Darkest Dungeon Early Game Review

I have a long and frustrating history with "Rogue-like" games. I love them and I suck at them in equal measure as I mentioned in my iNethack2 review. That being the case, of course I was interested in Red Hook Studio's Steam early access game, Darkest Dungeon. The game started life as a Kickstarter campaign, getting fully funded and delivering.

Darkest Dungeon is a role-playing dungeon-crawler in which you try to reclaim your ancestral home and lands around it from the corruption and evil that has taken root. You do this by recruiting heroes and going off on weekly missions getting ever closer to the next hurdle in your path to your ultimate goal. Simple, right?

Where Darkest Dungeon shines is how it takes the simple dungeon-delving premise and twists it up and makes it brutally hard. Think Lovecraft madness/mental trauma mixed in with X-Com's permanent death along with the base management. Or maybe it is a bit like 10000000 where every run gets you some resources you can use to upgrade your home base (the Hamlet) before going out again. But I get ahead of myself.

Darkest Dungeon takes the usual risk-reward system found in most RPGs and ramps it up to 10. Every time your adventurers go out on a mission, they become stressed. That stress can be caused by their encounters, other party members or just the build up of being used multiple times and leads to them collecting phobias, maladies, diseases and any mess of issues that will make them less effective until they have a chance to rest. Resting and treatment can't take away all of the effects. One of my characters is paranoid, which affects some of her stats, while another became so despondent on a trip to the ruins that he started to make defeatist comments during every battle that stressed out the rest of the party. Based on this and the limited resources available to you, a balance has to be made between taking "fresh" party members out or bringing along a higher level one who is a little bit whacky.

That risk vs reward is built upon by choosing what materials you want to take with you on your mission, more food and torches might be good. What if your characters are hit by monsters and start bleeding? Better stock up on some bandages, etc. All of those items will take pack slots from potential treasures you find on the mission that you want to bring back with you. Then you have to make the choice between upgrading buildings that help relieve stress or those that upgrade your characters' weapons, skills or armor. It's all a set of trade-offs that you will get to work through as you play Darkest Dungeon.

The game-play itself can be managed with mouse or keyboard only and the combat is turn-based with your characters taking turns against the monsters you encounter based on an initiative-like system. You can't rely that you will always get to go first. To make matters more difficult, each being in a battle lines up X X X X vs Y Y Y Y with each position being important. Some of your attack skills will only work from certain positions and can only hit certain other ones on the other team. Have a ranged attack? You probably want to place that character far to the left of your line and they will be able to hit the middle to far right of the enemy's line. This gives you strategic options in how you compose your team so that you can best wipe out the enemies you face. I have found that having a healer, someone who can stun the front ranks of the enemy, someone who can stun the back ranks of the enemy and a tank out front is the best at early levels. What options you will have will depend on the characters that arrive via coach to the Hamlet for you to recruit.

All of this fun is presented in a moody hand-drawn-esque style that is great. The music adds to the macabre feel of the game - like you are playing a horror role-playing game. The only drawback I have seen so far is that the combat and missions do get a little repetitive. Though that is offset by the tactical management of your resources and the depth of options you have at your disposal as you take your characters off to their death, which as I mentioned is permanent.

If you like Rogue-like perma-death games with town upgrades, resource and character management where you have to min-max your way to success, which can fall from your grasp at any moment, then you should be playing Darkest Dungeon right now! I give Darkest Dungeon 4.5 horror-filled screaming adventurer Mick Happies. I wonder if there is any room at the bar for my tippler of a jester?

iNethack2 HD Review

@

The @ symbol has a lot of meaning for me and quite a few older gamers. Long before it was a part of user names on Twitter or even widely known as part of everyones email addresses, it was your player character in one of the best games ever, Rogue (1980). Yes, THE Rogue that is referred to when someone says (or writes) that a game is Rogue-like. Rogue begat Hack (1985) and Mike Stephenson made NetHack (1987). All of them share the same premise of an adventurer trying to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor from deep in a dangerous dungeon. They all sported the same ASCII graphics with the @ as your character you moved through the dungeon. If you haven't heard of them, they are the precursor to games like Diablo.

iNethack was the original version of NetHack to grace the App Store, but it was removed in 2014. It is now back as iNethack2 due to the hard work of Future Shock Software to update the code and get it back out there for players. As a free download, there is no reason why this isn't already on your device. It is compatible with iPhone, iPod and iPad. Or play the latest version of NetHack online here.

