A Year in Roguelikes

The editors over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun recount a “fantastic year” of roguelikes by offering up a brief set of impressions for the likes of Dungeons of Dredmor, Incursion, Desktop Dungeons, and others.  A snip:

Like TOME, Incursion looks like any other roguelike but plays differently. With a stronger emphasis on meaningful character progression. I’m a huge fan but, sadly, it’s no longer in development. There’s still plenty to enjoy though. The nature of Roguelikes is that even when the original developers fall away from them, someone else will pick up the slack or implement the better ideas elsewhere. Unless that Roguelike is IVAN, which doesn’t look quite like any other Roguelike and hasn’t been copied anywhere near enough.

The inclusion of such glorious features as limb-loss, bleeding and body part transmutation required spritework that could show crimson pools and trails, as well as chunks of flesh scattered around a room. It’s woefully incomplete, with only a couple of areas to explore and coat with blood, but the graphics are actually quite lovely and having legs made of steel is impossible not to enjoy. It’s also the only game I know of, except for Die By The Sword perhaps, that actively encourages players to recreate the Black Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.