Well, there goes the rest of the week. I don't install games on my phone, but I always give SPD a pass because open source. The first time I installed it, I almost lost an internship because I was too focused on the game. The most recent time I installed it, my wife thought I was cheating on her because I was acting so shady and obsessive about my phone. Don't say I didn't warn y'all.
I'm not really sure what this is doing on Hacker News, but the game (Shattered Pixel Dungeon) is fun.
One of the nicest features is that whenever you observe an effect that unambiguously tells you what a potion/scroll does - such as throwing a potion - that type of object is automatically identified for you. In more "traditional" hack games you'd have to write notes yourself even though obviously a thrown potion exploding into fire means it's a potion of liquid fire, right?
Shattered Pixel is a good way to kill some time on public transit or similar.
I'm not really sure what this is doing on Hacker News
Incredibly fun game, open source, and in a genre that likely fits well into many HN users' interests. I rediscovered it recently and remembered it was open source, so why not submit it?
Thanks for submitting it, I have never heard of it. Maybe because I exist in the iOS "walled garden" and generally game on console only.
Do you know what game engine its based on? Or is it a custom thing?
Custom AFAIK. There's an iOS version: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/shattered-pixel-dungeon/id1563...
The title should include a [year], to save people like me from needing to check if anything significant changed in the game that made me miss half of a trip to Thailand in 2014.
The game has regular updates, so sort of.
I think the open source part is the main justification. Getting kids into tech and programming seems a HN sort of article, and an open source game is one way of doing it. Much more advanced than the entry level things like Scratch Jr. and not nearly as wide spread an audience, but a great step around the high school level for the few who wants to get deeper without committing to some formal education.
I saw this post and immediately thought “there’s probably a lot of potential trad roguelike fans on hacker news”, for one thing it’s probably the genre with highest percentage of fans are devs or have dabbled into game dev.
SPD is a good gateway to brogue, DCSS, cogmind, qud, etc
I’ve already mentioned Cogmind, but Brogue is a beautiful game with tight gameplay. Another great recommendation.
It's not a roguelike really, but Brogue was my gateway to CDDA (Catalysm: Dark Days Ahead). Not sure if I've lost more of my life to one of those or to Slay the Spire. I don't regret it one bit.
Been meaning to get into Cogmind (which seems even more aesthetically appealing than Brogue) and Caves of Qud, but I have children now, and must wait until they are of age before re-engaging with such things.
Brogue was my introduction to the genre. I also tried Golden Krone Hotel, a beginner-friendly title (and the first one I beat)! I played CoQ for a while, too, but there's something about Cogmind that clicked with me. I'm not very good at it, but it's a _total_ blast.
And I agree with you -- it is, imo, the most beautiful roguelike that I've seen or played. And it's got hundreds of unique sound effects, too, which makes a huge difference.
I've thought about CDDA, but honestly, the amount of material there is intimidating. But it looks very cool.
These games are indeed dangerous! I don't have kids, but I'm still in school, so I have to be careful. When you have some time, definitely give Cogmind a try. Hope you enjoy it!
You probably know all this, but for others:
Cogmind is a lot of really thought out small touches that sum up to an engaging experience despite at first glance looking like any other roguelike. It's got great animations/explosions and an intuitive UI.
The developer is the main mod of r/roguelikedev, has been running a great blog for years where he dives deep into aspects of roguelike dev (https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/), and is also just a wonderful human who genuinely loves supporting the community and playing roguelike games.
Sure, CDDA is a roguelike -- the word was supposed to mean primarily a specific way of controlling the character, introduced in Rogue. Everybody in the roguelike community calls it a roguelike.
Skyrim had that mechanic. You could eat ingredients for potions and if you had a duplicate it would tell you the effects, and the next time you found the ingredient again you would know what it was.
Good that they also have potions, so that no poison in the world is strong enough to kill you in Skyrim (or is there one?)
There is one raw ingredient in Skyrim which will kill the player. But it can't be found in the wild. It's given to you for a Dark Brotherhood quest. But you don't have to use it in the quest. Can keep it for later use.
Nethack identifies objects once you've observed their effect as well
Some, but not all. For example, "Call a white potion:" or "Call a scroll labeled VE FORBRYDERNE:" prompts. These often appear after observing an effect where an experienced player or one consulting spoilers knows what the potion or scroll must be, but the game didn't auto-ID it.
