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Yes

3 (27.3%)

No

4 (36.4%)

Maybe

4 (36.4%)

Total Members Voted: 11

Voting closed: March 12, 2011, 04:04:48 pm

[Levi]

Grats.  I might give it a try when I get off work.


Edit:  Heh neat.  The map generator gave me a ton of vertical halls between rooms without many horizontal connectors.  Kind of unique looking map resulted. 

[Siquo]

Your game is faulty. It gives me an error saying it needs a .NET framework to play.

I've now not programmed for two whole days, and am considering either to call the whole thing off, or "cheat" and still do 7 days worth of programming.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   Yes the map generation was weird. I have no way to
explain it really. It starts by creating a room then checking
in a random direction and if it can place a random sized
room it does. this cause the occasional room in a room
though you don't see it because its all excavation work
with no wall adding but you will see double hallways or
2 wide hallways. The game still puts out a text file called
test.txt which shows the map that was last genned.

[Ari Rahikkala]

I've ranted about this on several forums now, but I just can't get over how awesome kusemono is. I've been made into a believer: Stealth gameplay, from skulking around figuring out where the guards are, to carefully picking the best path to sneak toward your target with, to the dash of the last couple of steps right to get your knife stuck in them when they notice you, even to the occasional running away in panic not knowing how close behind the guards are and whether one's going to pop up right behind the next corner - it can all be done in a roguelike, and when it's all done in a way that works, it's awesome. I'd almost, almost contended myself with Crawl's "get good stealth equipment, approach from around a corner, hope the RNG is on your side and they don't wake up" gameplay as the best you can do in a roguelike, but this game blew that right out of my mind.

Extra boon, you feel like a complete badass when you start learning to really position yourself right to take out three or four or five ants in a single dash.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

7DRL - Reviewing format

   To start before I get on with this I will explain how I will be rating a number of other 7DRL games in the days to come. I have 5 different categories that I will grade on a 1 to 20 scale, 1 being bad, 10 is average, and 20 is near perfect.

   First is Ascii/Graphics use, This will be how well they where able to say what they meant with the their display and how well it came across. This means some simple things like using understandable thing such as a brown 'r' to mean a rat and not a rust monster. This will be genre based partly seeing as a science fiction game might have the brown 'r' meaning a type of robot. For the graphics I will be looking at the images and seeing how well they match the content. I understand that 7 days is not enough to make custom tiles for everything but if you do I will treat you better then the guy who grabbed a free bunch of tiles and stuck them wherever because no matter how pretty if you are using a picture of a rat to represent a robot.

   Next is Ease of use which will be about various things that could be better or are better. This will probably be biased but not because of key configurations unless the game does not come with a way to change them. Things that would fall under this category is stuff like if it takes to many keystrokes for important features or not asking if you really want to attack that town guard.

   Sparkly Bits is next on the list and it is what it is. It it sparkles and or is shiny it goes here.

    Difficulty will be the strategy type stuff and not stuff about control layouts or whatever, thats up in Ease of use. This is all about having to think before you bump into that 'D' over there. If I could be replaced by a 4 set of those drinking birds pressing the direction keys you will fail this category

   The final category is a combo of Addictiveness and replay value.  This will mean more then just having random dungeon levels because it may help but a boring room will be boring whether its the same one as last time or its a brand new boring room.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

Vicious Orcs
By:
Jeff Lait

   Once again Jeff has made a wonderful game. The story is that recently an earthquake opened up a cave where Orcs live and your to go and preemptively strike at them. There's a little more to it but that is what it comes down to.
Disclaimer: I have not actually finished this game so not all I say may be accurate all the way through!

ASCII Use: 17/20
   The use of characters works quite well even when he uses some non-traditional ones such as '&' for trees. For the setting these actually look better then the normal "T"ree's that you see. Rats, Bats, and other such traditional creatures will be attacking you and barring a few jarring colors here and there the characters and colors match. The one thing that is a little off but helpful is that the walls change colors the farther in you get to represent the areas toughness. Its useful to know where you are but pink walls? Really? Maybe it is supposed to be purple but from here it looks like I am sneaking around barbies house. Overall though its well done.

Ease of Use: 13/20
   A limited number of keys that do all that they need to. Simple easy to understand controls are out in force here though I do have a thing I did not like. I can understand the inclusion of a command to rotate the map seeing as the map is special but it only confused me when I tried it. I probably could have used it for something or other but because the map is weird it only got me lost.
   The map seems to either warp space to work or assumes that the tunnels are not flat so you go up and down because you end up going down hallways that on a normal roguelike would intersect the ones you just came from. Because its all persistent though this actually is quite fun to explore and actually lets you get lost if you not careful.
   In the town you talk to people by the bump method and you go through text by just pressing space so it fits together nicely but brings us to something I find quite annoying. When ever you buy something or use something in you inventory it kicks you out of the menu. This means that if your eating all that food you just found to gain some health back you have to press "i", go to the item, press enter, and press the correct key for what you want to do for every single thing. Ranged combat is useful but having to buy a dozen arrows at a time over and over by bumping into a moving target is not as fun.
   Another thing is that everything that is a weapon or armor is broken and you need to go to town and get it fixed before you can use it except for the first weapon upgrade. At least it only keeps the most up to date weapon/armor so you don't have to worry about that.
   For the simple commands and easy actual combat it fun but for the becoming ready to do battle is a little tedious so overall a bit above average.

