Rogue Legacy - Steam

So it begins, a legacy of dead characters.

The king was murdered; the betrayer stands within the castle and rules in his place, he is your ancestor. Something it keeping him alive and while he lives, the injustice remains rife. You attempt to right the wrongs that have been made to set order and balance back on the path of righteousness. The loss is more personal, your father went into the castle to resolve this issue and was never seen again, now it’s your turn as you leave your children behind and head to the traitor’s keep. Charon, agent of death stands before you and relieves you of your worldly possessions as you enter with but your armour and weapons and inside you step to continue the Rogue Legacy.

The only stable room in the set up

This is the gist of the game without giving too much away at first. It’s a platformer rogue-like and the rogue-like element here is that the cast you enter changes its layout each time (unless... you unlock the ability to keep it), and each entry into the castle will cost you your remaining cash but all cash found in the castle is kept for buying upgrades, armours, runes (empowering modifications) and the such. Within the castle lies a wealth of traps, monsters, mini-bosses, 4 main bosses and then finally (if you get this far) the last boss and a definitely final boss if we’re talking tropes at this point.

Select your sprog to go and die for your cause.

Much like games like Infinity Blade, we’re talking about generational progression. Your character, of whichever background (more about that in a moment) will be killed and stored in the gallery for all time. When you start hitting around the 40 lives lost mark, you begin to realise there’s quite an enormity behind losing. Not unlike the original Cannon Fodder which had tombstones for every single person lost in combat that would soon litter the level select screen.

Looks a bit crap, but later the castle will be quite a size with all unlocked items accessible

Each time you begin an attempt on the castle, you get to pick from one of three offspring of the previous attempt. Or basically a randomly generated set of characters which includes their classification, perks and demerits. Ranging from having Barbarians that have slim builds and more likely to be knocked back on a hit, to ninjas that don’t activate spikes because they lack a pulse in their limbs (it makes sense in context) to Paladins that are colour-blind, or longsighted (around you is blurring) short-sighted (around you is NOT blurry) to not being able to see incoming projectiles from off-screen and so on. It gives a very large pool of variation which can include being gay (a fan of the man/woman depending upon your gender and then makes one wonder how there’s a next generation... but I digress). This also includes the spell you will be taking with you ranging from throwing axes, knives, fireball walls, bouncing balls, homing attacks and more.

You died. And there's all the people you killed. Also, this one suffered coprolalia

As said, it’s a platform game, levels are randomly generated and each castle layout has the objective of killing 4 bosses and then the final boss to beat the castle before New Game+ is activated. The problem is you will die, a lot, and as a rogue-like you need to accept that fact and realise it is part of the game mechanic. Dying will return you to the HQ where you keep your cash from that run and can spend it on upgrades to stats, abilities, classes of characters, how much money Charon takes from you, unlocking new helpers that will give you new abilities and improving battle %’s for things like critical hits (if your particular class CAN do critical hits... Hokage, looking at you).

New equipment? Costs money. New runes? Costs money. Pattern much? Costs Money...

Graphically, the game is a strong call back to less serious looking platformers with plenty of cartoony styled graphics and animations (seriously, I love the hero’s running animation), monsters are sufficiently detailed with bosses really taking the biscuit on account of their size while scenery and backgrounds are lavished with those cute little nods and tips of detail that really bring the whole package together.

Spikes, Skeletons and monsters, oh my!

The music is select of a nice set of compositions, depending upon which area of the castle you’re in or if you find a juke box, there’s nothing overbearing or underwhelming and everything plods along at an agreeable pace while stopping short of becoming that ear-tick where you end up humming the same few bars over and over. It’s sufficient and fits the bill with some interesting use of instrumentals within the pieces themselves. The sound effects are diverse enough with your character having multiple sounds for being injured; spells and attacks use diverse effects to accompany their use.

Some of the locations are rather otherworldly, that's a huge moon too.

Overall it’s a fun game with a lot of replay factor though the random number generator can really stitch you up if you’re unlucky and have to play through multiple, horribly and awkwardly laid-out rooms. Sometimes you’ll die in the first few levels, other times you’ll die after a few bosses are beaten, but the random generation and the upgrading mechanic will keep players playing this for a long time. But not as long as it could have been, eventually there will be a point where insufficient progression will be made, where it’s impossible to continue on with the game and there’s nothing left to attain or unlock and then it’ll wither away because everything’s been done and there’s too much focused direction for the player to hold onto, the game being more rogue-like than rogue leaves it satisfying for a while but eventually unfulfilling.

Moraff's World - DOS

Thanks to the set up, this was the best title screen I could get. Shut up.