Only in the most obvious of cases. Your cat reluctantly steps on an item? Cursed. Grey stone moved less than X tiles when kicked? Loadstone. Hundreds of these.
Don't Nethack and DCSS do that as well?
DCSS does; NetHack sometimes does but there are very many cases in which you observe some effect and are then asked "Call a milky potion:" or "Call a scroll labeled ANDOVA BEGARIN:".
I can also recommend POWDER as a solid not-many-frills classic roguelite.
It would be nice if you could manually identity items though; sometimes the context you get a potion from tells you what the potion is but you have to remember that until you use it. Using the stones of intuition for this kind of seems wasteful.
Game dev is historically pretty popular on hn.
It's reminding me I need to rebuild my very-slightly-modified version to keep my Google Play developer account active!
Shattered Pixel encourages variants and branches, though sometimes Google tries to block the blatant clones that want to publish on Google Play, even though the license and developers want that outcome.
On the other thread of "brutally punishing", there is the "Too Cruel" variant of an earlier version of Shattered for those of us who need more difficulty. PD is more like a long game of chess than a dungeon crawler.
The fun part is trying to identify certain items before actually using them. (The guesses won't always be perfect, but you can greatly improve your odds.)
https://pixeldungeon.fandom.com/wiki/Shattered_Pixel_Dungeon is a great resource if you are new to the game and genre, although I suggest first trying discovering everything by yourself (prepare to die a lot) and start reading the wiki after getting through the first boss on lvl 5.
I've been playing SPD for years now and for me the best strategy to win the game is to keep Scrolls of Upgrade until you get a hold of a weapon of at least tier 4, same goes for armor. This makes the initial levels much more risky, but if you survive it's a matter of not making mistakes or getting yourself into high risk situations. Using this method I get to the Amulet in about 30% of the runs. Since the recent updates getting back to the ground has become a much more fun challenge.
Besides postponing the use of Scrolls of Upgrade, here are a few things that work for me:
* You don't have to identify potions and scrolls right away, often you can keep them until you gather more information. For example, killed flies sometimes drop health potion and they are on early levels, so you can learn the color without using it.
* Before you get the Scroll Holder that protects the scrolls from fire, it's a good idea to stash all the scrolls in water at the beginning of each level and retrieve them back before going to the next one.
* Scrolls of Mapping are absolutely crucial on levels >20 because of the traps and they are relatively cheap in the first two shops.
* Summoning trap rooms are great to gather a lot of xp if you have potions of paralytic gas and fire/toxic gas. After the level is cleared, you just open the doors by throwing something at it, go as far away as possible, throw paralytic and then fire/toxic potions. And run to the next level.
(prepare to die a lot)
No thanks. Repeatedly punishing you for stupid shit isn't a fun game.
Like the Sims will burn you alive for not buying a smoke detector and then having the audacity to make toast.
I see it as a different model of building knowledge about the game than most other genres. Dying early is part of the process, because each time you die you got to this point in a bit different way, learning other things on the way.
If you were hand-held to the very end you'd only see a a narrow path you went through, which is also ok. It's just a difference in the journey, similar to Breadth-First Search and Deep-First Search in graphs.
Another thing is game fairness. In my opinion, SPD is fair, there's no "you stepped on something you couldn't detect if you tried and died". If you pay attention you will see enough information to identify threats after the initial die-a-lot period :)
The traps just happen randomly throughout. The best run I had going ended instantly when I hit an alarm trap. It's impossible to recover. I cannot even escape lone enemies without a ring of haste.
Yeah, I could have detected that on a search, but I'm usually struggling to stay fed in the first place.
If you’re struggling to stay fed, try these tips:
* Don’t eat right away when the game says you’re hungry. Wait until you’re starving and below 50% health. This makes each food ration last way longer!
* Don’t eat pasties or meat. When you find an alchemy pot, use the recipe that combines one food ration, one piece of meat, and one pasty to make a meat pie. The meat pie is way more nourishing and gives you a “well fed” health regeneration buff.
