Getting into DCSS a lot recently. Still just running Minotaur Berserker with the furthest I’ve made it being the 10th floor aha.
Regardless, really enjoying it and wondering if others have any other recommendations. I tried ToME4 and just felt overwhelmed and wasn’t enjoying myself too much.
Have my eyes of Caves of Qud as well. Love the more “literary” aspect to it (even though I know it’s often nonsense), and the atmosphere/setting. Seems to be highly regarded overall though. Wondering if I should buy it and play alongside DCSS.
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Hades 10outta10
COGMIND.
COGMIND COGMIND COGMIND.
Cogmind is legitimately the most underrated “real” roguelike around. Everyone knows about CDDA and Caves of Qud or whatever, I never see anyone talk about Cogmind. It’s such a rabbit hole both gameplay and actually story-wise (because yeah, it actually has a story, despite being a traditional roguelike) that I can’t help but wonder how the hell it’s developer keeps going.
They have a blog where they talk about the game. It’s borderline obsessive.
If I look at any one aspect of it closely I inevitably end up going “wait, what the hell?” because it goes farther than I expected. In-game computer terminals, the way word of your presence travels throughout the caverns you’re in, each tile actually being a 3x3 space which affects how much “cover” you have… playing for quite a few hours before meeting other truly sentient robots and realizing that oh, there’s, like, lore. A lot of it.
Okay, I’m sold.
Caves of Qud is AMAZING! You should buy it OP
I’ve enjoyed Slay the Spire and Wizard of Legend. The latter is very hard to beat at least for me.
Dead Cells is brilliant
Holy god, I never thought I’d see someone else mention DCSS in the wild!! I used to play that a bunch about a year or so ago. Truth be told, I kind of miss it once in a while. Devilishly hard, but I did manage to break into Hell once. Even killed one of the pandemonium lords.
Shit… I might start playing again.
It was updated recently!
I’ve very recently spent a close to a hundred hours on a single character on Caves of Qud, and I’ve hardly scratched the surface of what would be it’s endgame areas. If you can handle the interface it’s an incredible game with near endless possibilities. The build variety is pretty massive with the way mutations/cybernetics and skills/stats interact with each other, allowing you to build your characters exactly how you want.
Tales of Maj’Eyal is also an excellent choice with a huge variety of ways to play with it’s dozens of classes and a wide variety of races to play to keep things fresh each run. The world itself is static, but each zone itself is random per run, and it also has the ability to tune the difficulty a bit to your liking, as well as having a couple expansions to check out too (with another on the way).
Cogmind is another one I’ve put a decent amount of time into that has a ton of depth, allowing you to pick and choose what parts to strap onto your bot for each run. Stealth hacker runs, ranged artillery explosion builds, incredibly fast ninja melee builds, there’s a myriad of cool ways to experience all it has to offer.
These are all pretty in depth games, and the first 10-30 hours could easily be seen as your tutorial, so don’t be discouraged by being overwhelmed by things, and don’t be afraid to look things up if you need to!
Cogmind is what I mentioned too, the developer is borderline obsessive and somehow it never gets the attention that other roguelikes get. I’m always shocked to see that it’s still getting regular updates.
It’s a fantastic game, I was blown away at how much the game has to offer and always enjoy checking out the terminal lore and uncovering its mysteries. It fits nicely in among the greats, and I strongly agree that it’s criminally underrated!
I love the idea of these games, but I am terrible at them. I sat down with Dark Souls and played it until I got gud, but Caves and Tales and Dwarf Fortress all kick my ass. Even Dungeons of Dredmor, which I poured dozens of hours into and got pretty far in, would annihilate me before I got to the bottom floor. Any tips on how to not suck long enough to learn how to not suck?
All of the games you mentioned regularly destroy my characters and plans, but that’s part of the fun of them I think. Dwarf Fortress is one I haven’t put enough time into due to the sheer depth and confusion of learning everything, I do plan to revisit it when I’ve got the itch for a colony builder and want to fail horrifically.
