Crawl

[flexibeast]

This extended spell of unseasonally hot weather (it's 39C / 102F today) has really knocked me about; i've found it very debilitating. Since i've found it so difficult to concentrate, and have thus been unable to do the study that i normally like to do, i've ended up playing a lot of the 'Stone Soup' version of Linley's Dungeon Crawl (and my use of 'Crawl' hereafter refers to the Stone Soup version). Previously NetHack was my roguelike of choice; but the amusement NetHack offered me (e.g. the many and varied ways of dying, which NetHackers often make reference to via the abbreviation 'YASD' - "Yet Another Stupid Death") was somewhat dampened by my feeling that learning spoilers was actually necessary in order to make significant progress in the game. (And my progress thus far has been, well, basically insignificant. :-) )

So i had a look around to see what else was on offer. My strong bias towards persistent levels (i.e. levels whose layout persists for the life of a game) narrowed the field considerably; and it thus didn't take long for me to give Crawl a try.

There are several things i like about roguelikes:

• Low memory usage. The machine i use regularly has only 256M of memory (although, heh, my first computer had 512K of memory), a significant portion of which is taken up running Firefox (hopefully Firefox3 will use much less). There's not much room left for playing games.


• Terminal-based (although many offer 'tiled', graphics-based versions). Which means i can run it inside the screen(1) session that i practically live in.


• Turn-based. The game doesn't continue in the absence of me pausing it, which means i can play it whilst doing other things without it demanding my attention.


• Depth of gameplay. Since levels are generated anew each game, no two games are alike. Nevertheless, one can use experiences from each game to develop tactics and strategies for future games.

To this mix, Crawl adds things like:

• Persistent levels. My imagination is sufficiently good to allow myself to consider it plausible that the '@' symbol is my character, the 'K' symbol is a kobold, the 'l' symbol is a giant gecko, and so on. It's not sufficiently good to consider it plausible that i can descend a flight of stairs, ascend them again, and find a completely different level to the one i just left.


• Large levels, spreading over several times the area of a NetHack level.


• A huge variety of species and roles to choose from.

All of which i've found very addictive, and an enjoyable diversion during absurd weather. :-)
 

Comments

[sacred-harlot.livejournal.com]

Glad that you get so much enjoyment from it Sweetie :-)

Much Love,
Sacred Harlot x

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :-)

[hemlock-sholes.livejournal.com]

You should give ADOM a try too.

http://www.adom.de

It's got persistent levels and much, much more.

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

Thanks - i actually already have . :-) i must say i did like it, but apparently there's an area that involves non-persistent levels, and somehow i kept on ending up there. :-P i imagine that i'll come back to it at some point, perhaps in the form of JADE - just as long as i can still play it in a terminal. :-)