* Try to be efficient with your movement and exploration. If you’re not careful you can end up wasting a huge amount of time wandering around not accomplishing anything. This also leads to more monsters being generated which means you take more damage, taxing your resources.
* Along those same lines: always try to fight dirty. If you see an enemy coming towards you try to hit them a bit at range (throw stuff or zap wands) then retreat behind a closed door or around some tall grass. When the enemy comes through the door or around/through the grass, hit them with an attack. You should see a yellow ! mark on the enemy indicating a surprise attack. Now retreat behind another obstacle and repeat. As long as you keep breaking line-of-sight and then hitting the enemy immediately when they reestablish line-of-sight (this also works with ranged attacks) you’ll get guaranteed surprise hits. This lets you defeat enemies more quickly without taking as much damage standing there missing all the time.
* Don’t overdo it though. After you’ve gained some levels and find you easily outclass an enemy then kill them quickly. Leading enemies all over the place takes more time (costing food) and can end up getting you surrounded, causing even more damage!
* Throw stuff down pits instead of carrying it around. This applies mostly to weapons, armour, and scrolls (before you get the scroll holder). Anything you throw down a pit will show up on the next level. This is a great way to avoid running back and forth swapping items when you’re low on inventory space and you want to sell things or do alchemy. Don’t throw potions though, they break (but do throw them at enemies or obstacles when the situation calls for it!)
I've been trying many of those but the meat pie is new to me! Thank you, I'll give it another go some day soon :)
In addition to brewing pies, you can also prepare excess meat easily by freezing or burning it. Throw it at traps, use wands, or even potions if you're using one anyway (otherwise don't waste a potion like this.) If you can easily kill fish (archer class) then you can get a lot of excess meat.
Yes, traps are put in random places. At least they can't be placed on water, grass or ash, so are safer sections to go through without doing search before each step.
That's why it's a really good idea to collect 4 Scrolls of Mapping for levels 1-24.
Sounds like Elden Ring. I started playing it recently and got annoyed at how often I died. But I realized that's part of the learning process. It's still annoying but at least I can see it for what it is.
This may not be the genre for you, then. And that’s fine!
No, it's my genre.
Just some have a dial where the default isn't Ultra Nightmare mode.
I don’t say this to be mean but if you think Pixel Dungeon is “Ultra Nightmare” mode, games like Nethack or Caves of Qud would probably cause you actual physical pain.
Pixel Dungeon is one of the most beginner friendly roguelikes, widely considered the “next step” in difficulty after the Mystery Dungeon series. (I often recommend it to people that enjoyed Pokémon Mystery Dungeon but find Nethack and DCSS too intense)
Dying is not dying in computer games. Think of it as a game mechanic.
With the exception of NetHack, which is famous for it, current roguelikes generally don't end the run for stupid shit (e.g. instead of killing you if you accidentally step into lava, they just don't let you do it), but more for wrong strategy or tactics.
So I used to play Pixel Dungeon and then saw a bunch of clones that looked like it. Is Shattered Pixel Dungeon the original project or a clone of a closed source game? Or completely unrelated?
It's a variant, with lots of quality-of-life upgrades, some very well thought-out new mechanics, and new biomes and missions.
I always found the game becoming easier with more mechanics/weapons/potions added (in other variants). Is this the case with SPD?
I don't necessarily think so. Evan puts a LOT of effort into balance. But even so, I've gotten to where I have 5 challenge modes turned on to make it a challenge, so maybe you're right.
The original Pixel Dungeon was closed source IIRC, but then the developer stopped working on it and released the source code. Now there are many forks/mods of PD, all with different features (the Pixel Dungeon wiki has a great list). Shattered PD is the most popular and polished one, it adds a ton of stuff and is very actively developed.
Yeah, I was looking though the code wondering what java based rendering library this was using but all of these support classes come from "PD-classes" (which was sighted in the SPD readme... just never joined the dots) but also pointed me to the creators itch account and relevant "Generator" artworks which are all very impressive
https://watabou.github.io/ https://watabou.itch.io/
Some really great work here
The original Pixel Dungeon uses a homebrew “engine” (that’s the PD-classes stuff). Shattered uses libgdx.
