October 8, 2009
I am ultimate roguelike player.
While waiting on students in the lounge of the office (which is basically a very small room which has a couple couches in it) I got back into playing Rogue Touch, for lack of anything better to do. That inspired me to go to my office computer and install Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup on it, for whatever reason. I guess to sap my productivity? I have no idea.
Needless to say, I suck at it.
I don’t know. Whenever I play these sorts of games, I always want to be a healer, or a mage of some kind. I pick these classes knowing good and well that I am going to go Kamikaze at some point and die immediately, because I’m a mage, and I have no armor, and I suck in general anyway. So after playing a couple of deaths like that on my office computer, I decided, fuck it, I’m going to actually accommodate my urges. It’s nothing but Hill Orc Fighters from now on.
Strangely, though, that hasn’t seemed to improve my effectiveness much at all. The top of my leaderboard is still a birdie healer, much like I kept running at home when I tried the game. I guess it’s not surprising that the class I played like 30 rounds of would be the one I would be best at, but at the same time I totally forgot how to call in divine favors so I wasn’t even using the healing powers of my healer. Also, I accidentally killed something while praying to my pacifist god and made her mad at me, so, you know, I was pretty well playing the worst healer ever. Yet, I still did better than all of my fighter runs thus far. Who the hell knows.
I mean, I’m not all that good at Roguelikes. I figured out Shiren pretty decently, and made it to the last area a few times, though never cleared it, but that’s about it. I’ve never made it out of the first strata of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. I’m under the impression that there are like 15 areas and I have to pick and clear like 7 of them to get plot coupons to clear the game? But as I’ve said, I’ve never seen past the first, so… yeah. I’m doing pretty awesome. Don’t want to brag, but, you know, I’m pretty well the best. At being awful.
Still, even when constantly losing, the game remains fun. It’s certainly helped by the fact that, as long as you’re using tiles, the interface is so, so much more useful than, say, Nethack. If you’re looking to try one of these hardcore roguelikes, I really can’t recommend Stone Soup with Tiles enough. It plays like someone gave a shit about interface. It’s wonderful.
But yeah, so that’s what I’m doing instead of the tons of homework and grading and whatnot I should be doing in my office. Exciting, no?