I'm definitely a big fan of roguelikes, and yours looks great as far as that goes. But it was pretty hard to understand what was happening or what to do given that everything was in Runes. I can tell there is some substance here though! Good job

I like that visual design, but i little worry about letters, i sacrifice them?)

@matthew-roelle Thank you for your nice comment! It is indeed hard to understand, but I wanted it that way. I hope it's still enjoyable xD

@slizzben You can sacrifice anything that moves, but I can't tell you much more than that!

It was pretty fun to try to figure out what was happening. I liked it. Nice job!

@kaunispoika Thank you, I'm glad you liked it :)

It was really hard to actually see what the player was so i would make the player more noticeable and maybe have an arrow over it.

The first time i tried it, it seemed like any time I hit any button I died. I'm guessing I got softlocked before figuring out what to do.

Space and the arrow keys scroll the page, which is sort of frustrating.

I really like the look and feel--ascii-chique.

Obscuring the language adds to the feel of adventuring and disorientation, it's a really nice idea.

It took a while (and a reset) to figure out how to proceed, but once I did, I liked it a lot. Nice work.

Very interesting idea! Almost got to a point where I understood what to do, and then I realised knew nothing at all. 10/10 would get lost again

@kaboosh I hadn't thought of that, mostly because the game is pretty much untestable because I know what everything does, but I'll definitely find a way to make the player more visible! Thank you for your help!

@justalocalhero Yeah, it is possible to start the game surrounded by mobs, I should have prevented that :(
I was told about the scroll a little earlier today and I'm sad I didn't think of that. It's the first time I make a game that doesn't fit ALL screens and that's what I get :p
Thank you so much for your comment!

I really enjoyed the parable to a young child trying to discover how to play a game without knowing the language. I know that as a kid I would spend countless hours trying to figure this out.

Alas, I'm now 34 years old and my patience ran out. I did seem to be able to make /some/ progress, as it asked me for my name.

Cool entry, and since I have no idea how it works, I really can't offer any criticism!

@yrasin Thank you so much for your comment, that's exactly what you were supposed to experience xD

@timeshapers sorry it wasn't just as you rememebered, but I'm glad the concept had some appeal to you and I'll do better next time :)

I made it to the boss! I liked that you made it unreadable, it made it half rogue, half puzzle. I wish the upgrade "candelabras" regenerated when you died. I missed out on a couple of upgrades 'cause I was holding them, but maybe that's a good feature to entice careful planning on pick-ups? Thanks for making this, it was fun!

Thank you so much for your comment @ravarion !
Yeah maybe the candelabras (let's call them that then, I guess? xD) could be saved upon death. Some of the score is, and you can upgrade it so that you lose less and less score upon each death, so it would have made sense to do the same with the candelabras... I'll keep that in my for a later version!
Thanks again for you help and well done for getting to the boss! :)

This game is a bit too cryptic for me.

@flying-dog-fish well, I guess you can't please everyone. Thank you for your comment though xD

I tried.. guess I felt like you when you were 5
also I got swarmed after some retries, not able to do anything at all

@dusho thank you for trying! Yeah dying in game doesn't reset it, it's just part of the mechanics, but you *can* refresh the page if you want a clean slate :)

I've never actually played a legit old school rogue-like, so it was interesting to play your omage to one. I felt like enemies reproduced endlessly. After a while there seemed to just be a ridiculous amount of them. Tiny bug I found, if the player and an enemy move to the same square at the same time, you apparently take no damage.

I also like the idea of introducing your own unique experiences form your childhood into your game. Not everyone will feel the same nostalgia about being unable to understand the text in games as you might, but I can certainly appreciate it.

@oxrock enemies are actually created at the start of the game and never come back once killed, but they will keep following you forever if you aggro them :p
Oh yeah, that's quite a funny little bug xD
Thank you for playing the game and commenting :)

First of all, it has a good feel of ASCII rogue-likes and I like the minimalist and clear design! Too bad it was hard to understand what is the goal and what I was doing, I'm still not quite sure but I've learned how to sacrifice by sacrificing myself many times and then enemies accidentally.

But, I reached the boss if that was boss! :)

@blodyavenger well done for reaching the boss and learning how and who to sacrifice!
You made your way to the top 5 \o/
Thank you for playing my game and commenting :)

A pretty interesting game. I did enjoy the style of gameplay, and the use of runes was pretty cool. Nice job.