"It's based on the source code of Pixel Dungeon, by Watabou." I also played the original Pixel Dungeon, great game and bonus points for being free and open source!
original creator: https://twitter.com/watawatabou
Was always free... now people have gone to town with the source code.
I've played a fair number of PD spin-offs / remixes and Shattered stands out as the best. It get regular updates that sometimes add or substantially change large chunks of the game.
By sheer coincidence I'd installed this a few weeks ago. It's really well made, but I ended up uninstalling it because—unless I'm really missing something—it is punishingly difficult. Maybe I don't know all the controls? Or there's some sort of mechanic I'm missing? Or maybe my expectations are wrong?
This very much seems like the kind of game I'd enjoy, but I find myself getting absolutely obliterated by the first snake or two that I encounter. I've yet to figure out how to sneak up on or by them. I've yet to find or earn any early loot that might help.
If anyone knows what I'm doing wrong, please let me know. I'd love to just crank the difficulty down by 50%.
Coming from classic Pixel Dungeon and a bit of Nethack, I can suggest the following heuristics:
- Don’t leave a level without finding a ration
- Identify scrolls and potions as early as possible by using them in a safe context
- Use doorframes to fight one enemy at a time
I'm rarely even getting to the end of the first level let alone leaving it unprepared!
The real trick to surviving the early game is to abuse the heck out of surprise attacks. Do not fight enemies in the open early on! Throw/zap stuff at them from a distance and then retreat behind a door. As soon as they step through the door, hit them! You should see a yellow ! indicating a surprise attack (guaranteed hit). Now retreat and do it again!
This trick works with anything that breaks line of sight. Doors and tall grass are my preferred options. It even works if you step through a door (closing it behind you) or around a patch of tall grass (to the opposite side of the grass from the enemy) and the enemy immediately opens the door or otherwise follows right behind you.
See my other reply [1] for more tips!
Are you making full use of the items you find, or are you dying with an inventory of wands/scrolls/potions that you were saving for a rainy day? One of the things to do is to identify items when you have some safety. One way to do that is to use the wands on enemies. Sometimes you do end up wasting a charge or empowering the enemy, but then you know what the thing does. And after a few runs you'll have a sense for something like "I've identified a lot of the 'good' scrolls, so its more likely the unidentified ones are 'bad' ones"
I'm not getting past the second or third room in most cases, so I don't even have an opportunity to hoard items
Get the snake to follow you through a door and hit the snake when they step into the door. This counts as a sneak attack. I think if you inspect the snake with the magnifying glass it will give you this hint (always take your time and do this with new enemies.
Alternatively, play as a mage (wands always hit snakes) or as an archer and shoot the snakes when they're still asleep.
Most of the game's difficulty curve is in learning tricks like this to cheese enemies. For instance, always fight flies (or any large group) in chokepoints.
Playing it for over a decade.
I primary play the huntress, so all these are from that perspective:
* only eat when necessary, that is starving or early on level and likely lot of enemies.
* your first upgrade scroll is for your permanent bow, upgrade the scroll, then apply it to the bow
* there is a specific path for enemy's approach, always
* use the seeds with statues and mimics in there presumed path
* ranged attacks where possible
* before walking into a well of health, put on all the cursed items, they will become uncursed
* in the shop order of buying is next bag/satchel, then food (even with horn of plenty), ankh (unless you are super confident), thereafter as augment your weaknesses with potions of healing, scrolls, rings, wands from the store
* when picking up things make sure you pick up in order of most preferred to least preferred. Items last picked up get stolen first.
* always try to "trap" enemy in a door. i.e. they stand in the doorway
* if you get a plate armour, dump every, single, upgrade into it. No questions.
* drink potions early, standing near door and water
* a broken honey pot & health potion brewed is worth more than individually
* upgrade potion of experience and scroll of transmutation, then use it to pick and improve a tiers of abilities.
* the frost and fireblast wands can turn your raw meat into good food. With frost, the meat needs to be against a wall or something. Fireblast just torches everything.
* rooms with traps - if they are single target traps, go to the furthest spot, then rest or make noise to bring the enemies in. Throw stuff on the trap triggering attacks on the enemy. for the avalanche rooms, drop something in the doorway, step back then throw stuff on the traps.
* enraged gnolls, just walk away. There is no arguing with someone who lost self-control :)
Good luck! You will need it.
