Well, there goes the rest of the week. I don't install games on my phone, but I always give SPD a pass because open source. The first time I installed it, I almost lost an internship because I was too focused on the game. The most recent time I installed it, my wife thought I was cheating on her because I was acting so shady and obsessive about my phone. Don't say I didn't warn y'all.
If you only play open source mobile games and are afraid of wasting your time, make sure you avoid the factory tower defense game Mindustry which presents itself at https://mindustrygame.github.io/
The crazy imaginative class selection in ToME (special shoutout to the chronomancer) easily makes it my go-to roguelike, but I do find I have trouble really feeling what the impact of my build choices are, although this is a common feeling with roguelikes - I probably feel it more in ToME because it feels like every level-up has a much broader decision space than most other roguelikes. Also that most enemies (at least early game) aren't a major challenge until you hit one that wrecks you.
Most of the time I go with "rule of cool", blaze ahead, and die somewhere around the time I get to the sandworm tunnels.
The farthest I ever got was what felt like the first real boss who just teleports you to <FUN> which came out of left field and my character in that run was _not_ prepared to handle that.
I'm still trying to beat it on normal difficulty. The farthest I got was first floors of the necromancer's tower, which is about 1/4 of the game AFAIK. I resist the temptation to try any add-on, there's so much fun without them.
That is why I am a fan of games that buff your character over repeated runs.
If more games did this, the difficulty slider could go away. As an added bonus, there is a satisfaction of getting to the point where you are so overpowered the game essentially breaks (see: vampire survivors)
Honestly though, Mindustry is so much better with keyboard/mouse controls. It's a shockingly good mobile factory/automation type game, but I'd just rather play it on PC. (Or Mac, which runs it fine)
Sure, but it's much harder to hide your laptop screen under the covers at 2am, back to spouse, shielding the light, keeping your secret safe. Plus, a screen tap is much quieter than a laptop k/m.
I had the same issue and my solution was: I modified the code of the game to add cheats (make my character super durable), compiled it myself and loaded the apk onto my phone. Then I finally finished the game and my addiction ended.
Usually I try to avoid cheats but I use them it in situations where I either get badly addicted or where I notice that I'm losing a lot of time with repetitive grinding
I just play as an archer/warden. It's a pretty easy class, I can beat the game maybe one in five times. Once you get the nature footwear artifact you've as good as won, and if you get a blooming weapon then it's a cakewalk.
Sniper is easier in my opinion. If you find a ring of marksmanship, it becomes pretty trivial with the sniper's armor bypassing and tier upgrades to the bow.
I think anyone hunting for a first win should play as a huntress or mage. Ranged attacks are pretty overpowered in comparison to melee and don't require as much position play. And since both classes begin with their final weapon, you don't need to rely too much on the RNG to survive.
I never tried World of Warcraft years ago until that South Park episode came out. Currently about the only games I still play on my phone are chess and Plants vs Zombies 2, which for some reason has had me hooked since the very first one came out. Luckily, my wife likes it too.
I'm not really sure what this is doing on Hacker News, but the game (Shattered Pixel Dungeon) is fun.
One of the nicest features is that whenever you observe an effect that unambiguously tells you what a potion/scroll does - such as throwing a potion - that type of object is automatically identified for you. In more "traditional" hack games you'd have to write notes yourself even though obviously a thrown potion exploding into fire means it's a potion of liquid fire, right?
Shattered Pixel is a good way to kill some time on public transit or similar.
> I'm not really sure what this is doing on Hacker News
Incredibly fun game, open source, and in a genre that likely fits well into many HN users' interests. I rediscovered it recently and remembered it was open source, so why not submit it?
The title should include a [year], to save people like me from needing to check if anything significant changed in the game that made me miss half of a trip to Thailand in 2014.
I think the open source part is the main justification. Getting kids into tech and programming seems a HN sort of article, and an open source game is one way of doing it. Much more advanced than the entry level things like Scratch Jr. and not nearly as wide spread an audience, but a great step around the high school level for the few who wants to get deeper without committing to some formal education.
