Let me know if you need any help with Windows build, been looking forward to this one since I saw your screenie hours ago. Love me a good roguelike!

Some awesome moments I had while playing:

* "The rock hits the rock." (I skillfully deflected an enemy-thrown rock with a thrown rock of my own)
* "You hits the rock." (my own rock, right after I threw it)
* "You hits the rock." (I skillfully deflected the rock thrown by a beefy wibble, with my bare fists)
* "Oof!" (As I walked straight into a wall, but quickly recovered as if nothing had happened)
* "The rock hits you." (I threw a rock and walked into its path)
* Feeling like I'm The One dodging rocks left and right
* Luring unsuspecting enemies into the hallway and then unleashing a laser beam of rocks at them

Something I missed was seeing a new ASCII letter and wondering "hm, what is this new creature I have never seen before?" And then realizing it was an 8-foot tall yeti who just decimated half of my health. In this game I saw 8 distinct varieties of monster, but only 2 truly different species. Then again, introducing too many different monsters might have over-encumbered a game that aims to focus on one mechanic.

I love that you focused on a single mechanic and made it fun to play. I enjoyed the chess-like dance that combat calls for (as I do in Rogue), and using the rocks to cover my options was a favored strategy of mine. The last time I did Ludum Dare (33 I think?) I tried to isolate a Rogue mechanic as well (the ricocheting spell bolt) but I didn't get a fun game in the end. This game is fun! And the color and aesthetic is lovely. Good job!

Thanks so much for your review. I got a huge thrill from knowing someone took the time to understand what was going on. You seem to have gotten out of it exactly what I'd hoped people would.

I would have loved to add a bigger bestiary but I just didn't have time. "Melee monster" and "ranged monster" with 4 levels of stats was all I could manage.

hey nice rogue-like! i liked the level design and how it played somewhat similar to chess, trying to line up rock throws and anticipate enemy movement. i really liked the music! and it was awesome that the music changed as the player progressed. i do wish the movement was more responsive. when i hit a key, it took like a whole second before the player responded and moved.

Yeah...performance is really bad. Working on it.

For anyone reading, performance is a lot better now.

nice rogue-like

@steve-johnson great game mate! had me hooked clearing rooms. Getting dwarf fortress vibes. Great soundtrack definitely played into the mood of the game. Game ran smoothly and felt polished. Great job!

Awesome game! I did something similar last LD: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-37/?action=preview&uid=125115

Always nice to see a Roguelike. My favorite part by far is the music, which is really nice and atmospheric.

Great game, the console like graphics(?) gives it a good feel. but, I think it needs a better tutorial. I think it would make for a great game, once you polish it...

Dungeon crawling in its finest form (or should I say cellar crawling XD). Opened my window so cold air could fill my room. In combination with cold air and the atmospheric music the game really immersed me. At the beginning I was a little confused with the controls (so much choice) but after a while I figured out how to throw rocks properly. I whish I could have used or at least found some spells, its a basement of a wizzard after all. Would like to see some additional stuff. Good job!

That was quite a lot of fun. I quite enjoy roguelikes and that was a neat twist on the idea. The timing involved in rock throwing adds a really cool level of depth where you have to predict your foes' movement.

I also found the basement theme a really cool twist on the "Small World" theme.

Took me a couple moments to find my `@` when I first loaded the game, but that's a product of a visual impairment, not your game.

This looks awesome, please make a linux build!

I love the atmosphere of this game. I also love the mechanic of prediction when throwing and dodging rocks. I don't play games like this very often, so I don't know if this is part of the genre, but I love the fact that everything only moves when I perform an action. This made every action I performed feel very deliberate. Also, little things like the doors opening and closing, and the rocks turning red mid-air made the game feel nice and complete. Good job!

Very traditional roguelike; the enemy ai was actually pretty good, but annoying as hell to deal with. lots of throwing and dodging rocks. While I question it's capacity of following the theme, it's the first roguelike I have played so far and I have played a bunch of games, so I'm feeling it :D .

Thanks for the game <3

Enjoyed this a lot, I'm a big fan of rogue-likes. Once I realized how good rocks were I enjoyed finding them all over the place! The music also fit well, good job!

I love a good rouge-like! Awesome game, beat it in 25 minutes, but decided to play again since it was so much fun :)

This game brings back so many good memories. I got nostalgic playing this. The ascii graphics are very appealing and on top of that roguelikes are my favourite genre so I really liked this! Also the music added a nice atmosphere...Wish it lasted a little longer.

Fun little roguelike. At first I had some travel with understanding how rocks travel but once you get how it works the fighting aspect became a fun puzzle. Thank you for creating this game!

Awesome music!! Really enjoyed the feeling of progression when the sound track changed from one room to another :thumbsup: what sometimes got to me was if I threw a rock and walked in the same direction it stopped the rock again. Is that intentional or just some problem with the order in which the entities are updated?

@somethinboutgames Just another unexpected interaction in the system. :-)

First of all, excellent soundtrack. It's also good to see a classic roguelike with ASCII visuals make the submissions list this time around! I'm not exactly sure what the purpose of the rocks are, I pick them up and throw them but I'm not able to throw them at monsters and they do not appear to affect the playing field in some way.

Great throwback, classic take on the theme. Fantastic soundtrack. Checks all the marks for an oldschool roguelike, well done.

