and sometimes repeatedly ends up tapping on my character to bring up the radial menu instead of e.g. clicking on the door I want to open or clicking on the nearby item I'd like to pick up. Again, not sure there's a great solution for this in general, but dealing with squares adjacent to my rogue can be a little muddy.
- And specifically on the door front: having "open door when trying to walk through a closed door" as an option might be nice and would probably kill most of the above annoyance.
- Inventory stuff can be a little weird when I'm trying to pick up stackable items in my quickslots but my inventory is full. I haven't really figured out exactly how this behavior works out, and I've been able to get by by clearing out a room and then doing some dropping and restacking and such at my leisure, but it'd be nice if the overall item-management behavior was a little slicker or clearer.
- Had a couple misc. crashes but nothing specific to report there. Also have had a couple moments where the game didn't crash but did seem to sort of freeze up for a few seconds, or semi-freeze up to the point where the game seemed responsive to interface input (checking character, etc) but I couldn't move my rogue at all.
- The skill tree reports 1 skill point when looking at it sometimes even though I have no available points. This seems to revert properly to 0 at some point, I haven't figured out if it's in response input or just a time thing. Confusing, esp. before I figured out that not every level yields a skill point.
- Automap is blank when first entering a level, even though it seems to populate the local area after the first step (or steps, or whatever, haven't pinned it down). Incredibly minor since it's basically mapping visible territory, but it's jarring every time I instinctively take a look at the map on a new level and it's just an empty red haze.
So there's a pile of little gripes. I want to emphasize that I'm really, really enjoying the game so far; I wouldn't bother with the feedback if I wasn't, but this is really a gem already and I look forward to seeing what happens with it as development continues. Really kick-ass work so far.
posted by cortex at 8:31 PM on May 9, 2010 [2 favorites]
Execution in general feels really solid, this is far more playable on my iPhone than is the Nethack port.
And so of course, things I can criticize at this point:
- Navigating the challenge stuff feels a little bit clunky. I've completed challenges one and three, tried and failed at number two, and am presuming that clearing all four will bring up a new screen of challenges but don't really have an explicit reason to expect that; I can guess that something like that will happen based on the "If you beat ten, you start with a bonus energy potion!" loading text I've seen a couple times, but don't really know!
- That finishing a challenge seems to leave me able to "continue" a new game that starts with that challenge character was confusing to me. It has also led to a quick ass-kicking both times I tried that out; I don't know if the intent is that you can use a Challenge character to jump into a somewhat-nastier game or what. It seems like a potentially interesting mechanic, but the lack of any guidance or prompting there is a little jarring.
- My finger isn't transparent, so I can't always easily see what's coming when I'm walking along (particularly left or right) except by doing a poke, move finger, return finger, poke... cycle. Not terrible, and I have no suggestion for how else to deal with this, but it's an interesting (and, at least until I get really used to it, annoying) result of the otherwise nicely intuitive tap-a-quadrant-to-walk control scheme.
- My finger is fat and sometimes repeatedly ends up tapping on my character to bring up the radial menu instead of e.g. clicking on the door I want to open or clicking on the nearby item I'd like to pick up. Again, not sure there's a great solution for this in general, but dealing with squares adjacent to my rogue can be a little muddy.
- And specifically on the door front: having "open door when trying to walk through a closed door" as an option might be nice and would probably kill most of the above annoyance.
- Inventory stuff can be a little weird when I'm trying to pick up stackable items in my quickslots but my inventory is full. I haven't really figured out exactly how this behavior works out, and I've been able to get by by clearing out a room and then doing some dropping and restacking and such at my leisure, but it'd be nice if the overall item-management behavior was a little slicker or clearer.
- Had a couple misc. crashes but nothing specific to report there. Also have had a couple moments where the game didn't crash but did seem to sort of freeze up for a few seconds, or semi-freeze up to the point where the game seemed responsive to interface input (checking character, etc) but I couldn't move my rogue at all.
- The skill tree reports 1 skill point when looking at it sometimes even though I have no available points. This seems to revert properly to 0 at some point, I haven't figured out if it's in response input or just a time thing. Confusing, esp. before I figured out that not every level yields a skill point.
- Automap is blank when first entering a level, even though it seems to populate the local area after the first step (or steps, or whatever, haven't pinned it down). Incredibly minor since it's basically mapping visible territory, but it's jarring every time I instinctively take a look at the map on a new level and it's just an empty red haze.
So there's a pile of little gripes. I want to emphasize that I'm really, really enjoying the game so far; I wouldn't bother with the feedback if I wasn't, but this is really a gem already and I look forward to seeing what happens with it as development continues. Really kick-ass work so far.
posted by cortex at 8:31 PM on May 9, 2010 [2 favorites]
Wow. I've been waiting for this since I saw it mentioned on TouchArcade a few weeks ago. I should have known something this awesome would have a MeFi connection.
posted by him at 1:22 AM on May 10, 2010
posted by him at 1:22 AM on May 10, 2010
cortex: There have been one or two new versions since the original post. If you haven't already updated you might want to have a look.
posted by JHarris at 3:44 AM on May 10, 2010
posted by JHarris at 3:44 AM on May 10, 2010
I've only done one playthrough at this point and haven't finished it yet (damn those flying babies), but my initial impression is that this is the best roguelike on the App Store at the moment. It doesn't feel like a port (which a lot of them do) and it's got a sense of humour (which a lot of them don't).