I saw this post and immediately thought “there’s probably a lot of potential trad roguelike fans on hacker news”, for one thing it’s probably the genre with highest percentage of fans are devs or have dabbled into game dev.
SPD is a good gateway to brogue, DCSS, cogmind, qud, etc
It's not a roguelike really, but Brogue was my gateway to CDDA (Catalysm: Dark Days Ahead). Not sure if I've lost more of my life to one of those or to Slay the Spire. I don't regret it one bit.
Been meaning to get into Cogmind (which seems even more aesthetically appealing than Brogue) and Caves of Qud, but I have children now, and must wait until they are of age before re-engaging with such things.
Brogue was my introduction to the genre. I also tried Golden Krone Hotel, a beginner-friendly title (and the first one I beat)! I played CoQ for a while, too, but there's something about Cogmind that clicked with me. I'm not very good at it, but it's a _total_ blast.
And I agree with you -- it is, imo, the most beautiful roguelike that I've seen or played. And it's got hundreds of unique sound effects, too, which makes a huge difference.
I've thought about CDDA, but honestly, the amount of material there is intimidating. But it looks very cool.
These games are indeed dangerous! I don't have kids, but I'm still in school, so I have to be careful. When you have some time, definitely give Cogmind a try. Hope you enjoy it!
Cogmind is a lot of really thought out small touches that sum up to an engaging experience despite at first glance looking like any other roguelike. It's got great animations/explosions and an intuitive UI.
The developer is the main mod of r/roguelikedev, has been running a great blog for years where he dives deep into aspects of roguelike dev (https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/), and is also just a wonderful human who genuinely loves supporting the community and playing roguelike games.
Sure, CDDA is a roguelike -- the word was supposed to mean primarily a specific way of controlling the character, introduced in Rogue. Everybody in the roguelike community calls it a roguelike.
The fun part is trying to identify certain items before actually using them. (The guesses won't always be perfect, but you can greatly improve your odds.)
Skyrim had that mechanic. You could eat ingredients for potions and if you had a duplicate it would tell you the effects, and the next time you found the ingredient again you would know what it was.
There is one raw ingredient in Skyrim which will kill the player. But it can't be found in the wild. It's given to you for a Dark Brotherhood quest. But you don't have to use it in the quest. Can keep it for later use.
Only in the most obvious of cases. Your cat reluctantly steps on an item? Cursed. Grey stone moved less than X tiles when kicked? Loadstone. Hundreds of these.
Some, but not all. For example, "Call a white potion:" or "Call a scroll labeled VE FORBRYDERNE:" prompts. These often appear after observing an effect where an experienced player or one consulting spoilers knows what the potion or scroll must be, but the game didn't auto-ID it.
DCSS does; NetHack sometimes does but there are very many cases in which you observe some effect and are then asked "Call a milky potion:" or "Call a scroll labeled ANDOVA BEGARIN:".
It would be nice if you could manually identity items though; sometimes the context you get a potion from tells you what the potion is but you have to remember that until you use it. Using the stones of intuition for this kind of seems wasteful.
It's reminding me I need to rebuild my very-slightly-modified version to keep my Google Play developer account active!
Shattered Pixel encourages variants and branches, though sometimes Google tries to block the blatant clones that want to publish on Google Play, even though the license and developers want that outcome.
On the other thread of "brutally punishing", there is the "Too Cruel" variant of an earlier version of Shattered for those of us who need more difficulty. PD is more like a long game of chess than a dungeon crawler.
So after reading the positive comments here I went ahead and bought a copy for iPhone in the App Store.
I was hoping that it supports controllers, as i recently bought a pretty neat controller that you plug the phone into the middle of, and you get buttons and thumb sticks on each side of the screen. Kind of similar to the joycons you have with a Nintendo Switch. This controller is PlayStation branded, but produced by a different company that has licensed the right to brand the controller that way.
Anyway, I am happy to report that yes indeed this game works with my controller. Left thumb stick moves the character around, and right thumb sticks moves a sort of aiming square around!
