Thanks. It's fun, I like how it doesn't really incentivize you to just kill everything in every floor. Legs have been helpful to use as well. Now it's just slowly figuring out the other things as I go along.
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Roguelike - Embrace the dnmRoa
- Thread starter melodiousmowl
- Start date
Waitttt a second. So in Noita, you can add different spells to the slots in the wands. That combines them??? I thought it like sets an order for what spells the wands can do. I'm an idiot haha
I think what I had to adjust to, was that I wasn't expecting it to be so much of a 2d shooter.
I'm not sure, it might only be the sequence - but that lets you setup interesting combos. there do seem to be some modifiers, but its not clear how they're applied.
Certain spell modifiers will cast more than just the next spell after them (provided it's not a shuffle wand), and certain modifiers can even combo with eachother.
It really does. Anyone here have experience with making OTs?
I'd make one if I had the time. But I think OTs are usually for when a game leaves early access/full release
I went on Steam tonight and Crying Suns was recommended to me. Clicked on the store page and the dev is doing a playthrough (didn't know Steam had this option). Looks like a more beautiful version of FTL, but with different combat mechanic. I'm really in love with the aesthetic (aside from the font usage...indie studios really don't pay enough attention to typography). Has anyone played/liked this? Is the combat realtime-with-pause? Some of the reviews said replayability is not great, which seems odd for a roguelike.
I actually wrote about the demo (and yep, there's one) a couple pages back:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/roguelike-embrace-the-dnmroa.37180/post-24725612
Frankly, I loved it, but reportedly it doesn't scale well to the full game, and I can see how (people cite repetitiveness and relative ease). I guess that's the thing with roguelikes in general; it's so hard to tell if the game you're playing during the first hour will bloom into something wonderful that will entertain you for months, or fizzle after a couple hours.
Ah thanks, that sounds promising. But I agree and that's why I didn't download the demo. Looking at the roadmap they posted it sounds like they want to flesh things out quite a bit and add more replayability in the next few months. Not that $25 is expensive, but I'd be more inclined to roll the dice on it now and hope they improve upon it down the road if they had an introductory sale. I'll put it on my wishlist at least.
That's pretty awesome to hear. Frankly the presentation is amazing and the core gameplay is solid, and worth giving the demo a try. If they can flesh out and add variety to it, it can become one of the truly great.
I think I might be weirdly well-positioned to answer this. Of all my friends who play a video game on a nightly basis, many of them have at least spent a couple hours in Qud, and exactly one of them has spent any time in Cogmind. I, also, have spent a good amount of time with Qud but have not touched Cogmind, so in my ignorance I am probably exactly the kind of person who is responsible for Qud having 3x the number of reviews.
I'm sure that Cogmind is an incredible game, I've heard only good things, but here's my stab at why this is the case.
Things that got me and others to pick Qud up:
- Immediately interesting narrative conceit.
- Strong sense that that narrative conceit actually comes up in interesting ways in the course of gameplay—cool faction stuff, cool procgen storytelling, narratively-meaningful consequences for player actions.
- Mutations seem both conceptually cool and like they produce fun, interesting gameplay situations.
- Character generation seemed extremely fun and compelling.
- Very nice, chill, attractive aesthetic.
- I saw screenshots and stories about the game that piqued my interest.
- No real sense of what it's about. I think you're a robot in a robot dungeon? Nothing to really sink my teeth in there.
- I know that the game involves, like, taking parts from enemies and equipping them yourself. That sounds very fun in terms of gameplay, but conceptually, narratively, it isn't really as compelling as e.g. Qud's mutation wackiness, or the time travel stuff, or evil twin stuff, or befriending the scion of a kingdom of snails or whatever. Swapping my gun for someone else's doesn't really get my imagination racing on its own.
- The aesthetic looks 'cool' but kind of harsh and alienating in a way that doesn't make me want to spend time with the game.
- I have had zero idea what is going on in every Cogmind screenshot I've seen.
- This is a big one and maybe a hard one to communicate: Among all the people I know, only one person is really invested in 'roguelikes' as a genre. Like, that one person will pick up a game solely because it is a roguelike. For the rest of us, I think there are a lot of roguelikes that we like, but the mere fact of something being a roguelike isn't inherently a value-add for us. Accordingly, even though I've heard a few times that Cogmind works as a new take on the genre, that isn't really a strong sell for me—I'm not invested in 'the roguelike genre', I just want to play a game that I'll enjoy. The degree to which a game breaks from the roguelike mold isn't a consideration for me as much as the stuff I talk about above.