Any reason this is not provided for download through F-Droid. I trust apps on F-Droid more than Google Play and helps with installing in degoogled phones.
There's a thread on GitHub where the dev explains why: https://github.com/00-Evan/shattered-pixel-dungeon/issues/13...
Downloading the APK direct from GitHub is the official way to get it without the Play Store. App updates take a bit more work, but you can set up notifications through GitHub to be notified for new releases.
I like Fdroid because it automatically compiles from source and does vulnerability scanner. Its not a safe practice to download random binary blobs from github. Its a shame it looks like a nice implementation but I will have to give it a pass.
Well, you can get it from https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.shatteredpixel.shattered... if you don't mind the vulnerability scanner having a false positive occasionally.
It looks like another commentor posted the Fdroid link.
Just FYI, there's an Android app called Obtainium that lets you add Github (and a few other VCS) repos to it. Obtanium will then check those repos for updates and install the new APK for you. Its pretty slick for people that prefer to get their APKs direct from the dev.
Is this not it? Built and distributed by F-Droid https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.shatteredpixel.shattered...
For those who enjoy SPD I recommend checking out some other popular roguelikes, many of them are also open source.
Some of my personal recommendations would be brogue (probably the most beginner friendly), DCSS (friendly, tons of content), ADoM and Cataclysm DDA (a sandbox survival roguelike, quite a unique mix)
What do these acronyms mean?
DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
ADoM = Ancient Domains of Mystery
Cataclysm DDA = Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead
I swear I didn't make the first one up ;) Edit: ah well, you got your answer already^^
"Stone Soup" refers to the Stone Soup folk story, where people contribute their supplies to make a great soup for everyone (it is developed by many people who contribute to the open-source project started by Linley Henzell as Linley's Dungeon Crawl).
Still a better name than NetHack (which is not a game about hacking networks... "Net" just refers to collaboration over net to improve the game Hack). There is also BrogueCE ("Brogue Community Edition").
Shattered Pixel Dungeon
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
Ancient Domains of Mystery
Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead
I should probably have used the full names for clarity, either way the acronyms mean, in order: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Ancient Domains of Mystery and Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead.
Currently hung up on CDDA. Probably the most complicated hardcore game I've ever touched. Learning curve like a brick wall. Incredibly rewarding to master though.
Really love that it's FOSS. I've got a bunch of scripts I run to scan the game files to learn things that are hard to get just from the in game menus.
This is cool, I love a good roguelike especially on my phone for flights and other time sinks.
I am curious though, why is the iOS version €4.99 but the Android version is free ? I've seen this a lot actually and have always wondered, I figured it might just be Apple's annual developer license fee but not sure.
Last time I checked, having an app on the Android app store costs $14 a year, vs $99 a year on the Apple app store
Isn't it that the Google Play store is a one-time $25 registration fee (and never again) but the Apple App store is $99 every year?
Yep that's exactly the reason, plus not wanting to compete with Pixel Dungeon. The developer talked about it when first announcing it was coming to iOS
Shattered Pixel Dungeon will cost $5 US when it fully releases on the App Store. I’m charging because of a mix of Apple’s higher platform fees, not wanting to undercut Pixel Dungeon, and because Shattered is releasing in a much more finished state.
https://shatteredpixel.com/blog/shattered-pixel-dungeon-is-c...
And also because historically iPhone users have been more inclined to pay for apps than Android users.
I’m on iOS and I paid for it without hesitation. Evan deserves it, just read his blog for the game [1] to see how much he puts into it!
I guess it is the same reason Anki isn't free either on iOS: you must pay Apple's dev account whether you make a profit or not
DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS.
I downloaded (not Shattered) Pixel Dungeon and then Shattered, and nearly a decade later I'm still playing. In fact it's 70% of my non-work computing time.
Not only that Shattered's dev updates often with sometimes great changes.
You've been warned.
Same. It's really the only mobile game that I keep coming back to.
I feel your pain. I've spent more time playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup than I care to admit. The fact that this can be played on Android makes it even more dangerous.
Glad to know I'm not the only one.
I've never seen a game, or software for that matter, with a better version history screen.
Thank you for the warning.