Edit: the pointer sensitivity was a bit high for me, but it is adjustable in the game settings and after adjusting it it is comfortable
Oh I know those! I had one for the iPhone 6s, but now my 12 Pro is obviously bigger, so it doesn't fit.
So, I 3D-printed one of those holders that holds an XBox controller and your phone above it. A bit heavy, but works perfectly for all controller-enabled games! And worthy of mention, Geforce Now also works! So I'm "PC-gaming" from my bed with this, and all for "free" (if you don't count the cost of the plastic, phone, or controller lol).
Backbone One? I recently got the non-PlayStation branded one for my iPhone and I love it. I had been wanting one for a while, and finally jumped when they released the Gen 2 version with swappable mounts to support cases.
It’s been fantastic for playing SNES games on mobile. I can’t recommend it enough. Only downside would be the included app is hot trash. Always tries to sell you some subscription. Luckily, I haven’t found the need to ever use the app.
I was waiting a bit too, because it’s not exactly cheap.
Eventually I found one that was brand new that someone was selling second hand because they had bought the wrong version. They had the latest iPhone which has a USB-C port, but they had bought the Backbone One with lightning connector. I have a slightly older model. The iPhone 14 Pro. So mine has lightning connector. He got most of his money back that way, and I got a discount compared to buying one in the store. Everybody wins :)
Anyway yeah, I’ve been enjoying mine too. I’ve mostly been using it with Nvidia Now or what it’s called. Via the Backbone app. This way I can play some of the games I have in my Steam account on a computer in the cloud using my phone and my Backbone One. I only play at home on WiFi, and I’m on the free plan so I have to wait in a queue and each play session lasts 1 hour and then I have to start a new session. Been re-playing one of the modern Tomb Raider games this way and have been quite enjoying it so far.
I hadn’t played games for a long time, mostly because of school, but recently I picked up Cogmind, a fantastic sci-fi roguelike. Basically, you’re a robot that can attach and replace different items, including utilities, propulsion systems, weapons, and power sources. It’s some of the most fun I’ve had playing a game in ages.
The developer, Josh Ge, is also very kind and deeply engaged with the community, which is great.
https://pixeldungeon.fandom.com/wiki/Shattered_Pixel_Dungeon is a great resource if you are new to the game and genre, although I suggest first trying discovering everything by yourself (prepare to die a lot) and start reading the wiki after getting through the first boss on lvl 5.
I've been playing SPD for years now and for me the best strategy to win the game is to keep Scrolls of Upgrade until you get a hold of a weapon of at least tier 4, same goes for armor. This makes the initial levels much more risky, but if you survive it's a matter of not making mistakes or getting yourself into high risk situations. Using this method I get to the Amulet in about 30% of the runs.
Since the recent updates getting back to the ground has become a much more fun challenge.
Besides postponing the use of Scrolls of Upgrade, here are a few things that work for me:
* You don't have to identify potions and scrolls right away, often you can keep them until you gather more information. For example, killed flies sometimes drop health potion and they are on early levels, so you can learn the color without using it.
* Before you get the Scroll Holder that protects the scrolls from fire, it's a good idea to stash all the scrolls in water at the beginning of each level and retrieve them back before going to the next one.
* Scrolls of Mapping are absolutely crucial on levels >20 because of the traps and they are relatively cheap in the first two shops.
* Summoning trap rooms are great to gather a lot of xp if you have potions of paralytic gas and fire/toxic gas. After the level is cleared, you just open the doors by throwing something at it, go as far away as possible, throw paralytic and then fire/toxic potions. And run to the next level.
If you like the game, consider donating to the project, you can do this directly in the game, at least in the Android version.
HN markdown doesn't want you to indent bullet lists.
> killed flies sometimes drop health potion and they are on early levels,
Stuff like this feels a little game breaking. Maybe potions should have no color until consumed (though this conflicts with the (arguably maldesigned) inventory system where duplicate objects have 0 encumbrance).
There's a delicate line between "learning how to play the game" and bypassing the intentional design that certain facts are not supposed to be known before a run starts.
I don’t say this to be mean but if you think Pixel Dungeon is “Ultra Nightmare” mode, games like Nethack or Caves of Qud would probably cause you actual physical pain.
