X
this green x might not look too menacing to you, but beware, it's a tentaculated monstrosity (ahhh run for your lives!!)
this post is a pc game review and the game i'm talking about is a neat little rpg called dungeon crawl (now that's a rpgish name, don't you think?). most of you are familiar with that new type of gamer that only thinks about the visuals of a game and not the actual feeling or gameplay (that essential thing that can't be described by the number of polygons or the color depth). i lived in the same room with such a guy for 5 months and it is very annoying. you can show him real games like doom, ufo, full throttle, tie fighter, stunts, jazz jackrabbit 1 :p and he'll only shrug with disgust and say "oh but it has so shitty graphics!" and then go back to play need for speed 17 (or whichever is the last one). so if you are like that dungeon crawl is not for you (unless you find ascii attractive).
the goal is simple (and also very rpgish) descend deep into a mosnter-filled dungeon and recover the orb of zot! as with most rpgs you first create a character (choose your race and profession) and pick some starting equipement. the entire graphics of the game is done in ascii!! you are shown the layout of the rooms from an over the top perspective (viewing it under normal incidence) and both your character and the occupants of the rooms are represented by colored ascii caracters, eg: @ (your character), o (orc fighter), o (orc priest), o (orc champion), O (ogre), X (tentaculated monstrosity -ahhh run! hans, run!!). as in most rpgs you are awarded xp and advance levels, but also using a skill automaticaly trains you in that skill - much like in elder scrolls 3:morrowind- so using a sword several times in combat will increase your swordfighting skills. there are many neat things in the game, but i'll let you discover them by yourselves - i once found a scroll that summoned a host of colored butterflies, utterly useless, but quite spectacular.
besides your race and profession you can also choose a god to worship. different gods demand different tasks to be performed by their followers. i chose makleb, the blood good, and praying to him while in combat gave me an increased strength and berserker rage and i was healed every time i killed a monster - "ahhhh! blood for the blood god!!", ups, this is from warhammer, sorry khorne :p. (other gods may ask of you to destroy undeads or infernals, or to refrain from using magic or to sacrifice valuable items on their altars). upsetting your god can result in your his servants attacking your or even in your banishment to the abyss (you are so toast!).
the game is rather challenging and retrieving the orb is not an easy task. playing with a straitforward fighter is difficult enough, but for a greater challenge you may try a spriggan assassin or a ghoul ice elementalist (yup, you can even do that!)
good luck to you all, and don't forget to identify that black viscous potion before you drink it!
this green x might not look too menacing to you, but beware, it's a tentaculated monstrosity (ahhh run for your lives!!)
this post is a pc game review and the game i'm talking about is a neat little rpg called dungeon crawl (now that's a rpgish name, don't you think?). most of you are familiar with that new type of gamer that only thinks about the visuals of a game and not the actual feeling or gameplay (that essential thing that can't be described by the number of polygons or the color depth). i lived in the same room with such a guy for 5 months and it is very annoying. you can show him real games like doom, ufo, full throttle, tie fighter, stunts, jazz jackrabbit 1 :p and he'll only shrug with disgust and say "oh but it has so shitty graphics!" and then go back to play need for speed 17 (or whichever is the last one). so if you are like that dungeon crawl is not for you (unless you find ascii attractive).
the goal is simple (and also very rpgish) descend deep into a mosnter-filled dungeon and recover the orb of zot! as with most rpgs you first create a character (choose your race and profession) and pick some starting equipement. the entire graphics of the game is done in ascii!! you are shown the layout of the rooms from an over the top perspective (viewing it under normal incidence) and both your character and the occupants of the rooms are represented by colored ascii caracters, eg: @ (your character), o (orc fighter), o (orc priest), o (orc champion), O (ogre), X (tentaculated monstrosity -ahhh run! hans, run!!). as in most rpgs you are awarded xp and advance levels, but also using a skill automaticaly trains you in that skill - much like in elder scrolls 3:morrowind- so using a sword several times in combat will increase your swordfighting skills. there are many neat things in the game, but i'll let you discover them by yourselves - i once found a scroll that summoned a host of colored butterflies, utterly useless, but quite spectacular.
besides your race and profession you can also choose a god to worship. different gods demand different tasks to be performed by their followers. i chose makleb, the blood good, and praying to him while in combat gave me an increased strength and berserker rage and i was healed every time i killed a monster - "ahhhh! blood for the blood god!!", ups, this is from warhammer, sorry khorne :p. (other gods may ask of you to destroy undeads or infernals, or to refrain from using magic or to sacrifice valuable items on their altars). upsetting your god can result in your his servants attacking your or even in your banishment to the abyss (you are so toast!).
the game is rather challenging and retrieving the orb is not an easy task. playing with a straitforward fighter is difficult enough, but for a greater challenge you may try a spriggan assassin or a ghoul ice elementalist (yup, you can even do that!)
good luck to you all, and don't forget to identify that black viscous potion before you drink it!
3 comments:
Now that you mention it I'm making an opensource gamecollection. Shame on me for leaving DC out. The father of all RPGs. Shame on morrowind/oblivion for copiing DC :)
On the origins of RPG-like computer-games:
The first game in the style of DC was called Rogue: http://www.wichman.org/roguehistory.html
ref:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.rogue
http://groups.google.com/groups/dir?q=rec.games.roguelike
The ancestor of all RPG-like computer games was Adventure (http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/). It had no (ASCII) graphics, but the computer printed a descritpion of your surroundings and you had to enter commands to do things, eg. 'attack troll'
You can find the source code of several versions at http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXsource.html
I personally prefer the rpg some japanese created, full with hentai :D
I'll send the link when i can scoop it up.
Just as a sidenote:
I got killed a few times by those X tentaculated monstrosities. Suxx.
How can u drink potions in the beginning which are not identified, you end up dead. I usually end up dead with the unidentified potions :D
Tho the nethack on a pocketpc is nicer :D
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