Thank you for playing and commenting @anyonebacon !

Fun, and that's all that matters

Super cool! Probing the game to figure stuff out was fun. It added a layer of mystery and perceived complexity. The slow ticking tile movement of the enemies brought back some memories.

I really enjoyed the feeling (that I've not really had much before) of playing something in a language I don't understand, and trying to figure out what is going on. I made it to the boss... but I don't think I won. Nice look, and nice use of runes!

Oh... I really thought the instructions said to press spacebar to shoot... now I see it says ARROWS. That explains a lot. Well, I made it to the boss twice without ever firing a shot... pacifist achievement?

Key repeat was really high, I just held WASD for a second and always end up in the lava :(.

@abeyance Thank you so much for your comment!
@irwatts I'm so glad you got those feelings, it means I haven't done it for nothing xD
@jimbly Thank you for your comment! Sadly you can't finish the game without firing a shot, because the boss can't be sacrificed and there's no portal in its room to run away anymore xD
I'll look into the key repeat thing, thank you for telling me! :)
Thanks again for your comments and for playing my game!

There is a sense of discovery this game touches upon that I love. There is a simple satisfaction found in puzzling out what are the basic rules of the game.

What can I touch?
How do I defend myself?
What is my goal?

The rune text I think brought back some memories of playing games when I was young and not really understanding them too, so job well done on reviving that old feeling!

I tried but i literally didnt understand nothing at all. Not only the runes but also what i was supposed to do and what was going on. By yours description it seems like figuring out what is to do is part of the game, but honestly that is not my thing.

Also, i find it VERY laggy in Firefox. In Chrome it runs smoothly

@vinay-rao Thank you so much for your comment, I've very glad you got to experience it as it was supposed to be :)

@derek-volker I'm sorry it didn't click with you, I'll do better next time!
It works much better on Chrome, absolutely, even the unicode characters :(
I found that out way too late to fix it but I'll try to remember to test sooner next time :)
Thank you for your comment!

I did like the visuals very much. I was playing, hoping to get a sort of translation device. Since that didn't happen, here is how I understood the game. I collected these yellow things, which I used to buy attack power. Walking into the square I was presented a choice: Sacrifice myself or keep living. Upon sacrificing myself three times, the game reset.
Still don't know exactly what's going on and what the overall goal is. But good job, I certainly played it a couple of times!

@pancakefriday Thank you so much for playing the game and commenting!
You got it mostly right, but most people don't get that far anyway xD
You need 4 sacrifices to open a portal, then taking it gets you to a different floor.
You don't *have* to sacrifice yourself though ;)
Thanks again, I'm glad you liked it!

@andrea, oh I didn't notice that was a different floor. What is the difference to the first floor? Is there some sort of translation device somewhere? :D

This was really hard to understand! I know that was your goal but it made it a little too challenging for me personally. The mood was fantastic though considering this.

@pancakefriday Sadly, no translation device, though that would have been a great idea :)
The second floor is harder (mobs move faster) and the third floor has nothing but a boss that nobody managed to beat yet :p

@kaleido Sorry about that, it was not such a great move after all :p
Thank you for playing and for your comment! :)

Not yet @andrea ;)
Edit: Okay, I can't do it.

An interesting challenge trying to work out what each symbol does, still couldn't work some things out but it did start to make some sort of sense after playing for a bit.

I didn't understand much but I had fun :-) I like runes.

Good job making this game!

Best joke I've seen so far.

@pantoufle thank you for your kind comment!

@anton-savinov I'm gonna take that as a positive comment xD

Very interesting approach, not sure I got how you interpreted the theme but other than that the sense of exploration and understanding your little world was really something :) It was still too obfuscated for my taste, would have been cool if you gave us the option to reveal some stuff between runs, or with a special pick-up maybe... anyways, good job :)

@jhell The sacrifices are needed to go to the next levels, but I admit it's not the core mecanism of the game :(
Some sort of translator would have been great, yes, like a way to decode letters by "looting" them... I'll think about it :)
Thank you for playing and thank you for your comment!

@pancakefriday you can go to http://dev.androidandrea.com/ld43/boss/ to get directly to the boss, full buff, it might help.
It *MIGHT* xD

The second level started from everything running towards me I have managed too survive that but then someone bastard got me and everything was even more crazy like i have respawned on sacrifice altar and immediately did 4 sacrifices teleported somewhere and ultimately died no fucking clue wtf happened :P.
So tldr confusion should be theme of this game :P

I spent a bit more time on the game and managed to decipher the runes! I was still not able to defeat the boss though.