Pixel Dungeon is one of the most beginner friendly roguelikes, widely considered the “next step” in difficulty after the Mystery Dungeon series. (I often recommend it to people that enjoyed Pokémon Mystery Dungeon but find Nethack and DCSS too intense)
I see it as a different model of building knowledge about the game than most other genres. Dying early is part of the process, because each time you die you got to this point in a bit different way, learning other things on the way.
If you were hand-held to the very end you'd only see a a narrow path you went through, which is also ok. It's just a difference in the journey, similar to Breadth-First Search and Deep-First Search in graphs.
Another thing is game fairness. In my opinion, SPD is fair, there's no "you stepped on something you couldn't detect if you tried and died". If you pay attention you will see enough information to identify threats after the initial die-a-lot period :)
Sounds like Elden Ring. I started playing it recently and got annoyed at how often I died. But I realized that's part of the learning process. It's still annoying but at least I can see it for what it is.
The traps just happen randomly throughout. The best run I had going ended instantly when I hit an alarm trap. It's impossible to recover. I cannot even escape lone enemies without a ring of haste.
Yeah, I could have detected that on a search, but I'm usually struggling to stay fed in the first place.
* Don’t eat right away when the game says you’re hungry. Wait until you’re starving and below 50% health. This makes each food ration last way longer!
* Don’t eat pasties or meat. When you find an alchemy pot, use the recipe that combines one food ration, one piece of meat, and one pasty to make a meat pie. The meat pie is way more nourishing and gives you a “well fed” health regeneration buff.
* Try to be efficient with your movement and exploration. If you’re not careful you can end up wasting a huge amount of time wandering around not accomplishing anything. This also leads to more monsters being generated which means you take more damage, taxing your resources.
* Along those same lines: always try to fight dirty. If you see an enemy coming towards you try to hit them a bit at range (throw stuff or zap wands) then retreat behind a closed door or around some tall grass. When the enemy comes through the door or around/through the grass, hit them with an attack. You should see a yellow ! mark on the enemy indicating a surprise attack. Now retreat behind another obstacle and repeat. As long as you keep breaking line-of-sight and then hitting the enemy immediately when they reestablish line-of-sight (this also works with ranged attacks) you’ll get guaranteed surprise hits. This lets you defeat enemies more quickly without taking as much damage standing there missing all the time.
* Don’t overdo it though. After you’ve gained some levels and find you easily outclass an enemy then kill them quickly. Leading enemies all over the place takes more time (costing food) and can end up getting you surrounded, causing even more damage!
* Throw stuff down pits instead of carrying it around. This applies mostly to weapons, armour, and scrolls (before you get the scroll holder). Anything you throw down a pit will show up on the next level. This is a great way to avoid running back and forth swapping items when you’re low on inventory space and you want to sell things or do alchemy. Don’t throw potions though, they break (but do throw them at enemies or obstacles when the situation calls for it!)
In addition to brewing pies, you can also prepare excess meat easily by freezing or burning it. Throw it at traps, use wands, or even potions if you're using one anyway (otherwise don't waste a potion like this.) If you can easily kill fish (archer class) then you can get a lot of excess meat.
Yes, traps are put in random places. At least they can't be placed on water, grass or ash, so are safer sections to go through without doing search before each step.
That's why it's a really good idea to collect 4 Scrolls of Mapping for levels 1-24.
With the exception of NetHack, which is famous for it, current roguelikes generally don't end the run for stupid shit (e.g. instead of killing you if you accidentally step into lava, they just don't let you do it), but more for wrong strategy or tactics.
I started an opinionated and still incomplete guide for new players https://spd-huntress-guide.pages.dev/guide. I didn't put it out there and was going to take it down because I couldn't finish it let alone maintain it. It's impossible to keep up with the pace of Evan's updates so the walk-throughs with seeds probably don't work, but someone might find it useful.
As someone who was intrigued by this post but felt a little overwhelmed starting out, this is awesome. Thank you for sharing, whether its incomplete/outdated or not.
I’ve played this for a while, and not to brag, but I’ve got to chapter two on a warrior AND mage.
