/vr/ - Retro Games

>>9455729
If you like this kind of roguelike, one of my all time favorites was originally made to run on the GBA called Powder. It's straightforward get to the bottom of the dungeon, kill the boss and get out. It has a really great class system where your current class is determined by which god you currently follow and you have to play in accordance with what they like to gain favor (warrior attack a lot, wizard cast spells a lot etc) but all the gods are watching all the time and will get variously pleased or annoyed with you. Then it's also got tons of other neat little features and tricks. I've been playing it for like 15 years and it's always fun to go back to.

http://www.zincland.com/powder/

>>6272498
Powder is not quite retro but pretty solid and worshipping the barbarian god is viable and he'll smite you if you try casting any spells.

Shiren is also very simple and doesn't even let you cast spells at all so that might interest.

>>5848117
Doom RL is a ton of fun. My favorite, Powder also isn't retro but has a pretty classic RL feel which is part of why I like it so much. Similar to Rogue it's a simple dive to the bottom of a dungeon, defeat the boss and make your way back out. It's got lots of options, a very cool class system and challenging enough that even having played it as much as I have still die regularly. Though there is diagonal movement possible, it's only while dressing up to please a certain god and depending on the specifics of items in that playthrough it may ir may not be practical. But it can be very useful at times.

>>5224718
>>5224718
I can see that way of looking at it. But 4chan has never been about lots of tight knit small boards and the reality of most of the generals I've visited is they end up being clusterfucks of mostly off topic banter. I dunno, maybe that's the goal though.

Though that said an rl general could work here if the posters at least nominally talked about retro entries.

>>5113715
Powder isn't quite retro but is a lot of fun.

Rogue was one of my favorite games when I was young and I eventually went hack and beat it in my 20s then moved onto Nethack and dabbled in a bunch of others over the years. I think when they're good it's one of the best genres there is.

>>4686690
First off, easily over 95% of all the roguelikes ever made would fall under the category of "indie".

Second, if you played something without permadeath it wasn't really a roguelike, it was what most would call a "roguelite" which are similar too but a fundamentally very different genre.

Things like grinding up items over multiple playthroughs is counter to the very spirit of the original genre and I fully agree is terrible. As are for example, the pokemon mystery dungeon games which literally are as you described, mindless grinding games in boring randomly generated maps.

The precise goal of a roguelike is that through many plays and many deaths you do gain mastery of the game's systems. So that even though you can never predict what is going to be around the next corner, and death is always one bad decision away, you still manage to persevere and win despite the odds being stacked against you.

Randomized maps are partly good because these are games you're meant to play and fail over and over while learning so you're not bored by the same dungeon every time. But personally, I see another great thing about them. I find that with a designed map as in dungeon crawlers, you can always feel the hand of the designer to a degree. So with rare exception for example will there be a long path that just stops at a dead end with nothing there. In most games that would be considered bad design.

But consider it in the context of a roguelike. You're low on food, so every step you take matters. You see that there's a corridor leading off somewhere but you have no way of really knowing if it leads anywhere. It makes even the simple decision of whether to explore that path a weighty and potentially game ending one and that's why they're typically turn based. In a good roguelike almost no decision us an easy one and there is always death looming behind you. Some people (many) hate that, but it's like crack to me and almost no other genre delivers like it does.