I expected a big reward from deciphering, like being able to read a very special hint to defeat the final boss. In the end, it just helped me read the UI and some flavor text.

It was a neat idea to make the whole game "cryptic", and I think you made it in a way that is visually appealing too. I did not expect to spend so much time on a ludum dare game :-)

That was super interesting. Couldn't really tell what was going on, but I think I made it to the final boss, which was like a green monster...thing. I died :\

Props for the creativity!

@xesenix Ahahah, you were no very lucky, were you? xD Well, I hope it was at least fun :p Thank you for playing and giving me feedback!

@pantoufle You know, that's actually a wonderful idea! Deciphering the runes could give you a huge hint to like, drop the strength of the boss or something, by doing something impossible to guess without deciphering the runes... I'm gonna make a note of that, thank you so much!

@ale Well, you got as far as the boss, which is much better that most player, well done! Thank you for playing and commenting! :)

It's a super interesting idea - I think it's really cool and valuable that you relayed your experience with not understanding English through this game. It's not for everyone, but it's very unique.

Thank you so much for your comment @arcling !
I know it isn't as good as it could have been but I'm glad the idea has been properly relayed anyway :)

This is a awesome game! So far this is the best game on this ludum for me.

Wow, thank you so much @alexey-akulovich , that means a lot to me!

Nice roguelite! It's not that hard to grasp what's happening after a while (and some deaths), enjoyed quite a bit running around. Thanks!

@xphere Thank you for playing, and thank you for your comment! I'm glad it's not completely obscure to everyone xD

wtf, who sacrefices letters??XD nice game

@der-finski Letters, mobs, the player... Everything goes xD
Thank you for your nice word!

A fantastic idea to combine rune and classic rogue. It's great fun exploring

@teapoly Thank you for your comment, I'm glad you liked!

Awesome game, even tho I had no idea what the hell I was doing! Language barrier on point :D Btw. Where are you from? :D

@teo989 thanks xD
I'm from France!

@andrea Had the same problem in my youth. Czech Republic here xD

@teo989 so you get it :p So much of our content came (comes?) from the states, and I didn't start learning english until I was 13 or something :(

Amazing game with cool graphics!)

Amazing game with cool graphics!)

Thank you @gri-bel !

Thank you @gri-bel ! xD

very nice designe

Very nice concept and execution !
I have no idea of what I did, but it seems like I managed to see a boss and die :D
The graphic design is very beautiful.
The notion of sacrifice is a bit obscure though, except that I sacrificed my sanity trying to figure all the meanings of the interface o/

really like the mood and feel of this game but i need to play it more to understand it better -- thanks for making it

Wow, that was quite cryptic. I like the minimalist aesthetic and I think you made quite a bold move using runes for everything, especially where it counts (high-score and move explanation). This requires a very steady hand at explaining the basics to the player in a different, yet meaningful way, and I'm afraid you overreached a little there.

So I found out that I can't touch the wiggly lines and there are two types of enemies and there are blockers. I can shoot everything but most enemies take more than one shot. There are upgrades, but I couldn't figure out what they mean, I assume they increase life, shot amount and shot speed or something like that. After a while the four corners of the target area start to glow so I can finish the level. If I touch the target before that, a dialog appears and I guess depending on my answer I die? I couldn't find out whether I get a benefit from picking up the round gray things though. There are only life replenishing runes on the boss level, but I died there on my remaining life.

The game mechanics are solid, although the keyboard query seems to pick up on the keyboard repetition settings, so there is a slight lag at the beginning of holding a key. This can be remedied by reacting to "key down" and "key up" events. In between the down and up event you assume the key is held, and during the whole time, you perform the corresponding action at each nth frame. You will get much more consistent behavior.

The shooting could have used some polish. I would have liked to have faster, more responsive shots with higher range and I would have liked the shots to reload faster. All this possibly at the expense of tougher and faster enemies so that it would have more of a cat-and mouse thing.

I didn't get the sacrifice part at all though.

All in all I found the game interesting enough to understand its mechanics, but it would have helped if it were a bit more approachable. It's definitely a very unique entry. Good job!