I love the identification process and relatively quick, albeit very tactical if you want, gameplay. It’s my go to iPhone game when on short journeys, mostly because I can just save where I am and pick up whenever without having to remember dungeon layout or potions/food etc.
While imperfect, I nevertheless adored Reign of Swords/Clash of Kingdom on my old iPod touch back in ~2008.
I've looked for a replacement for years but 99.9% of similar games on the App Store are spam/pay to win/microtransaction hell with the typical cheap ugly "international" art style.
Oh man, that reminds me of my childhood in rural Greece, where the only software I could get was from magazines, where they downloaded demo/shareware versions of stuff and put it on a CD.
Obviously there was no way for me to pay or get the full software, so I spent hours and hours playing the same levels over and over in the demo.
I loved Castle of the Winds, and another turn-based games with pirates. There was also a similar one with tanks and such, called Metal Knights maybe?
If you like Magic The Gathering card playing game, avoid Forge (Desktop + Android) because it is open source (made in Java) and it has all the cards, gameplays, you can build your deck or choose from a huge list of ready-made ones and play against the AI and online up to 4 players in the same game I believe.
recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38651346 and XMage is usually submitted alongside them when any M:TG makes the front page, including the quarterly(?) "M:TG is Turing complete" paper thread
By sheer coincidence I'd installed this a few weeks ago. It's really well made, but I ended up uninstalling it because—unless I'm really missing something—it is punishingly difficult. Maybe I don't know all the controls? Or there's some sort of mechanic I'm missing? Or maybe my expectations are wrong?
This very much seems like the kind of game I'd enjoy, but I find myself getting absolutely obliterated by the first snake or two that I encounter. I've yet to figure out how to sneak up on or by them. I've yet to find or earn any early loot that might help.
If anyone knows what I'm doing wrong, please let me know. I'd love to just crank the difficulty down by 50%.
I primary play the huntress, so all these are from that perspective:
* only eat when necessary, that is starving or early on level and likely lot of enemies.
* your first upgrade scroll is for your permanent bow, upgrade the scroll, then apply it to the bow
* there is a specific path for enemy's approach, always
* use the seeds with statues and mimics in there presumed path
* ranged attacks where possible
* before walking into a well of health, put on all the cursed items, they will become uncursed
* in the shop order of buying is next bag/satchel, then food (even with horn of plenty), ankh (unless you are super confident), thereafter as augment your weaknesses with potions of healing, scrolls, rings, wands from the store
* when picking up things make sure you pick up in order of most preferred to least preferred. Items last picked up get stolen first.
* always try to "trap" enemy in a door. i.e. they stand in the doorway
* if you get a plate armour, dump every, single, upgrade into it. No questions.
* drink potions early, standing near door and water
* a broken honey pot & health potion brewed is worth more than individually
* upgrade potion of experience and scroll of transmutation, then use it to pick and improve a tiers of abilities.
* the frost and fireblast wands can turn your raw meat into good food. With frost, the meat needs to be against a wall or something. Fireblast just torches everything.
* rooms with traps - if they are single target traps, go to the furthest spot, then rest or make noise to bring the enemies in. Throw stuff on the trap triggering attacks on the enemy. for the avalanche rooms, drop something in the doorway, step back then throw stuff on the traps.
* enraged gnolls, just walk away. There is no arguing with someone who lost self-control :)
Get the snake to follow you through a door and hit the snake when they step into the door. This counts as a sneak attack. I think if you inspect the snake with the magnifying glass it will give you this hint (always take your time and do this with new enemies.
Alternatively, play as a mage (wands always hit snakes) or as an archer and shoot the snakes when they're still asleep.
Most of the game's difficulty curve is in learning tricks like this to cheese enemies. For instance, always fight flies (or any large group) in chokepoints.
