#oneaday Day 873: Cardinal Quest is Out on iOS, and You Should Probably Buy It

There’s a surprising dearth of good roguelikes on mobile platforms. While I wouldn’t wish to shoehorn the ridiculous number of key commands from something like Angband onto a buttonless phone, the basic concept is a good fit. Explore randomly-generated dungeon, kill monsters, get treasure. The basic controls you need to make a roguelike work — directions and inventory, mostly — are pretty workable on a touchscreen, and the turn-based nature of the genre means that the frustration factor of trying to be accurate with non-physical controls is simply not there.

This isn’t to say there aren’t good roguelikes out there, however. On iOS, there’s 100 Rogues, Sword of Fargoal and several others I haven’t tried. On Android, the pickings are a bit more slim, though there are a few out there for the taking.

Today, iOS added Cardinal Quest to its lineup, a rather wonderful little roguelike with a pleasing retro aesthetic, streamlined gameplay and the kind of addictive nature that is perfect for mobile games.

Cardinal Quest isn’t a new title, however; it’s been available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux machines for quite a while now, and there’s a free demo you can play over on Kongregate. But its release on iOS today marks its first jump onto portable devices.

For the uninitiated, Cardinal Quest is a simplistic dungeon-crawler that cites Gauntlet, Golden Axe and red-box Dungeons & Dragons games as its key inspirations. Taking on the role of one of three different pixelated heroes, the player descends into the randomly-generated dungeons to seek their fortune and hopefully defeat the evil minotaur lurking in the depths. Along the way they’ll discover treasure and a variety of different spells to make their journey easier.

Cardinal Quest adds a few nice little twists on the conventional roguelike formula. Walking over an item of equipment, for example, causes your character to automatically decide whether it’s better than what he already has or not, and replace it if necessary. There’s no faffing around with comparing stats, it simply takes care of it for you. This might irk purists a bit, but it keeps things nice and pacy.

Similarly, special abilities aren’t learned, but are instead found as treasure. Five can be equipped at once, while others are stored in the inventory. Instead of using a magic points system, each skill has a cooldown determined by one of the character’s stats, making some inherently more suitable for certain classes than others — though, so far as I can tell from my brief time with the game so far, any class can use any spell.

Also, while the game does feature permadeath as all good roguelikes should, there’s a bit of a safety net in place in the form of a “lives” system that lets the player walk away from a couple of fatal encounters before succumbing to oblivion. It makes the experience a little more friendly to newbies while still remaining brutal enough to provide genre veterans with a decent challenge.

Wrap the whole thing in pleasingly blocky pixel-art, retro sound effects and chiptune music and you’ve got Cardinal Quest in a nutshell. Grab it here for $1.99.

#oneaday Day 830: Roguelikes, for the Adventure-Curious

I was having an idle discussion with a couple of people on Twitter earlier, at least one of whom I know reads this blog (hi Anne!) and the subject turned to that of roguelikes. This is a genre of gaming that I’ve got to know quite well over the last couple of years and while I’m still not that good at them (I’m yet to beat one, for example), I feel I know a bit more about the genre now.

Quick recap for the uninitiated: a roguelike is a (usually) turn-based role-playing game typically focused on exploring randomly-generated dungeons, killing as many monsters as possible and acquiring lots of lovely loot. Sometimes there is a plot or quests and usually there’s some way to “win”, but they tend to be monstrously difficult games and generally feature “permadeath” in that they delete your save game if you happen to kick the bucket during one of your (mis)adventures.

It’s easy to see them as utterly impenetrable, however, thanks largely to the fact that many of them are presented using purely ASCII graphics, making them look more like something from Teletext than cutting-edge interactive entertainment. The fact that some of the more popular ones have a key command mapped to literally every key on the keyboard (shifted and non-shifted) doesn’t help matter, either.

So what I’ve gone and done is pick out some of the roguelikes I’ve played over the years that seem to be pretty accessible and easily-understandable. Then, if you’re curious, you can try them out for yourself. If not, you can, I don’t know, go and harass a badger or something.

So let us begin.