I am going to download it. But I'm not going to touch it until I'm on vacation next month. :) I've got a lot of work between now and then.
Semi-unrelated but this reminded me of the countless hours I spent playing Castle of the Winds[1] as a kid.
Based on this thread I went searching for it and, as it turns out, the original author is working on porting[2] it to Unity!
[1]: https://www.mobygames.com/game/842/castle-of-the-winds/
[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/CastleOfTheWinds/comments/172ckn6/i...
Oh man, that reminds me of my childhood in rural Greece, where the only software I could get was from magazines, where they downloaded demo/shareware versions of stuff and put it on a CD.
Obviously there was no way for me to pay or get the full software, so I spent hours and hours playing the same levels over and over in the demo.
I loved Castle of the Winds, and another turn-based games with pirates. There was also a similar one with tanks and such, called Metal Knights maybe?
While imperfect, I nevertheless adored Reign of Swords/Clash of Kingdom on my old iPod touch back in ~2008.
I've looked for a replacement for years but 99.9% of similar games on the App Store are spam/pay to win/microtransaction hell with the typical cheap ugly "international" art style.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2008/10/06/reign-of-swords-revi...
https://www.ign.com/articles/2009/08/03/reign-of-swords-2-re...
https://www.ign.com/articles/2008/02/07/mobile-battles-reign...
http://web.archive.org/web/20111001213349/http://www.mobileb...
Holy fuck I completely forgot about that game. I spent hours and hours and hours playing that game as a kid.
I probably logged 50 hours just in the free demo level.
So many hours trying to farm cube slimes to get rare items in that game. I loved it.
But it requires you to login with your Google account. Weird for an open source game.
I dont have google account, but noticed they release apk builds directly on github, side-loaded and running, I may be gone a while...
This is not true. Probably you installed it through the Play store?
No such requirement if you get it from F-Droid, which you should.
From my experience, you can just skip it and still play the game.
Most of those Google prompts can just be bypassed by hitting the "back" button (on android, at least).
I started an opinionated and still incomplete guide for new players https://spd-huntress-guide.pages.dev/guide. I didn't put it out there and was going to take it down because I couldn't finish it let alone maintain it. It's impossible to keep up with the pace of Evan's updates so the walk-throughs with seeds probably don't work, but someone might find it useful.
I can't seem to load the page, would love to read.
I don't know why that would be, but someone archived it: https://web.archive.org/web/20240321134120/https://spd-huntr...
As someone who was intrigued by this post but felt a little overwhelmed starting out, this is awesome. Thank you for sharing, whether its incomplete/outdated or not.
So after reading the positive comments here I went ahead and bought a copy for iPhone in the App Store.
I was hoping that it supports controllers, as i recently bought a pretty neat controller that you plug the phone into the middle of, and you get buttons and thumb sticks on each side of the screen. Kind of similar to the joycons you have with a Nintendo Switch. This controller is PlayStation branded, but produced by a different company that has licensed the right to brand the controller that way.
Anyway, I am happy to report that yes indeed this game works with my controller. Left thumb stick moves the character around, and right thumb sticks moves a sort of aiming square around!
Edit: the pointer sensitivity was a bit high for me, but it is adjustable in the game settings and after adjusting it it is comfortable
Backbone One? I recently got the non-PlayStation branded one for my iPhone and I love it. I had been wanting one for a while, and finally jumped when they released the Gen 2 version with swappable mounts to support cases.
It’s been fantastic for playing SNES games on mobile. I can’t recommend it enough. Only downside would be the included app is hot trash. Always tries to sell you some subscription. Luckily, I haven’t found the need to ever use the app.
Yep, Backbone One.
I was waiting a bit too, because it’s not exactly cheap.
Eventually I found one that was brand new that someone was selling second hand because they had bought the wrong version. They had the latest iPhone which has a USB-C port, but they had bought the Backbone One with lightning connector. I have a slightly older model. The iPhone 14 Pro. So mine has lightning connector. He got most of his money back that way, and I got a discount compared to buying one in the store. Everybody wins :)
Anyway yeah, I’ve been enjoying mine too. I’ve mostly been using it with Nvidia Now or what it’s called. Via the Backbone app. This way I can play some of the games I have in my Steam account on a computer in the cloud using my phone and my Backbone One. I only play at home on WiFi, and I’m on the free plan so I have to wait in a queue and each play session lasts 1 hour and then I have to start a new session. Been re-playing one of the modern Tomb Raider games this way and have been quite enjoying it so far.