Thought I'd go WAY back to the dawn of time and pluck forth from the depths of DOS, a game that first got me into the whole Dungeons and/or Dragons principle of wandering around a dungeon with various health points, other sorts of stats and generally kicking the shit out of multiple monsters that couldn't reach the upper level where it was safe and I was the only person in the town that could do anything at all, ever. I am of course referring to Moraff's World.

Choose your race, or whichever set of numbers looks nicer to you.

The idea is simple enough, create a character using a quick sheet and wandering your way through approximately 200 levels of dungeons in your quest to punch out the Red Dragon King. (I didn't vote for him...) On the way you'll encounter a veritable army of monsters ranging from badly drawn orcs, to badly drawn puffballs, to badly drawn dragons and many other badly drawn creatures. Combat is an easy enough affair of simply pressing F for fight when they're up close to you and the winner is the one still with a positive number of hit points.

Well, what teenager isn't this these days?

 Interestingly, the screen splits the view into 4 view screens, each one showing your perspective while facing in the four key compass directions. Upper view showing North, Lower view showing South and so on, which allows you to see in all directions and lowers the chance of something sneaking up on you and taking you by surprise. (I said 'lowers' not 'stops'...) What it doesn't stop, is that some walls are fake and enemies can pop out from them at a moment's notice.

How would you like to play? Pick carefully or you're going to be in trouble.

Depending upon your character will depend upon whether they're capable of using weapons, or spells, if they have access to any or all spells and if they gain Experience by wandering around or by fighting and killing things. There's a host of different ways to play the game but regardless of that, it's all a very similar experience.

Slightly confusing at first but the display lets you see all round at all times.

There is only one dungeon and even if you leave to head into the wilderness, you won't find a different dungeon, just the same one again and again. That said, the dungeon is huge at 200 levels and a town where you'll be running back to in order to level up or exchange your hard won cash into game-legal tender (carrying too much will slow you down and give faster monsters more attacks before you can retaliate). You'll also be able to head into the Temple and cure poisons, diseases and resurrect yourself should you bite the big one.

Killing monsters and taking stones, repeat, repeat, repeat.... Ad Nauseam.

The biggest issue in the game is that of combating boredom. After a while it becomes an endless slog through dungeon floor after dungeon floor before you get to the point you MIGHT want to find and kill a boss monster and gain from it a key that will let you descend to that floor instantly. IF you can find the ladder that will take you there. The other big issue here is that without spells or items that can tell you, there's little indication as to which floor of the dungeon you're on. Some ladders in the dungeon drop you one floor, some will drop you multiple floors and the almost undetectable trapdoors can drop any number of levels downwards. Of course this doesn't sound too bad but remember that the further down you go, the higher the level of the monsters and the more powerful monsters come out to play. You know the ones I mean. Those that can strip you of your armour in one move, those that can poison and inflict diseases upon you, those that can drain your levels for you. You know now, the fun ones.

Ah yes, the lovely "Blocker" types of low attack/high hp that just waste your time.

Finding treasures is a random event that happens on the defeat of every monster, you could, for instance, find the most powerful armour on the first creature you battle, or the most powerful weapon but at the same time you might first 1 copper piece, which isn't worth anything in real terms within the game. Typically, Cups of Health will be found initially at the start of the game but later on, you'll be running back and forth from town to the lower levels in search of the stronger monsters so that you might level up sooner rather than later.

The bat, it could infect you, but at 3HP you're more likely to catch a cold than a disease.

Outside of the scope of the instructions, there's little here to keep people playing once they grow tired of the monotonous exploration and discovery, new threats of monsters become annoying when you realise that it will take considerable time and preparation to even begin fighting them and then to realise that some monsters can ignore powerful attacks and spells on the basis of "I'm just not going to accept that" and then it's out of health time and you're dead, or resurrected if you paid enough for it.

Second Wind

While recently many of the games I've reviewed have been commercial releases, punted out by corporations and professionals that produce multitudes of games and such in vast numbers. I thought I'd review something with skill and talent in that hasn't be blighted by the "Triple A" touch of video games I like to refer to as "Thrown enough cash at it to solve a 3rd World Country's starvation issues" and instead is made simply by a few people, with little more behind the motivation beyond the fact they WANT to make the game.

I really should review INDIE games a lot more. There's a lot more variation in the different games and yes, there's a LOT of crappy ones, but the true gems shine even harder for that matter. When you do find something that glorious, you cannot help but be impressed by the concept, the originality, the execution or all of the aforementioned aspects at once.