Are you making full use of the items you find, or are you dying with an inventory of wands/scrolls/potions that you were saving for a rainy day? One of the things to do is to identify items when you have some safety. One way to do that is to use the wands on enemies. Sometimes you do end up wasting a charge or empowering the enemy, but then you know what the thing does. And after a few runs you'll have a sense for something like "I've identified a lot of the 'good' scrolls, so its more likely the unidentified ones are 'bad' ones"
The real trick to surviving the early game is to abuse the heck out of surprise attacks. Do not fight enemies in the open early on! Throw/zap stuff at them from a distance and then retreat behind a door. As soon as they step through the door, hit them! You should see a yellow ! indicating a surprise attack (guaranteed hit). Now retreat and do it again!
This trick works with anything that breaks line of sight. Doors and tall grass are my preferred options. It even works if you step through a door (closing it behind you) or around a patch of tall grass (to the opposite side of the grass from the enemy) and the enemy immediately opens the door or otherwise follows right behind you.
If you like these kinds of games but find SPD to be a little too mechanically simple and lacking in build diversity, you may also enjoy DCSS (dungeon crawl stone soup) and my personal favorite: Frogcomposband.
You can play the later at angband.live, and it's an exceptional game with incredible depth and variety.
And BTW, if I can figure out how to do Eclipse CDT and get the source code running in an IDE, so that I can do LOTS of fun things with class skills, you can to! Because the last time I did C/C++ was 1998.
Also, Remnants of the Precursors (java) you can do some fun things. I got "doomstars" half-implemented, a race skill that marks planets with resources or artifacts (archaeology bonus), and lots of other fun things.
I really like open source games, half the fun is hacking them.
I have yet to download nethack from the net and hack it though.
I agree about SPD. While it's great for a mobile game and looks gorgeous, I find the gameplay somewhat shallow for a roguelike.
If I have a monitor and keyboard at hand, I prefer to play the likes of ADOM (classic version, not Ultimate), Brogue, Legerdemain, Sil, DCSS, etc. which offer more depth, strategic complexity and meaningful choices, IMHO.
Haven't tried the frog one, will do at some point.
There was a Nintendo DS port of Stone Soup that I really loved. Had some great times provoking monsters into fighting each other while I hid in the shadows.
So I used to play Pixel Dungeon and then saw a bunch of clones that looked like it. Is Shattered Pixel Dungeon the original project or a clone of a closed source game? Or completely unrelated?
The original Pixel Dungeon was closed source IIRC, but then the developer stopped working on it and released the source code. Now there are many forks/mods of PD, all with different features (the Pixel Dungeon wiki has a great list). Shattered PD is the most popular and polished one, it adds a ton of stuff and is very actively developed.
Yeah, I was looking though the code wondering what java based rendering library this was using but all of these support classes come from "PD-classes" (which was sighted in the SPD readme... just never joined the dots) but also pointed me to the creators itch account and relevant "Generator" artworks which are all very impressive
I don't necessarily think so. Evan puts a LOT of effort into balance. But even so, I've gotten to where I have 5 challenge modes turned on to make it a challenge, so maybe you're right.
The trick is knowing what you have to do, and focusing only on that. Backtracking is the enemy, and should be avoided aside from unlucky guesses as to how a map is laid out.
If you're the wizard, the horn of plenty is almost a cheat code, because one of your character upgrades gives you brief recharging when you eat, and the horn allows you to "nibble" constantly. Plus you can't starve.
Also, if you go warlock, you have a character upgrade that lets you get food and healing from bopping a marked enemy. That's super useful.
The monk has a class skill that lets you "meditate" to heal, and the fuel for that is defeating enemies. Right now my character is starving most of the time, but I meditate often enough to mitigate it.
Using the alchemy pot to mix 1 ration, 1 pie, and 1 piece of meat (any kind), gives you a super food that lasts longer than the combination of all plus additional healing over time. And feeding a super food to the horn of plenty is 4 upgrades at once.
But the biggest trick is just avoiding all possible damage as much as possible, so that you can keep a reserve of healing potions.
"It's based on the source code of Pixel Dungeon, by Watabou." I also played the original Pixel Dungeon, great game and bonus points for being free and open source!
I've played a fair number of PD spin-offs / remixes and Shattered stands out as the best. It get regular updates that sometimes add or substantially change large chunks of the game.