Sparkly Bits: 15/20
   It has gold you collect fall down the side of you screen and collect in a pile! This is the most Dynamic system for keeping track of money in a roguelike I have seen recently. Quite fun to watch.


Difficulty: 18/20
   Except for the first wall color transition the Difficulty builds quite nicely. The only reason for the first jump is because that is when the first ranged opponents show up. Quite a satisfying experience. Even the lowly rat has an interesting strategy that you will find out for yourself. Seeing as I have not actually completed the game I can not comment on the overall toughness but what I have seen is well worth the time.

Addictiveness/Replayability: 10/20
   Even though the dungeon is new every game I must admit the first bit can be tedious. The game once you get going is quite Addictive but dieing and having to restart is a let down. This is probably because of the start being the same every time even if the dungeon is different. Once you start playing you won't stop till you die but when you do it might take a little to start over so I am going average on this one.

Overall: 73/100
   Quite a fun game to play once you get going though restarting after dieing can be annoying and the keeping your character geared up is tedious seeing as you have to go back to town to fix the latest weapon or armor upgrade. A decent game with above average quality. Works on Windows and Linux so if you have one of those I advise trying it out.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Vicious Orcs has a pretty weird difficulty curve. It starts out really deadly and, uhh, vicious as you're trying to whack at bats with a weapon that doesn't even hit half of the time, and to chase down kobolds that know how to keep their distance and plink away at you with their bows. Then you get the fireball spell and can suddenly just walk around scorching everything, only occasionally heading back to pay the healer and meditate. And then you get the heal spell and can just refill your stats at the island completely, and the game becomes a repetitive exercise of going back to the village and healing yourself for free every time you run low on either HP or mana.

But of course in truth... (big spoilers ahead!)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

... by using magic you're draining energy from the village in ironic ways: Using the portal spell occasionally extends the snowy pass, the fire spells bring frost to the fields, and the healing spell spreads plague in the village. The orcs don't exist, but if you've cast even a single spell in the game, you'll be deluded into seeing the villagers as orcs when you return to the village at the end of the game. And I'm not sure, based on reading the code, whether there's any way to reach the victory condition without killing all of the villagers, whether you never use magic or not. Honestly, I don't think the game is fun enough to try.

[GTM]

Vicious orcs looks/sounds awesome, but I'm just too spatially challenged to play roguelikes that use non-euclidean dungeon maps.  Jeff comes up with some of the coolest concepts, but I wish he'd stop using those dungeons so I can play his games.  Then again, it's good that something different and unusual like that exists.

Today I tried vicious orcs, plus Regicide!, Magicko, and Free-like.  Good ones so far. 

[Tilla]

Looking forward to sitting down with some of these at some point that isn't now. Maybe when they're all tallied up in an easy to read list Elite International Detective is looking cool from Slashie

[Tilla]

Looks like: so far there've been 45/98 completed, not bad although it's actually down from successes last year and up from number of contestants. Still, 45 new roguelikes to try out

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   And I plan to review a number of them...

you know once I drag myself away from prospector...

and once I get my Mafia game settled out...

and after I do all my homework for collage...

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

Rook
By:
Joshua Day

   A fun little game to play. You start game with an orb that prevents you from accidentally killing yourself and a ring that makes all damage fatal.

ASCII Use: 10/20
   Basic and understandable though not much else to say here. Average enough.

Ease of Use: 11/20
   You move with hjklyubn or the numpad. Items are activated with a then the letter. All of your items are listed on the side of the screen and if use of one would mean death its highlighted red. The same for the movement keys which are also listed on the side and highlighted red if they would mean death.

Sparkly Bits: 11/20
   Based on chess somewhat though it is hard to see at times. This has been done before, still interesting but not enough to get above an average rating.

Difficulty: 13/20
   An interesting challenge with a moving goal. Kill the King if you can, it may take you a few tries to get there. Above average but still not Hard.

Addictiveness/Replayability: 10/20
   Good draw once you start so you will want to finish it and being a quick game you will finish before it wears off but the replay is not much to talk about.

Overall: 65/100
   A fun quick game to play through once though you probably won't play it again after you win. I advise it for someone looking for a quick play of something new before going back to whatever you where doing.