T w e n t y S i d e d
From The Archives:
A Telltale Autopsy
What lessons can we learn from the abrupt demise of this once-impressive games studio?
Linux vs. Windows
Finally, the age-old debate has been settled.
The Best of 2011
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2011.
Rage 2
The game was a dud, and I'm convinced a big part of that is due to the way the game leaned into its story. Its terrible, cringe-inducing story.
What is Vulkan?
What is this Vulkan stuff? A graphics engine? A game engine? A new flavor of breakfast cereal? And how is it supposed to make PC games better?
The ascii orcs do look better on this version :D
Man this takes me back to playing Angband, although, I never played it using ASCII characters, neither Dwarf Fortress, I can’t barely tell what I’m doing with clear sprite to begin with.
But I’m sort of interested in Caves of Qud, is it good?
Loading Ready Run is doing Caves of Qud on their Talking Simulator stream for like three weeks or so (one stream is done, two more to go), with the newer modernized UI. I’ve never seen or played it before, but watching it seems to work. Lots of little fiddly character creation options that seemed fun. Cori spent a ton of time sprinting away from things, which made it look more lethal than it turned out to be when Cameron (first time player) went in and fought stuff just fine for a while (until it wasn’t fine). Everyone has passive regeneration (at least that they played) so if you can get away you can heal, but wandering off into the desert unprepared can run you out of water leading to an inevitable death, as one would expect.
Very in-between the simulating exploration of Dwarf Fortress (which I’ve also watched them play a bit of), and the Diablo-eque dungeon clearing with lightly randomized world of Tales of Maj’Eyal (which I’ve played a bunch of). The sprites in Qud are much simpler, better than ACII but not nearly as obviously readable as TOME (which has visible equipment changes on your character and spell explosions and effects and buff auras etc).
Don’t think I’ll pick it up myself, but I will finish watching their series.
The “it’s fine until it isn’t” is why I suck at oldschool roguelikes. Years of more traditional RPGs have generally set my brain in a mode of “if I’m okay with this dungeon in general this stronger creature has to be beatable too” and I end up dying a lot but failing to do what you’re supposed to do, which is learn what is and what isn’t above your challenge rating.
Dorf Fort mentioned!!!!!!
Man, I really hated that damn elven archer. Robbed me blind.
You know how hard it is to get financing to set up a used armor store on the 5th level of a dungeon?