Pick a class, any class

The basics of the game are simple. You tap the screen in the direction you want to go. Double-tap and you move in that direction until you run into something or a monster shows up. Run into a monster and you attack it with your weapon. Have a ranged weapon, use the correct command letter in the command bar at the bottom to throw something (or zap if you have a wand or spell) at the monster. Kill it and you gain experience. Don't and you likely are going to die. To help you in your travels you start the game with a pet (kitten or puppy) who can also fight for you in some cases. Warning, your pet can die. You will die. Horribly and often. All of the Rogue-likes share one thing, death is easy and permanent. With the right settings chosen you might even run into your ghost in the dungeon one day.

The Quest

DawnHack tileset and UI

Sounds simple right? It is and it isn't. You have to manage your hit points, collect enough food not to starve, and solve puzzles to make it all the way to the bottom of the dungeon and get the Amulet let alone make it back out again. I have been playing for 30 years and I have never won. I have never even had the Amulet in hand. Even using wiki pages or downloaded guides, I have never ever even been close. It is that hard. I have also never stopped playing. It is that good a game.

Sometimes you take a risk and a Water demon crushes you.

So, dungeon crawl, permadeath and deep gameplay are all here. You choose between a number of character classes and races at the beginning of the game. Your choice determines your starting stats and general equipment. Rangers start with ranged weapons and food, Wizards with wands, rings and spells, etc. Your pet can help you find out if anything you find in the dungeon is cursed or not (a pet will only reluctantly step on a cursed item). Your pet can even help you steal from shops you find along your journeys - you just have to train him or her to do so (by throwing them food when they do something you like). Wish for the right thing and you can have Excalibur in your hand, polymorph objects to change them into better ones, use Genocide scrolls to get rid of extremely dangerous monsters like the Basilisk. Pray to your god for help. Eat what you kill to stay alive. It is all up to you and all in the game.

Here's a death. A sad pathetic one.

Worried that ASCII, old school graphics aren't your thing, you can change it in your settings to something more modern. (Exit the game, go to Settings on your device, find iNethack2, scroll down to Tileset to find a new one. You can also change your character name there or make other adjustments to the gameplay. The game has in-game help to get you started on what the commands do. Don't forget to use s to search as there are hidden traps and doors all over the place.

Here's a better death.

Here's everything I killed on my dungeon crawl.

Don't take my word for it. iNethack2 and its predecessors are some of the best games ever. They are free due to the awesome work of very smart people making them available that way. Go get a copy or play online. You won't regret it. iNethack2 gets 5 Mick Happies. If you like it, buy a copy of Future Shock Studios' Interplanetary Drift to say thank you for making it available on iOS again.

iOS Puzzle Games - Hoplite Review

I like iOS games for playing when I want to be distracted for a little while (except Hearthstone, which can keep me distracted for a long while), usually before bed or on a lunch break when not reading. That is why I love it when things go on sale and this is the best time of year for sales. I recommend, if you have an iOS device and like gaming, that you get a copy of the TouchArcade app and start "watching" all of the games you are interested in…that way you get notifications when they go on sale. Well this week two games I have been watching for a while went on sale for the massively low price of "free". The games, Hoplite (free thanks to Pocket Gamer UK) and The Nightmare Cooperative, are similar in that they are both turn-based puzzle games with RPG and definite Rogue-like elements. I thought for this week, I would review Hoplite.