This one is a flash game from what I can tell so far. It might be available on other formats though as far as I can tell, it's just on flash. But what a game it is.

A little background, Rogue-likes, as the name suggests, are any games that fit a model identifiable with the game Rogue. In which you wander around a dungeon that's randomly generated and continue to progress to harder and harder levels, taking on harder and harder enemies while collecting weapons, items, spells etc to level up and hopefully get to the bottom and win the game. In a manner of speaking. Second Wind, takes the bare bones of this concept and removes the structure of dungeon floor space by having everything that happens as a randomly occurring event.

For example, on the first level, which is set in a dungeon, you'll explore places and perhaps happen upon a monster, an event of skill/strength, shops selling either weapons, armour or health potions, Non-Playable Characters that have their own interactions and quests, or one of the many avatars for what qualifies as Gods within the game itself. Finding one could mean finding another one in the next move, or not finding another one for the next 20 or so movements. So you could find a text that explains a snippet of the world you're in, and never see it again for the next 30 games, or bump straight back into it the next time you press "explore" but that's random number crunching for you.

This does get annoying when you NEED to get to a certain location in order to progress to the next level.

Each enemy is a parody or rip-off of other enemies found within similar games. Usually accompanying the enemy is a very out of place description, something jovially cutting about the genre and then something equally humorous to found when defeating said enemy. For the most part it's very light hearted on the humour and will often give you a chuckle (assuming you GET the reference) the first few times you fight the adversary.

Given the RPG roots, there's the usual Health, Gold, Level for each character. Health being the main decider between "alive" and "dead" though you can return once from death as part of the eponymous "Second Wind" ability. Your character will have 3 abilities during any fight depending upon which character you chose, of which there are around 20 different types of character from fighters to magicians, martial artists to knights etc. You'll also have Dexterity, Power and Armour ratings which will determine how much Armour Penetration you can do, how much damage you can do and how much damage you can soak up, in respective order.

The catch is that there's a BIG difficulty spike from the first level to the second level and you'll find sometimes that going too soon will result in you fighting enemies you cannot harm because you cannot get past the armour. OR you'll have to rely upon other attacks/abilities that will bypass armour entirely. Such as the Parry technique for fighters, that will return a % of damage back onto the enemy but you have to survive the damage first of all. So if you really cannot damage an enemy, you'll have to run and lose cash or die (and sometimes you can't run at all, because you lack the stats to succeed in running away like a prick).

Story wise, you're someone who has ventured into the dungeons of a world ruled by several Gods. Your purpose to rise to the higher levels, transcend realities and battle the Gods of the world. How you play and how well you do will determine whether you ruin reality or rule it as either MasterMcShitBag or a nicer person. Though the criteria for meeting such endings isn't entirely clear as to getting the best ending or middle ending, though the worst endings are clear for either joining the last boss or losing to him. As it turns out, the best ending is met by killing the last boss without killing any other Gods, which makes it a rather herculean task as the deaths of the other Gods will anoint you with the huge stat boosts that will allow you to fight the last boss on relatively fair terms.

Thankfully you can continue repeatedly in the third level as it's purported to be some form of ascension and as such, leaves you on another plane of reality where you can respawn ad infinitum. It doesn't make it mean much more than repeatedly having your arse handing to you.

Though there's a fairly enjoyable story, it is hidden within "pages" that can be found as random events, detailing the events before the game, leading up to the game and the circumstances found now that shape the course of the protagonist. It can however be entirely bypassed and the game becomes "Whose balls do I break next?" while running around looking for more fights to get stronger and stronger. In these senses, it does become a grind fest and most people will find that, as the monsters get stronger, there becomes a limit at which experience is not gained as much and that is the game's way of telling you to move the hell on and kill the bosses already of that level.

The music within the game has become one of the few games where I've actually sat and done nothing in-game just so I could hear the music playing, particularly for Boss fights and the Final Boss fights. It's a suitable mix of epic and exciting that leads to a satisfying build up, though if you're too overpowered, can detract from the overall expectation of wanting a long, solid battle.

That having been said, it's not going to be everyone's game. You really have to have an affinity for a) grinding through levels to get to higher points and a rather expansive knowledge of tropes for, and around, dungeon crawlers, rogue-likes and other such games, but mainly anything closely associated with Dungeons and Dragons (the tabletop game, not the cartoon series... Even if Eric was whiny, but the best character out of the bunch). However for those that DO get this genre, as esoteric as it might be, there's a rather witty wealth of game contained within that will make even the most ardent player sit back and chuckle softly with a wry smile upon their faces.

Though having said all that... I now want to watch Eric and his shield running around, being sarcastic.