Again, I'm sure Cogmind is incredible, I've heard only good things, I'm sure that I'll pick it up someday when I'm in the mood and have an absolute blast. As someone who has one toe dipped into Roguelike World, though, Qud has found a kind of breakout name recognition among people I know in a way that not many other contemporary roguelikes have, I think.
Caves of Qud has been in development for over a decade, right? It just has had more time to exist.
Thank you for the insightful post, a lot of it makes sense. I think Qud has done a great job bringing more modern RPG elements to roguelikes and making the experience more front-loaded, which is kind of necessary for roguelikes because that's where you spend the majority of the playtime.
Cogmind is much more back-loaded, you need to get a few floors in to get bits and pieces of the story and to really open up the options in terms of gameplay. It is also very systems-driven, which I love, but without getting super into it, the systems themselves are not very transparent in their workings. What I really love about it, is that you can become a wizard(programmer), a sneaky rogue, a heavy hitting melee barbarian, an archer or any combination of those. When you really begin to understand the systems in the game, it really is the Matrix moment where you can already guess what a particular bot's role is and how it's going to act in response to your actions and use that to your advantage.
Watching the developer play it (and fail hilariously every now and then) helps get a feel for the wider possibilities, but obviously shouldn't be necessary to get into the game.
I guess that is also a good point.
I think based on why you like Qud, Cogmind would really click with you:
- The game is very systems-driven, with each faction of robot having unique AI and interacting with you, the world, and other robots in various ways. You're not a warrior crawling through a static dungeon; you're part of a mechanical ecosystem that you can manipulate and use to your advantage. Cleaners and repair bots tidy after your battles, reinforcements came from garrisons that you can hack into and mess with their allegiances, enemies can be hacked, etc
- There's a lot of well-written sci-fi storytelling to be found from terminals. Not as narratively-focused or integrated as Qud, but much more so than a lot of other roguelikes
- Literally building your character offers a lot of strategic and tactical depth, from various movement types to heat and energy management, cloaking and armor, scanners, melee and ranged weapons, energy versus ballistic, and so on. Hacking, stealth, tanky brawler, evasive sniper, et al
- Gorgeous ASCII aesthetic. I never liked ASCII art until I played Cogmind. Screenshots may be hard to parse but it's beautiful and vibrant in motion. The power of your weapons and the effects of your scanners/special equipment/etc add a tangible tactile sense of interaction that the bump-dodge style of many roguelikes lack
- Very accessible with many QoL features. What might be Cogmind's greatest strength is that it's designed to ease the player into the genre, without sacrificing the emergent complexity and customization inherent to the genre. I'd say Brogue and Cogmind are the best entries to traditional roguelike design
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Plus, the developer is adding difficulty modes in the next patch, for the people who like the idea of roguelikes, but not the patience to replay them 100s of times to see everything:
Are there any traditional dungeon crawler roguelikes that folk recommend on the Switch?
No action games or tactics battle games, please. I love Into the Breach but for different reasons.
I enjoyed Quest of Dungeons a bit, but it is a little bland.
I wish we could get Shiren on Switch.
No action games or tactics battle games, please. I love Into the Breach but for different reasons.
I enjoyed Quest of Dungeons a bit, but it is a little bland.
I wish we could get Shiren on Switch.
Unexplored?
It should be out in ~2 weeks. I hope the developer will enjoy some positive feedback on the difficulty setting expansion, it was apparently not an easy decision.
I can see that, it's not that great on PC either tbh. Not really seeing too many other roguelikes on the Switch unfortunately.
Tangledeep
Yodanji and DragonFangZ for the bill but neither were particularly memorable to me.
Switch is amazing for roguelites, not likes, unfortunately.
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Well I finally had some free time and got my first run in, and I gotta say, this game is right up my alley. I was initially surprised that it throws so much weaponry at you from the start, but it quickly became clear that you have to be a careful with what you equip and how you dispatch enemies.
I brute forced my way through about 5 levels before finally getting overwhelmed. 1 run and 12 achievements later, and I can safely say this game is absolutely for me and I intend to put some serious time into it. Looking forward to getting a better grasp of the systems, I'm a big fan of the ecosystem they've built here.
Thanks again, garion333!!
Glad you're enjoying it. A big tip for being stealthier is to get a melee weapon and just cut your way through walls to avoid the bigger hallways.
I was literally just immediately shooting every enemy I came across with both weapons lol. Probably didn't help my survivability.
I'll give stealth a shot next time, thanks!
You can totally do brute force as well, but you have to get in and out of floors pretty quickly.