Diablo III

Okay, technically it’s not a roguelike in the strictest definition of the genre, but Blizzard’s upcoming title shares a lot of DNA with the genre. Randomly-generated dungeons, a focus on combat and loot whoring rather than plot (though the game does have a story, and seemingly somewhat better delivered than in its predecessors) and even the option for permadeath if you’re feeling masochistic. The Diablo series has always been very accessible yet deep for those willing to invest some time and effort into it, and early indications seem to be that the third iteration will be no exception. It also has a great multiplayer mode, which is the highlight of the experience for many.

Where to get it: Buy it for PC here. It’ll be released on May 15, but you can preorder and pre-download now.

Dungeons of Dredmor

Dredmor is an independently-developed roguelike from Gaslamp Games. The game casts players in the role of a male or female hero with a custom combination of skills — some useful, some just plain bizarre. It’s then up to the player to battle their way down through the titular dungeons on their way to a confrontation with Dredmor himself. Dungeons of Dredmor is accessible in that there are not many commands to remember and the base mechanics are pretty simple. It also has attractive pixel-art graphics, a bizarrely cheerful soundtrack and an excellent sense of humour. The developers also regularly release updates to the game that improve the experience significantly.

Where to get it: Buy it for PC and Mac via Steam.

Hack, Slash, Loot

Hack, Slash, Loot differs from many other roguelikes in its scope. Its quests are short, there’s no level grinding for experience points and the only stuff the player character can carry is the stuff they have equipped. Potions and scrolls are used immediately, and equipment is swapped out when picked up, meaning players have to weigh up whether or not their newly-discovered loot is worth taking with them. The whole thing is wrapped in an endearing retro aesthetic and its difficulty level is fond of kicking you repeatedly in the face until you cry. As compensation, however, the more you die, the more characters and quests you unlock.

Where to get it: Buy it for PC and Mac via Steam.

Doom: The Roguelike

Doom: The Roguelike (or DoomRL as it is often referred to) is an excellent example of the creativity often seen in the genre. The game is quite literally a reimagining of the original Doom but rendered as a roguelike. Until recently, it combined the original music and sounds of Doom with ASCII art, but the most recent update has added graphics, new music and remastered sounds. It’s a simple but fun experience and works considerably better than you might expect. Best of all, it’s free.

Where to get it: Download it for PC, Mac or Linux for free here, though the Mac port is a bit dodgy.

Tales of Maj’Eyal

Tales of Maj’Eyal (formerly Tales of Middle Earth) is one of the more well-established names in the free roguelike sector. It’s a more complex game than some of its peers, but its interface is accessible and the mechanics are straightforward to understand. There are lots of different character classes to try, and lots of locations to explore. The game is relatively unusual in the genre for including a “world map” and towns to explore between dungeons, giving it a more traditional RPG structure while still punching you in the squishy bits with its difficulty on a regular basis.

Where to get it: Download it for PC, Mac or Linux here.

100 Rogues

The quintessential iOS roguelike, 100 Rogues combines attractive retro pixel art with simple mechanics and addictive gameplay. The quest is short enough that it could potentially be finished in one sitting, and you get the opportunity to battle the Pope. Like most of its peers, it’s incredibly challenging, but very addictive.

Where to get it: Buy it for iPhone and iPad here.

There are hundreds of other examples out there, but these are some that I’ve played and enjoyed as someone who is still something of a greenhorn in the genre. Why not check them out? In my experience, roguelikes are some of the best games for creating “emergent narratives” — that is, the stories that occur naturally through your play rather than an explicit narrative included by the developer. Stories like these, for example.

#oneaday, Day 294: Filthy Rogue

The roguelike genre is one I only discovered relatively recently. In fact, I was a relative latecomer to the whole RPG genre, only getting to grips with it for the first time with Final Fantasy VII. As such, for a good few years, I felt that RPGs were all about strong stories, interesting (and sometimes clichéd) characters, a buildup to an epic final conflict and some of the best music you’ll ever hear.

As such, when I played an RPG that wasn’t so strong on the story and focused more on loot-whoring or level-grinding, I found myself losing interest quickly. It was long after its release that I finally beat Diablo II and, to this date, I’ve never beaten it on anything other than the normal difficulty level.

That changed when I came across Angband, though. Angband looks like the sort of game you used to play on Teletext. Sure, there are graphical tilesets you can customise it with. But at its heart, it’s a text-based game with about a bajillion keyboard commands.