It's an awesome game, I'm playing it non-stop since last summer and embarked my 9-years old daughter along. We're sharing games and exchanging bits of information (yes, she's thinking out of the box, and it sometimes works :) )
The author, Evan, is maintaining a fediverse community for all mods of the original Pixel Dungeon, accessible via https://photon.lemmy.world/c/pixeldungeon for instance, after the Reddit troubles from last year.
I love roguelike games (still miss you 100 Rogues), and I played Shattered Pixel Dungeon 77 times before finally winning with a Rogue class. Once I'd done that, I never had the urge to play it again.
This is the only game I ever donated to. I open it up almost every time I recompile and run. My previous build was an experimental corrupt mage with corpse dust. I wanted to see if I can balance charges and corrupting an army of wraiths that spawn all the time because of the corpse dust. Current build is a plain old assassin with +10 assassin's blade and anti-magic armor. Trying out the badder bosses challenge this time.
Via wand of corruption. But you need a lot of recharge. Ring, ability and armor needs to be able to recharge your wands. Wraiths become very resistant to wand towards the end, so you will need those charges.
Excellent game, I lost an embarrassing amount of time last year getting all of the badges.
The mobile versions are great because they’re ad-free, and work without internet access when on airplanes. And since it’s turn-based, it’s very interruption-friendly. The Reddit community is also a lot of fun: equal mix of strategy and memes.
All of them? I gave up on that goal partway through the pandemic; I spent about a year's worth of occasional games without seeing Tengu and eventually accepted that I wasn't interested enough to get that 6-challenge badge.
Strategy on Reddit, you say? Perhaps that could help. But, perhaps it's better if I don't spelunk that particular rabbithole.
For the last badge, it wasn't masterful strategy: I played until I got lucky with an overpowered Ring of Wealth run, and farmed the dwarven floors for like 3 days before breezing through the demon halls and ascending. That one and only six challenge run landed with 1,050,700 points, which was just enough to get the final "Over 1 million points" badge.
That was the last round I played, almost a year ago. I consider myself free from the game now, but look back on it fondly :)
For those who enjoy SPD I recommend checking out some other popular roguelikes, many of them are also open source.
Some of my personal recommendations would be brogue (probably the most beginner friendly), DCSS (friendly, tons of content), ADoM and Cataclysm DDA (a sandbox survival roguelike, quite a unique mix)
Currently hung up on CDDA. Probably the most complicated hardcore game I've ever touched. Learning curve like a brick wall. Incredibly rewarding to master though.
Really love that it's FOSS. I've got a bunch of scripts I run to scan the game files to learn things that are hard to get just from the in game menus.
"Stone Soup" refers to the Stone Soup folk story, where people contribute their supplies to make a great soup for everyone (it is developed by many people who contribute to the open-source project started by Linley Henzell as Linley's Dungeon Crawl).
Still a better name than NetHack (which is not a game about hacking networks... "Net" just refers to collaboration over net to improve the game Hack). There is also BrogueCE ("Brogue Community Edition").
I should probably have used the full names for clarity,
either way the acronyms mean, in order: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Ancient Domains of Mystery and Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead.
I see they accept donations (and it's probably the only way they keep themselves financially supported), does it need to go through Play Store's billing system?
Afaik, Google takes down open-source apps that link to their donation page without going through their billing system because it falls on their "no circumvention" policy.
Was absolutely obsessed with it couple of years ago. Hard, deep mechanics for its genre, super fun. First finish was quite the ride. What a win for FOSS.
An open-source multiplayer version of this would be pretty sweet!
I've been playing on and off for about 3 years now, I'm not even very good, have never beat it yet.
In the past week or two I've learned about better strategies, e.g. max out your weapon so you can one-hit most enemies. Trading blows is a death sentence.
This play guide has more helpful knowledge information:
Ome additional note: Don't let thieves get too far away after they steal from you, else This stolen item will disappear forever. This just happened to me a few minutes ago.
How would multiplayer work with the turn-based aspect? Do you have to wait for other players to take their turns? This would be terribly boring IMO. Do you instead allow anyone to take a turn whenever? That turns the game into an RTS. I've thought about this a lot and I don't really think it's possible.