But you can literally switch between tiles and ASCII on the fly in Cogmind:
Yeah, I'm interested in both, but Cogmind just seems to be something much more unique. I finally picked it up today, since I've wanted to get back into an actual roguelike.
I didn't realize that but I still think CoQ appears to be more readable based on the store page alone, these sorts of games are difficult to sell to people that haven't played something similar.
Sure, CoQ has much more obvious RPG elements and lets you play at your own pace. In Cogmind there are very few occasions where you can take your time on a floor.
It's true, but there are times where you can take your time and soak in some of the story bits. But so very true, it's mostly a "how the hell do I stay alive??" game.
I just realized last night that you can swap attributes between wands in your inventory, not just add perks you've found/bought
...I thought you could only add new perks, not change perks between wands.
That kind of changes everything
Not sure if you'd prefer discovering stuff on your own, but the developer has a massive (nearly 4 hours) tutorial on the early game. I'm watching it now, though it starts off incredibly basic, just going over the interface.
Looks like they also have a ton of videos showing off a variety of runs with different builds.
Played a run of Cogmind (about an hour, only got to level 3 I think) and wasn't really blown away, but it wasn't entirely uninteresting or anything like that either, so I'll definitely give it some more hours. I'll try a couple of more runs before checking out the above video.
Out of curiosity also booted up CoQ and was immediately reminded how much of a chore playing it with a tenkeyless keyboard can be and uninstalled it after 5 minutes. It also made me appreciate Cogmind's simple and approachable mouse controls a LOT more.
e: Starting to see some really intriguing terminal entries like Solar War and Project Seraph, but they're all red so I'm not even gonna try accessing them yet lol. Wasn't initially that interested in the lore, but now I'm really looking forward to finding out what's going on.
Out of curiosity also booted up CoQ and was immediately reminded how much of a chore playing it with a tenkeyless keyboard can be and uninstalled it after 5 minutes. It also made me appreciate Cogmind's simple and approachable mouse controls a LOT more.
e: Starting to see some really intriguing terminal entries like Solar War and Project Seraph, but they're all red so I'm not even gonna try accessing them yet lol. Wasn't initially that interested in the lore, but now I'm really looking forward to finding out what's going on.
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Check out the previous page of this thread. Several people, including myself, have posted their impressions there.
Here's a link to mine:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/roguelike-embrace-the-dnmroa.37180/page-7#post-24788674
TLDR: If you like FTL, absolutely try the Crying Suns demo.
Oh yeah, there's a lot of fun stuff you can do with terminals (and the other types of accessible machines). There are also different levels of all machines (you can tell by the size or if you access them there's a level in the readout as well) and the higher level ones have more interesting stuff, but are also harder to hack.
Just an FYI
roguelike_con just happened so if you want to watch the video of it while it's still up on twitch https://www.twitch.tv/roguelike_con/videos
The schedule somewhat to coincide with the video time (Not super accurate but gives you a decent gauge)
Located at this link aove
roguelike_con just happened so if you want to watch the video of it while it's still up on twitch https://www.twitch.tv/roguelike_con/videos
The schedule somewhat to coincide with the video time (Not super accurate but gives you a decent gauge)
Located at this link aove
Kind of, with factions you mostly find out about it by meeting them though. If you can, grab a signal interpreter and keep an eye on the exits you take. Not all exits out of a level take you to the same place, there are branches.
Got it.
Really starting to get into this game now. It doesn't really seem to have the emergent storytelling element that I usually look for in games like this, but it definitely makes up for it with mechanical depth and the gameplay. It feels great to play and I really just love how simple and intuitive the UI is and how great the mouse controls are.
I'll stick with Dwarf Fortress whenever I feel like witnessing violent, random hilarity ensuing, but I can definitely see myself putting much more hours into Cogmind than probably any other roguelike when I feel like actually playing a roguelike.
Glad, you're getting into it, Cogmind is a very slow burn, but the depth of the mechanics and content is worth it.
There are also a few elements that stay between runs (beyond the lore entries) and once you get to that it'll open up more gameplay options as well. As a more general tip, make sure you read all the descriptions of weapons and items, some have specific mechanics associated with it. For example piercing weapons get a damage multiplier if you move up to 3 squares in a line before attacking with it.
Yeah, ramming is an actual thing in Cogmind. Since you're a heavy ass robot and all it makes sense.
Baby's first "real" roguelike, yes. It's both great because of how relatively simple it is and also a bit of a negative.
Baby's first "real" roguelike, yes. It's both great because of how relatively simple it is and also a bit of a negative.