As with all roguelikes on a touchscreen, the control system is the biggest challenge. I like your quadrant touching better than Fargoal's constant swiping, but as cortex pointed out, there are still visibility issues. It'd be great to get diagonal movement as well, if you're compiling a 1.1 wishlist.
Great work, though. My new favourite iPod game.
posted by him at 4:57 AM on May 10, 2010
As with all roguelikes on a touchscreen, the control system is the biggest challenge. I like your quadrant touching better than Fargoal's constant swiping, but as cortex pointed out, there are still visibility issues. It'd be great to get diagonal movement as well, if you're compiling a 1.1 wishlist.
Great work, though. My new favourite iPod game.
posted by him at 4:57 AM on May 10, 2010
Looks great. I'll give it a go. I deleted the two serviceable nethack ports from my iPhone as the controls just drove me crazy so I need some rogue-like fix.
I'm never sure if I'm spelling "rogue" correctly.
posted by chairface at 1:26 PM on May 10, 2010
I'm never sure if I'm spelling "rogue" correctly.
posted by chairface at 1:26 PM on May 10, 2010
Just grabbed an update. Either the autodoor thing got added (yay!) or I just failed at triggering it before; and my report about a misreported 1 skillpoint is actually me failing to parse negative space on the thin font's 0 character. Oops.
Current playthrough dishing out better item variety too, but that may well just be chance.
posted by cortex at 5:31 PM on May 10, 2010
Current playthrough dishing out better item variety too, but that may well just be chance.
posted by cortex at 5:31 PM on May 10, 2010
Bought and played. I love it. I would like some text so I know what's what as the game goes on but I understand screen constraints guide the design.
I think the Bandits should be call "Cowbolds" since they are clearly cowboy kobolds. I would also like to see a thief class but that would involve adding traps, locks, secret doors, stealth, etc; plus rerolling the prerendered content like the splash screen & intro movies.
Love it love it love it!
posted by chairface at 11:12 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]
I think the Bandits should be call "Cowbolds" since they are clearly cowboy kobolds. I would also like to see a thief class but that would involve adding traps, locks, secret doors, stealth, etc; plus rerolling the prerendered content like the splash screen & intro movies.
Love it love it love it!
posted by chairface at 11:12 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]
Actually the first roguelike I've ever played and guess what I learned? I like roguelikes way better then RPG's. Who knew resource management was way more compelling than rock paper scissors? I really like the sense of humor in the flavor text. It is crashing occasionally, but so does every other iGame I have. And this one actually saves where I am when it crashes so yeah.
posted by edbles at 11:08 AM on May 15, 2010
posted by edbles at 11:08 AM on May 15, 2010
Today, I fought the boss on level five, and was really confused about the whole thing until I figured out that I had to target a square off to the side of him.
posted by cortex at 11:30 AM on May 15, 2010
posted by cortex at 11:30 AM on May 15, 2010
I really like this game overall; I've been wanting a rougelike for the iPhone and this is way better than I would have settled for. :-) Thanks so much!
My only issue is that I seem to have trouble sometimes with accidentally moving toward a creature when I intend to wand it from afar; I've actually gotten a few game overs because of this. I've tried to be very precise about tapping the monster itself and I have tiny girlish fingers, but it seems pretty hit or miss whether I move or wand the monster. I'm not sure how easy that is to fix, but it does make things frustrating sometimes. I would be happy if I just had a ranged button I could toggle before tapping the monster, so that it would know I'm not trying to move.
Also, when it does crash, it doesn't save anything since the last time I loaded a new level; not sure if that's just me or edbles's crashes have been luckier or what.
posted by Nattie at 12:22 PM on June 19, 2010
My only issue is that I seem to have trouble sometimes with accidentally moving toward a creature when I intend to wand it from afar; I've actually gotten a few game overs because of this. I've tried to be very precise about tapping the monster itself and I have tiny girlish fingers, but it seems pretty hit or miss whether I move or wand the monster. I'm not sure how easy that is to fix, but it does make things frustrating sometimes. I would be happy if I just had a ranged button I could toggle before tapping the monster, so that it would know I'm not trying to move.
Also, when it does crash, it doesn't save anything since the last time I loaded a new level; not sure if that's just me or edbles's crashes have been luckier or what.
posted by Nattie at 12:22 PM on June 19, 2010
I may just have terrible memory and was just noticing the lack of complete restarts.
posted by edbles at 3:04 PM on June 19, 2010
posted by edbles at 3:04 PM on June 19, 2010
I love this game apart from all the terrible bugs - any word on if fixes are on the way?
posted by Artw at 7:37 PM on July 10, 2010
posted by Artw at 7:37 PM on July 10, 2010
I'm just here to say that I love 100 Rogues and that it was worth both my time and money.
That is all.
posted by gc at 9:15 AM on April 17, 2011
That is all.
posted by gc at 9:15 AM on April 17, 2011
...and a lot more stable now (I'd forgotten my comment above).
posted by Artw at 10:00 AM on April 17, 2011
posted by Artw at 10:00 AM on April 17, 2011
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posted by keithburgun at 7:00 PM on May 5, 2010