For Caves of Qud and Tales, my best recommendation is to try out new things and builds and see what works. I had miserable luck in Caves with most of my melee focused builds, but using a ranged focused build (use your ammo semi sparingly until Grit Gate where you can buy 1k rounds per restock) was what got me further then ever before. There’s some abilities that help immensely with survival too, the Precognition mutation allows you to see the future and reset on a cooldown, even if you stumble into an unfortunate death for example. Also look at domination or proselytize/beguiling, as those will allow you to recruit or control other characters, even shopkeepers who you can then drop the full inventory on the ground for you to utilize (though be careful, failure may turn them against you). Using a zone tier map like the one found on the Qud wiki if you don’t mind knowing roughly how tough each over world area is also is a good way to avoid stumbling into an area you’re not prepared for.
Tome I have less advice for even after 100+ hours, I had a blast trying out all sorts of build combos, but a good way to get an idea of what builds work well is to check out https://te4.org/characters-vault and search for your difficulty and campaign, and filter it to only show winners. This will show you a list of characters who have cleared the game, and allow you to see what their exact build was upon winning, including stats, talent choices, gear, and a few other useful things. Having a zone order guide pulled up absolutely helps as well and is a decent way to get familiar with where to go when still starting out, especially if you want to see every zone the game has to offer.
Lastly, for Qud, ToME, and even Dredmor, don’t be afraid to turn on a difficulty that isn’t permadeath. I love the thought of only having one life, but for learning the game it’s never a bad thing to turn that off for your first run (or first few!), as it’ll allow you to retry the same scenarios with different approaches to see what works best. Qud I think does this the best with it’s Roleplay mode, checkpointing at settlements so you’re set back usually by dying, but you can still continue on to get a better understanding of all the game has to offer, making future runs that much smoother. Death is all part of the fun either way, sometimes you’ve taken a character to the point where it’s starting to feel stale and a new build can reinvigorate interest in wanting to continue exploring what the worlds have to offer!
DCSS is my usual recommendation but you’re already playing it.
Caves of Qud is phenomenal and you won’t regret playing it. If you have a phone, I’d highly recommend Shattered Pixel Dungeon. It may be one of the cleanest versions of the genre. It’s also available on PC, but I’ve never played it there.
Similarly, I think Hoplite on the phone may be the most distilled versions of the genre, pared down to the barest essentials and utterly glorious as a result.
If you like Hoplite try Pawnbarian
Ancient Domains of Mystery, but not the half 3D one.
ADOM
Dwarf Fortress adventure mode, coming to Steam eventually. Also available in older versions for free.
Dwarf Fortress
More Action: FTL, Spelunky, Angband, Barony
Ancient Domains of Mystery is really really good if you can get into it. It’s available on Steam, but you can get the free version which is identical except for the UI from https://adom.de/
The only one I know is Dead Cells. I could play it all day even though I’m awful haha.
I highly recommend OneBit Adventure. It is available on mobile and Steam. The last time I checked it is still in active development, So you will see new features and improvements frequently.
Ah, look at everyone recommending action roguelikes. The Berlin Interpretation is dead, long live the Berlin Interpretation! I’ll happily n’th Caves of Qud and Cogmind as amazing turn-based traditional roguelikes, and I’ll add to that pile the following lesser-known gems:
Some other notable traditional roguelikes which I think are less good than any of the six above but still worth playing, are:
The lack of Cogmind makes me mad.
Yeah nevermind, I just ignored it for some reason.
Where’s Zorbus?
It would make me mad too, which is why I already had it in the second line. 😋
Amazing, thanks very much for sharing this. Admittedly I was referring to the Berlin interpretation of a roguelike, so I very much appreciate such an extensive breakdown of some of your recommendations. Haven’t heard of a handful of these, will be checking them out with time!
Everspace 1 and 2 are both solid games if you like space exploration and ahooting!