Hoplite was created by Doug Cowley at Magma Fortress and it is a great game that was originally generated as part of the 2013 seven day Rogue-like challenge.. You are an adventurer on a quest to descend 16 levels into a dungeon to get the Golden Fleece and return safely. The game is played on a hexagonal grid and you try to make it safely to the stairs before being killed by the enemies on the board. You have to watch out as some will throw bombs or fire arrows or shoot fire at you. To help you, you have the ability to leap, bash, throw or stab your opponents. Unlike other games, you only have to move toward your enemy (ending your move next to them) in order to stab them to death. To also help you, there is a shrine on every level where you can heal or upgrade your skills (or get new ones).

Here I tapped on the enemy archer to see where he could attack next

The graphics are simple but effective. The touch interface is also simple, which means that a lot of effort was put into refining it to make it great. Touch where you want to move. Movement is one tile at a time when there are enemies on the board but then you can speed ahead once they are gone. Touch an enemy to determine where it can hit from its current location (they can only seem to attack if they don't move that turn). Touch to select or de-select a skill you might want to use. All working great and playing into the need to think through every move. The game gives you the feeling that with the right planning you might make it across every level uninjured and without killing an enemy.

Hoplite is also deep in its simplicity. While there isn't much in the way of an item system (it differs from the typical Rogue-like in not needing a lot of items to gather). There is an achievement system that helps you gain access to new and better skills that will then be available in game at the shrines. The strategy comes in when you have to choose between healing at the shrine or taking the upgrade to your throwing ability, allowing you to hit enemies from farther away (at a safer distance).

The typical game length (if you are as bad as me) will last you about 15 minutes at the most. I really like the simplicity and depth combination that the developer has come up with here. Looking through the achievement list, I know I will have a lot more to do in the game to get good enough to get all of them. Hoplite is a great addition to the grand old tradition of dungeon crawlers that didn't start with Rogue, but continues to drag people like me in with each new iteration. Hoplite gets 5 Mick Happies.

FTL: Faster Than Light Review

FTL: Faster Than Light is a space simulator where you and your crew are piloting a ship trying to run from a Rebel fleet bent on stopping you from delivering key data to the Federation. FTL was developed by Subset Games (Matthew Davis and Justin Ma) and partially funded through a Kickstarter campaign. The game is available (Mac, PC, Linux) via the FTL website or through Steam.

I first heard about FTL from listing to the Major Nelson podcast where E mentioned that he was playing the game. From there I searched for the game and found the FTL website. There wasn’t much detail there, so I happened to come across this YouTube video of a play-through that gave a really good overview of the game:

FTL has minimalistic top-down graphics and real-time combat. You control all aspects of your ship from how much power you put into various ship systems to where you station your crew (they add bonuses as they become more proficient at a job – faster weapon power up, etc.) and how you upgrade your ship. The items you most have to manage are fuel, missiles, drone parts and scrap - the currency of the future. The controls are point and click and easy to learn and you can pause when necessary – which it is if your ship has been boarded, has a hull breach and is on fire – to help you think about where to move crew or what part of an enemy ship to target.

The basic elements of the game have you jumping (using FTL drives) to various spots in a given star sector. At each stop you may run into hostile ships, potential quests, black market stores or other challenges or dangers. At each you will have a series of choices to make that may help or hurt your overall goal to escape the Rebel fleet and reach the Federation. With each jump you make in a sector, it will (hopefully) take you closer to the exit point (where you can jump to the next sector) and away from the Rebel fleet (shown on the jump screen as a growing danger area you want to avoid – read you fight enemy ships every jump).

FTL doesn’t waste much energy on the graphics, but the sound is great and the game play is really engaging. It is similar to rogue-like games (Rogue, NetHack, etc.) in that death of your ship and crew is permanent. I found that it made me think fondly of NetTrek and similar minimal graphics starship games of the past. There are also Stats and Achievements to help you track how well you have done on each game. There are also multiple ship designs that can be unlocked by various achievements. I have played six games so far and unlocked one new ship design and haven’t come close to winning the game on normal, succumbing to a different death each time.

FTL is hard, fun and re-playable and at $10, you should go out and get it. If you wonder if FTL is right for you, watch the video above for a little while to get a feel for how it works and how quickly things can go from great to running at the edge of your seat. FTL gets 4 Mick Happies. Safe travels in the darkness of space.