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skavenhorde
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Joined: 17 May 2008
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 Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 6:58 am Post subject: Legerdemain Indie Roguelike |
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I downloaded this free rogue awhile ago and instantly fell in love the the original feel to this game. It is a traditional rogue with one little caveat there is a great story behind this game as well. You'll die a lot just like in any rogue, but having an original story that goes along with the hardcore aspect of rogues is a truly wonderful experience.
There is one feature that I like that a lot of rogues don't do. When you rest in an INN you save your progress so that the next time you die you will start over from there. Some traditionalists may not like that, but since this rogue's narrative is part of the actual enjoyment of the game I felt it was a good compromise.
Here is an overview of the game:
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Mostly this site is about our first title: an epic and surreal CRPG called Legerdemain. It is written in Java and runs on PCs running Windows, Mac, and Linux. We have free versions of Legerdemain available over at the downloads area, so feel free to try it out!
Legerdemain takes place in a strange and cracked fantasy world called Phenomedom. You assume the role of an imprisoned magician seeking to learn the nature of your captivity. Along the way you’ll uncover vast conspiracies, morbid secrets, and the secrets of ancient puzzles. You’ll likely slay a few thousand monsters along the way too.
Legerdemain draws heavily upon interactive fiction and Roguelike games to provide an experience focusing on story and depth of play. From interactive fiction we inherit elements of scene description, exploration of new environments, and conversation with the game’s inhabitants. From Roguelike games we derive a top-down two-dimensional perspective and numerous strategic elements. Legerdemain’s glyph-based UI is also reminiscent of Roguelike games, but here we forego ASCII for the myriad and more modern conventions of Unicode.
So come on in and give Legerdemain a try! We have a persistent, hand-crafted world, a detailed but intuitive approach for character development, a novel spellcasting system called Manipulation, and over two hundred hours of gameplay. There’s merchandise for sale too! See the tab marked Get Stuff! for more details.
Enjoy your stay!
The Phenomedom Tourist Bureau |
You can play the game for free or you can buy the cluebook with the tilesets. I can't recommend the cluebook enough. The writing is excellent and reminiscent of the cluebooks of old that used to contain a narrative like The Bard's Tale or Ultima VII cluebooks. Plus, the dang thing is huge. I'm not sure how long it took him to write it, but it couldn't of been overnight 
The main improvement is the tiles. If your not a fan of ASCII then it's worth the few bucks it costs to get the cluebook to get the additional tilesets.
Here is the homepage: http://roguelikefiction.com/
Here is a preview of the game with tilesets: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxCTBNcG3Mw |
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Hajo
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Joined: 18 Sep 2007
Posts: 670
Location: Between keyboard and chair
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 8:03 am Post subject: |
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Despite being around since a while, it's still one of the less famous roguelikes. Maybe in that genre the story is rather a problem than a marketing help.
Good that it gets some recognition here  |
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skavenhorde
Level 4 Searcher
Joined: 17 May 2008
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 8:25 pm Post subject: |
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I did not know anything about this game a few months ago. I even went through a Rogue kick back then and tried to find the best Rogues out there. I found the usual ADOM, Tome, Crawl Soup, DoomRL etc... But never saw this one.
Out of all the rogues I've played this one is my favorite. |
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cowgod
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Joined: 01 Nov 2007
Posts: 621
Location: Pittsburgh, USA
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 9:22 pm Post subject: |
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I just downloaded it, but it will probably be several days before I have a chance to look at it.
You might want to try playing Castle of the Winds. It's sort of a toned down Rogue-like, but it does have a storyline, even if it's a minimal one. You can download it for free these days, but I did purchase it once upon the time.
In fact, you can get it for free from my website http://www.orbitalcows.com. I didn't make it, but I'm reasonably certain anyone can give it away now that it's freeware. |
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skavenhorde
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Joined: 17 May 2008
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 9:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Thanks, I'll give it a try a little later. |
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cowgod
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Location: Pittsburgh, USA
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| Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 9:32 pm Post subject: |
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I've tried out Legerdemain.
I really like the idea of having a designed world, rather than a randomly generated one, in a game that utilizes ASCII art. And I like the idea of including a plotline. However, I found that I was completely lost when actually playing the game. I didn't make it out of the dungeon.
I was badly injured by a trap and out of my healing spell. I decided to go to one of the permanent torches to memorize spells and rest when I ran into a leper I'd been playing cat-and-mouse with before. And he killed me.
I will most likely come back to the game later after playing through some of the stack of games I've already started. Or possibly not. I get the feeling that it will be pretty hard to figure out what's going on without the clue book.
I looked up a video of the game with the tileset that comes with the clue book, and that makes into a regular game. The tileset is somewhat shoddy, but I can see how it would add to the game.
Playing this game helped me make some design decisions about my own game, so I'm glad I played it. |
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skavenhorde
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Joined: 17 May 2008
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| Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2010 2:34 am Post subject: |
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The beginning is sorta rough, but not so different from other rogues. I can't tell you how many times I ALWAYS die in the beginning of a rogue.
I made the mistake of thinking that the beginning area was just another dungeon. I'll grab some stuff, level up and then go take on my captors. That was the wrong move. In the beginning you are a prisoner running for your life and you need to get out of there as fast as possible and head to an inn. Once you're at an inn every time you die you'll reset there, but until then "RUN!!!!!!!!!"
Once you get to the inn the story picks up and you start finding out about this world you live in, plus you start to figure out how the heck things work. Like how much sleep you need, how much food, etc... It's a true rogue in that respect. You'll need to figure out what you need to survive on your own or you could post a message at their forum. I prefer to figure it out with trial and error.
Speaking of trial and error, you don't know how long it took me to figure out that it's really really difficult to turn a Dark Elf Necromnacer good in ADOM. They're evil to the bone, I swear to god one day my necromantic Dark Elf in ADOM will become a champion for good and actually beat that game  |
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