Yeah it'd have to be a RTS/ Diablo type of mechanic, although if you keep food as a number-of-moves-limiter, the turn-based aspect may be less critical.
Maybe a game could work where each player explores the map independently but when a creature is encountered, the other player is teleported in, and then returns to prior spot after the fight? Could be fun.
Got most of the way through act 3 and uninstalled bg3. I like that game, but just didn't feel compelled to complete it. At that point, it has been so long since the characters leveled up that gameplay was just sort of repetitive. There weren't really any new tactics to learn and employ.
The level cap killed that game for me, it turns out.
This is cool, I love a good roguelike especially on my phone for flights and other time sinks.
I am curious though, why is the iOS version €4.99 but the Android version is free ? I've seen this a lot actually and have always wondered, I figured it might just be Apple's annual developer license fee but not sure.
Yep that's exactly the reason, plus not wanting to compete with Pixel Dungeon. The developer talked about it when first announcing it was coming to iOS
> Shattered Pixel Dungeon will cost $5 US when it fully releases on the App Store. I’m charging because of a mix of Apple’s higher platform fees, not wanting to undercut Pixel Dungeon, and because Shattered is releasing in a much more finished state.
Can’t shake the thought that this is mostly caused by Apple not allowing easy side installs. Android making it easy to just install a custom app but not on iOS so basically the developer is (ab)using to let iOS users pony up install money.
this is far and away the best roguelike i've played on mobile. indeed, it's pretty much the only roguelike i've ever seen that has a decent mobile user experience. you can tell that the dev team has put a tremendous amount of work into making it look and feel good.
i looked it up, and it looks like more of a metroidvania than a roguelike. also the play store reviews say the controls aren't great on mobile. might pick it up for steam deck though, it does look fun :)
Just got hit with a wave of nostalgia, I remember playing it in 2015, and I opened up the link to Google Play, and I still see my comments there, that the dev even responded too. Great game that I will have to pick up again!
It's a great game, and feels very very close to crawl, aka Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It's also fair regarding the payment model (cosmetics only, otherwise completely free on the mechanics side).
It has been neat watching this game change over the years. Every year or so, enough new updates have been had that it feels like a new "season"; similar to online games. It keeps getting better.
This is one of those games I wish I could play on an emulator or VM or something where I could take a snapshot and subsequently undo my inevitable, catastrophic mistake.
Thanks for reminding me of it, I used to play it all the time but haven't even installed it for several years. I bought it after a recommendation from Roguelike Radio, the podcast hosted by Darren Grey, one of the ADOM and TOME devs (If I remember correctly)
Any reason this is not provided for download through F-Droid. I trust apps on F-Droid more than Google Play and helps with installing in degoogled phones.
Downloading the APK direct from GitHub is the official way to get it without the Play Store. App updates take a bit more work, but you can set up notifications through GitHub to be notified for new releases.
Just FYI, there's an Android app called Obtainium that lets you add Github (and a few other VCS) repos to it. Obtanium will then check those repos for updates and install the new APK for you. Its pretty slick for people that prefer to get their APKs direct from the dev.
I like Fdroid because it automatically compiles from source and does vulnerability scanner. Its not a safe practice to download random binary blobs from github. Its a shame it looks like a nice implementation but I will have to give it a pass.
You don’t have to die often. Winning streaks of 20+ (with 6 challenges active) are completely doable. This guy RunningFromCake [1] has some nice tutorials on how to get better at the game. He also has videos showing his winning streaks and how he accomplishes them.
I (perhaps mistakenly?) started with YAPD but then got my friend hooked and he went for SPD. I love how active the SPD dev is, but the mechanics are juuust a tad too different for me to want to learn them all. Both are great games though!
I downloaded (not Shattered) Pixel Dungeon and then Shattered, and nearly a decade later I'm still playing. In fact it's 70% of my non-work computing time.
Not only that Shattered's dev updates often with sometimes great changes.
I feel your pain. I've spent more time playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup than I care to admit. The fact that this can be played on Android makes it even more dangerous.
