Would the Crawl Devs ever make a Sci-Fi Roguelike?

[wesleyshaver]

I play Crawl Tiles a lot because so much of the game just oozes quality. There are design decisions here and there I disagree with but as a whole the game is excellent. Interface, graphics, design, challenge, Crawl is simply the best roguelike I've played.

This fact makes me hunger for the same quality roguelike but with a sci-fi theme. Your character could be a cyborg or mutant who upgrades his/her body throughout the game, picks up plasma rifles and miniguns to lay waste to robots and aliens retrieving bullets and energy cells from their weapons and scrap parts and genetic material from their corpses. I'm talking pure 1980s-style crazy sci-fi. Settings would include alien planets, derelict spacecraft, and MegaCorporation skyscrapers.

I think the possibilities for creativity are far greater than in the standard fantasy setting. If I become a millionaire I will fund a game like this and pay some Roguelike devs to make it for me

Does anyone else want to play something like this?

[dpeg]

Theme is pretty much secondary for me, and I sometimes hate these "high fantasy" tropes, the D&D-nonsense and the Tolkienisms. (For me, the standard argument that "ASCII is better because that 'D' becomes a mighty dragon in your imagination" just doesn't work -- it is a "D" of some colour, hence a dangerous enemy.) However, the fantasy setting is good for one thing: gods! You can probably have gods in many a setting, but our current setup allows us to a lot in the divine department.
That sad, I would hate a science fiction setting even more.

I believe that there are a number of theme-wise off-the-path roguelikes out there. It might be worth exploring that landscape.

[mageykun]

If someone ever coded a tiled sci-fi rougelike, I'd definitely give it a play. For the record, I there are some sci-fi themed rougelikes out there, but to my knowledge they're all ascii.

There is Transcendence, which tries to apply rougelike mechanics and philosophy to an elite-type space explorer/trader/fighter. It's a nice idea in theory, but in practice I find it kinda tedious, especially starting over when you die (there is at least one god involved though! :p). There's also Space Exploration: Serpens Sector which tries to do something similar in a much more condensed manner- play is more on the time scale of Desktop Dungeons. It's less complete though.

...I'm still waiting for someone to make the perfect, randomly generated, opened ended rougelike love child of Star Control II. I would play that forever.

[Grimm]

That would indeed be a beautiful game.

In the meantime rlprospector is promising but still in early days, and no tiles yet. http://code.google.com/p/rlprospector/

Edit: SE:SS is modelled heavily on Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space. http://www.digital-eel.com/weird/
The predecessor of that game is available for free.

[zasvid]

Doom the Roguelike is fun and sci fi, it has quite clean interface, good gameplay and awesome sounds (yes, sounds!). It doesn't have tiles yet, I think, but IIRC they are coming in the 1.0 version (current version: 0.9.9.2, so it should get to 1.0 quite promptly).

There's also 3059, a fully featured sci-fi roguelike. It doesn't have tiles, but it's not just ASCII either, because it uses some expanded charsets to represent stuff (e.g. a computer in game looks like a computer). Also the background might actually be tiled. Whether it is a fun game, I dunno, never found the time to sink my teeth into it.

Another one is the GearHead series, which is about piloting mechas. I haven't played it for a long time, but the games offer a graphical interface. They are also well-developed, I guess, because there's two of them

[Jenx]

I was about to suggest Doom RL too! I love that game for it's straightforwardness (wait this is actually a real word?!) and when I noticed the mock screenshots done by Derek Yu who's making the tiles for it..well damn. I can't wait for the tiled version to show up.

[Zicher]

DoomRL == the roguelike FPS .
Really, I thought that Crawl was fairly straightforward (at least compared to ADOM, at which I started roguelikes) - but only until I met DoomRL .
It even incorporates sounds and music from the original Doom games! What's not to like?

[galehar]

If someone ever coded a tiled sci-fi rougelike, I'd definitely give it a play.

This typo seems pretty common, I keep seeing it. Any reason why? It hurts my french eyes! (rouge means red).

[Tiber]

If someone ever coded a tiled sci-fi rougelike, I'd definitely give it a play.

This typo seems pretty common, I keep seeing it. Any reason why? It hurts my french eyes! (rouge means red).

Possibly because most of the emphasis in the word "rogue" is on the long O sound, so it looks more like it's right to some people with the 'u' before the 'g'?
Just don't get me started on "lose" and "loose". Hint: "lose" rhymes with "news" and "loose" rhymes with "moose".

[Grimm]

"Rougelike" always makes me think of those dress-up doll games. Like, you take your DSGl of Makhleb to the salon to get your makeup done, scoring XP for quantity and quality of rouge, mascara, etc.

[Mychaelh]

Cool space trade/explorer:

http://www.asciisector.net/

[mageykun]

If someone ever coded a tiled sci-fi rougelike, I'd definitely give it a play.

This typo seems pretty common, I keep seeing it. Any reason why? It hurts my french eyes! (rouge means red).

Well great, now I'm all embarrassed and annoyed. I've been misspelling that for weeks without noticing. I'm almost tempted to abuse mod powers and start retconning my old posts. I'm adding roguelike to my dictionary now.

[Bim]

Just came across this, sorry to resurrect, but I wanted to point out Decker is an awesome cyberpunk/hacker roguelike, with tiles! (well, exclusively tiles) with randomly generated levels and a lot of exploring/crafting/skills.
However, it does get a bit tedious/samey after a while and as soon as you get over being able to pay rent (much like real life!) things just become a case of how much you want to carry on with it, as you could grind away pretty much indefinitely. I will say though, I've spent ages and ages playing it in the past!

I'd love to rewrite it and carry it on in a similar vein to DCSS, but alas, I do not have the time nor the skill.

[nicolae]

Just came across this, sorry to resurrect, but I wanted to point out Decker is an awesome cyberpunk/hacker roguelike, with tiles! (well, exclusively tiles) with randomly generated levels and a lot of exploring/crafting/skills.
However, it does get a bit tedious/samey after a while and as soon as you get over being able to pay rent (much like real life!) things just become a case of how much you want to carry on with it, as you could grind away pretty much indefinitely. I will say though, I've spent ages and ages playing it in the past!

I'd love to rewrite it and carry it on in a similar vein to DCSS, but alas, I do not have the time nor the skill.

Decker? Good god, I found that years ago... I still have it somewhere. Is anyone actively (re)developing it now?

I never got very far, if I remember right, its learning curve was steeper than Nethack's. Shame, it's a cool idea.

[varsovie]

Well, one very fun sci-fiysh RL : The Slimy Lichmummy. It has both tiles and ASCII.

[Konebred]

I would love to see a post nuclear winter roguelike. The first wasteland was pretty good though.