Really cool entry. I have been wanting to do a rogue-like for a long time, so it was inspiring to play. It was also very interesting to read your design & implementation analysis doc. I wonder if the CSV approach could allow people to extend your game without writing code. The background music is GREAT! (composed in the wee hours - impressive) I am determined to beat this ... have picked it back up a couple times today :smile:

Awesome game! I was amazed how immersed I was in a game designed with ASCII art.
Great music too! The AI was impressive, it made the enemies feel alive. (Those damn wibbles always running away haha)

Super awesome game! I love the background music!

A narrative dungeon crawler ascii game in a game jam. I'm in love. Deeply in love. Continue this please, I want more.

Very good job, I like how the game looks, feels modern and smooth while using ASCII graphics!

The soundtrack fits perfectly too, love the piano tracks :)

Oh man, I really liked this. I loved the sense of humor. The .txt manual was great. The music added to the mood well, and had a very nice progression as you make your way through the basement. The two enemy types and two attack verbs added just enough complexity to make the combat an interesting puzzle/dance. The AI seemed well-done. Great use of color.

If I have to complain about something, I could see adding a mention in the manual about melee attacks for anyone not familiar with roguelikes. I'm also not sure about the healing hallways working for an unlimited number of uses. It takes away from the difficulty a little bit and encourages the player to backtrack through a big chunk of cleared rooms if you take a lot of damage.

All in all this was great. I'm a bit curious about the use of color for the rooms; I always felt like I was in a weird state of being lost yet like I had an inkling of what direction I ought to be going. Was there some logic to the coloring that I only subconsciously noticed that guides you towards the end?

@davidthelazar Thanks for the in-depth feedback! Good point about the manual, I hadn't thought of having to explain melee for inexperienced players.

The map is divided into 4 quadrants, and each quadrant has a distinct color. Maybe that's why you didn't feel totally lost? Also, because of how I generate the rooms, the connections between them are actually largely the same across games.

Your point about infinite hallway heals is apt; it's a feature I added very late in the game, because I wanted to skew toward the easy side. In Ludum Dare judging, people often don't have the time/energy/motivation to get through a hard game. If I were releasing this 'for real' I would remove hallway healing completely and add consumables instead.

"Roguelike" partly means "hard but rewards repeated play." That's at odds with the time constraints of both implementers and players. I was just happy to have decent tactical combat!

@steve-johnson Really fun game with great music. The manual is well done and informative, wish I had read it before playing.

The thing I liked most in this game is to rush into room full verps and wibbles throwing rocks all over the place and even get bitten by your own rock) That is cool
The interesting and most enjoyable thing is to think how to move and where to throw rocks
Perhaps a little bit of background story (as in many roguelikes) would make this game even more interesting

Really enjoyed the game. The music was excellent and I enjoyed working out the best way to tackle the different enemy types.

@steve-johnson Hey, saw your comment on my game. Should have mentioned it was an unfinished mess, sorry you had to play it. :p

Just played your game a bit. Props on you for using Pygame! I love pygame. :) Used it myself during LD36. Really like that you included multiple background songs. Also throwing rocks that can be used by your opponents is interesting. My only real issue with the game is that you can walk into your own rocks which makes them a lot harder to use. Also the enemy AI always seems to pick the most optimal choice so sometimes it seems impossible to hit them. Overal pretty good entry. :)

@decentsauce Actually it is not PyGame! It is BearLibTerminal. And I used pyglet for the music.

Agreed about the rocks, totally unintended simulation behavior. :-)

Spectacular game! The combat was really cool, and the music was amazing. My score at the end was 34.

Just like the good old rogue like games. Loved the music and overall mood of the game. Very good job!

Great old school feel. The music fits well and I like the exploration... though it was pretty hard for me. I wished there were some hit sounds and maybe a bigger text feed. Pretty cool game though :D

Very good job I'm happy a rogue like made the compo. I played it a while, I wish there were more enemies to diversify combat a bit, it didn't really feel like a small world as the maze was pretty big, but I enjoyed it anyways :smile:

Oh, rarely seed ascii roguelike! And having a good ADOM feeling. Good job here, good job!

It could have more variety, but not for a compo version, I guess. Also rock throwing mechanics was pretty confusing, I didn't fully understand how it actually work at the end.

Pretty fun, Was playing the compo version, hit a "Failed to execute script" crash in both my plays though which cut them short. Playing on win 10
Haven't played too many roguelikes so not much to compare it to, but I'm guessing its all the classic stuff. Sort of felt like my rocks should go faster to give them a bit more advantage over melee, not sure i ever managed to hit anything with them. Music was excellent though, it was the highlight for me.

@automatonvx What were you doing when the game crashed? I haven't hit any issues with the latest compo version.

Nothing special I think, just moving, zipping around holding down the arrow keys trying to find the way out. I tried to recreate it playing a couple of times but wasn't able to get it to crash again

Great job, man. Saw your progress on this on IRC over the weekend, but then somehow lost track of it once I got into ratings season. Managed to find it again this afternoon, and I'm glad I did - you did a great job getting the essence of a rogue-like distilled down to its very essence.

I'm a sucker for rogue-likes and when I saw this one looked like net-hack I had to play it. It was really fun and the music was very atmospheric and really set the mood. I chuckled when I saw the readme.txt file. That gave it a good old back in the day vibe :grinning:

Really nice game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iJfrvw7wWA