But you know what? The kind of emergent narrative that came out of several intense Angband sessions rivalled any pre-scripted tales that Squeenix have ever come out with. Largely because it was so unpredictable, and that any screw-ups were inevitably your fault for failing to prepare adequately, rather than the fault of the game mechanics itself.

Take the time my oil lamp ran out on the fifth level of the dungeon. This meant, in gameplay terms, that I couldn’t “see” new passageways ahead of me—namely, they weren’t revealed on the map—unless I banged into a wall, which then helpfully revealed said wall on the map for me. My first reaction in this instant was, of course, to panic. Death in Angband doesn’t mean restoring a saved game. Oh no. Death in Angband means your save game getting deleted and you having to start all over again. This adds an enormous amount of pressure on you, the player, to get it right. And it also makes you kick yourself when you realise that you didn’t bring enough oil to fuel your lamp.

So off I went, slowly “feeling” my way along the walls of the corridors in an attempt to find the stairs up… for five floors. This sounds like an impossible task. But after a fairly lengthy period of methodical, careful searching (and a few terrifying combats in the pitch darkness) I finally managed to emerge victorious to town level, stock up on oil and provisions and jump back into the dungeon with renewed fervour.

Of course, I promptly got twatted by an Ogre, making all that work utterly meaningless. But it didn’t matter—it was a fun experience unlike anything I’d experienced in a game before. And I’ve struggled to repeat it with any game since then.

Not through lack of trying, though. There are some great roguelikes out there, many of which are a lot more accessible than Angband. I have three favourites I’d like to share with you right now, one of which is, of all things, a board game. The other two are iPhone games.

Sword of Fargoal is actually a remake of an old Commodore 64-era title which didn’t look like the picture above. No, it looked like this:

The best thing about Sword of Fargoal is its simplicity coupled with a surprising amount of hidden depth. While Angband is rather intimidating to get started with, with pretty much every key on the keyboard (shifted and non-shifted) mapped to something, Fargoal simply requires that you get to grips with moving and using a context-sensitive button in the top-right corner. And keeping an eye on the text display at the top of the screen for hints and cues, too. Combat is a case of running into an enemy—the player and monster will then take turns bashing each other until one or the other falls over or one runs away. Gold is collected to sacrifice at altars throughout the dungeon for experience point bonuses. And the rest is left to the player to discover. The more you play, the more you start to notice little graphical details and cues tipping you off to the location of traps or treasure.

And it’s challenging, too. There are 15 levels to explore, all of which are sprawling monstrosities with several areas. And when you make it to the bottom to recover the titular blade, you then have to escape again. I haven’t even made it to the bottom yet. It’s a lengthy, challenging quest. And despite the fact that death is permanent, it’s addictive and easy to return to.

Then we have 100 Rogues, which takes a slightly different approach to that of Sword of Fargoal. While Fargoal‘s quest is lengthy, 100 Rogues can potentially be beaten in one sitting. Key word here being “potentially”. 100 Rogues is particularly brutal, fond of surrounding the player and battering them to a pulp. Fortunately, the player also has a Diablo-style skill tree at their disposal, including a number of attacks that can beat back several enemies at the same time.

It’s very difficult, though, and the descriptions of the game on the App Store don’t even try and hide the fact that you will die. A lot. In fact, there’s even a Game Center Achievement for having sent the titular 100 rogues to their eventual demise.

I only picked this up recently, but it’s immensely appealing due to its 16-bit graphics and soundtrack. It looks and plays like a Genesis/Mega Drive game, in a good way. It’s a bit buggy in places but the author appears to be committed to regular updates.

Finally, one of my favourite roguelikes of all time is Warhammer Quest, a game that involves you having people you actually don’t mind being in the same room with. Featuring all the genre staples—a randomly generated dungeon, permadeath, brutal difficulty, vast amounts of phat lewt—it’s very much the board game equivalent of Rogue et al. Even better, everyone gets to join in on the fun—there’s no need for a Game Master player (unless you really want to use one) as the rules cater fully for monster “behaviour”.

Couple that with the game’s immense customisability (it’s a word) thanks to its use of Games Workshop Citadel Miniatures line of figures and you have a game with limitless potential. And hundreds—hundreds—of tiny pieces of card and plastic.

So there you go. A whistlestop tour of the roguelike genre. And I didn’t even mention Moria or NetHack once.