Rougish ======= A throwback rogue-alike that runs in a browser.
Story ----- You're a teenager in a small village in rural England at the dawn of the 15th century. The village elders have been preparing you since birth for the screening ritual. This past week, you've successfully passed the written screen, the oral screen, and the heritage screen. There's just one screen left: the game screen.
In the middle of the night, the elders took you from your house and threw you down into the dank catacombs underlying the village. The eldest, a man wizened and frail, peers down into the darkness and begins to give you some last advice. Find the flashlight, find the ladder. Avoid Grumpus.
The entire game depends on this last, one, screen.
Can you survive and emerge victorious? Good luck!
Greets ------
Greetings to my lovely wife Joelle, my cat, Mu, and obskyr & khahem from IRC for helping me with some last-minute testing.
Notes -----
For QWERTZ keyboards, ? will function properly. For AZERTY keyboards, ; functions intead of .
Movement: Arrow Keys or HJKL (Recommend HJKL on embedded) Interaction: . Attack: a Inventory: i Use: u Status: s Breadcrumb: b
Nice game. I've always loved old roguelikes, although it would be nice to have your stats up to the side of the window at all times. I'll bookmark this so I can play later ;)
Looks very interesting! I love that it has music, too. However when I use the arrow keys, the browser window scrolls at the same time as the game moves! That makes it very hard to play. And hjkl hurts my non-vi brain.
Perhaps list the keys in the text under the game window?
I like the homage to nethack, however, it could use a little bit more hand holding in the beginning. How do I pick things up? Can I defend myself when I'm being attacked? Also, I had to turn the music down (read: off) because it was a little grating after a while. =/
Those of you with non-us keyboard layouts, can you suggest an alias for ? and . that will work nice? qwertz can probably use the # for ?, but I have no idea about azerty.
It felt rewarding when I completed the game however it was a grind getting to the end. At the end it said I took 10313 turns, which isn't actually that many because I could speed down hallways, but since it was exploring probably over 100 rooms, most of them empty or with a bat it got a bit tedious. If I had found the flashlight first I think I would have had a better time because exploring each room wouldn't have taken so long. It was fun when I fought Grumpus and found items like the shield but the majority of the time I was just walking down empty hallways. If there was more in the world I would have enjoyed it much more.
I've added a slight patch to make the game nicer for non-us keyboards. the ? on a QWERTYZ keyboard should work, as should ; instead of . for AZERTY.
@ken One of my biggest regrets in not having as much time as I wanted was in filling out the beastiary and items. There's definitely room to make the dungeon a WHOLE lot bigger, and put a bunch of crazy stuff in there. Sadly, it was not to be... I am pleased to have a complete, sparse as it is, game. :)
Congrats on creating such a large game (large cave, lots of items) in such a limited time frame. Not easy to get into, but a very nice entry! One suggestion though: you should display the "key" somewhere on a empty space on the screen, it'll make it easier for first time players to use the game properly (I had get out and on of fullscreen many times just to check the keyboard shortcut to use.)
Good simple roguelike. There was a problem for me, running the game in Chrome: pressing up or down keys would scroll the whole page instead of only the character in the game. Nice music!
The cave actually randomly generates every time you play...it's different every time! :)
Also, in the beginning it tells you to use ? to see what keys do what :). With a resolution of 80x24 every character counts... :)
@tiagolingalexandre: I think it's a problem with the embedding in the ld48 site; if you use it standalone it doesn't do that (but also, that is why enter and space are aliased, and HJKL are available instead of arrow keys)
Nice idea to go old school! Maybe you could simplify more. Remove S button, put status up at all times. Remove breadcrumbs. Maybe even auto attack. Should this music be in the game, it was composed by Beethoven right? Kind of a stretch to make this follow the theme. I would have rather seen a smaller rogue-like that fits everything onto one screen or something like that.
I love the music, and the mood it creates. The game has a significant flaw - text is very hard to read, at least for me. It's also pretty hard to understand when your opponent die because they stand at the same position as you and they disappear from view. Overall, nice re-make of a very old and very good genre :)
Playable, but pretty rough around the edges. I think the best advice I have is to try something a little less ambitious the next time you do ludum dare. Good job none the less though
Comments31
I've updated the description and the in-game help.
Perhaps list the keys in the text under the game window?
Pressing ? does not seem to do anything - German layout here, have to press shift+"ß" (next to zero).
Maybe adding an alias would be a good idea
For anyone else having issues:
Leave a breadcrumb: b | Check status: s
Inventory: i | Use: u
Interaction: . | Attack: a
Movement: Arrow keys or HJKL
Excellent game! I love your style, ill definitely keep playing this one.
@ken
One of my biggest regrets in not having as much time as I wanted was in filling out the beastiary and items. There's definitely room to make the dungeon a WHOLE lot bigger, and put a bunch of crazy stuff in there. Sadly, it was not to be... I am pleased to have a complete, sparse as it is, game. :)
The cave actually randomly generates every time you play...it's different every time! :)
Also, in the beginning it tells you to use ? to see what keys do what :). With a resolution of 80x24 every character counts... :)
@tiagolingalexandre:
I think it's a problem with the embedding in the ld48 site; if you use it standalone it doesn't do that (but also, that is why enter and space are aliased, and HJKL are available instead of arrow keys)
Maybe you could simplify more. Remove S button, put status up at all times. Remove breadcrumbs. Maybe even auto attack.
Should this music be in the game, it was composed by Beethoven right?
Kind of a stretch to make this follow the theme. I would have rather seen a smaller rogue-like that fits everything onto one screen or something like that.