Oh I know those! I had one for the iPhone 6s, but now my 12 Pro is obviously bigger, so it doesn't fit.
So, I 3D-printed one of those holders that holds an XBox controller and your phone above it. A bit heavy, but works perfectly for all controller-enabled games! And worthy of mention, Geforce Now also works! So I'm "PC-gaming" from my bed with this, and all for "free" (if you don't count the cost of the plastic, phone, or controller lol).
If you like these kinds of games but find SPD to be a little too mechanically simple and lacking in build diversity, you may also enjoy DCSS (dungeon crawl stone soup) and my personal favorite: Frogcomposband.
You can play the later at angband.live, and it's an exceptional game with incredible depth and variety.
There was a Nintendo DS port of Stone Soup that I really loved. Had some great times provoking monsters into fighting each other while I hid in the shadows.
And BTW, if I can figure out how to do Eclipse CDT and get the source code running in an IDE, so that I can do LOTS of fun things with class skills, you can to! Because the last time I did C/C++ was 1998.
Also, Remnants of the Precursors (java) you can do some fun things. I got "doomstars" half-implemented, a race skill that marks planets with resources or artifacts (archaeology bonus), and lots of other fun things.
I really like open source games, half the fun is hacking them.
I have yet to download nethack from the net and hack it though.
I agree about SPD. While it's great for a mobile game and looks gorgeous, I find the gameplay somewhat shallow for a roguelike.
If I have a monitor and keyboard at hand, I prefer to play the likes of ADOM (classic version, not Ultimate), Brogue, Legerdemain, Sil, DCSS, etc. which offer more depth, strategic complexity and meaningful choices, IMHO.
Haven't tried the frog one, will do at some point.
this is far and away the best roguelike i've played on mobile. indeed, it's pretty much the only roguelike i've ever seen that has a decent mobile user experience. you can tell that the dev team has put a tremendous amount of work into making it look and feel good.
You should try Dead Cells.
i looked it up, and it looks like more of a metroidvania than a roguelike. also the play store reviews say the controls aren't great on mobile. might pick it up for steam deck though, it does look fun :)
This is one of those games I wish I could play on an emulator or VM or something where I could take a snapshot and subsequently undo my inevitable, catastrophic mistake.
Like DF, this sort of game becomes terribly boring after you have won / seen all things. You don'y want to win quickly.
That's called save scumming
This is the only game I ever donated to. I open it up almost every time I recompile and run. My previous build was an experimental corrupt mage with corpse dust. I wanted to see if I can balance charges and corrupting an army of wraiths that spawn all the time because of the corpse dust. Current build is a plain old assassin with +10 assassin's blade and anti-magic armor. Trying out the badder bosses challenge this time.
Doesn't corruption require you to hit the enemy? How does that work with wraiths when they die after one hit?
Via wand of corruption. But you need a lot of recharge. Ring, ability and armor needs to be able to recharge your wands. Wraiths become very resistant to wand towards the end, so you will need those charges.
Excellent game, I lost an embarrassing amount of time last year getting all of the badges.
The mobile versions are great because they’re ad-free, and work without internet access when on airplanes. And since it’s turn-based, it’s very interruption-friendly. The Reddit community is also a lot of fun: equal mix of strategy and memes.
All of them? I gave up on that goal partway through the pandemic; I spent about a year's worth of occasional games without seeing Tengu and eventually accepted that I wasn't interested enough to get that 6-challenge badge.
Strategy on Reddit, you say? Perhaps that could help. But, perhaps it's better if I don't spelunk that particular rabbithole.
For the last badge, it wasn't masterful strategy: I played until I got lucky with an overpowered Ring of Wealth run, and farmed the dwarven floors for like 3 days before breezing through the demon halls and ascending. That one and only six challenge run landed with 1,050,700 points, which was just enough to get the final "Over 1 million points" badge.
That was the last round I played, almost a year ago. I consider myself free from the game now, but look back on it fondly :)
This game is so good. It's probably the thing I miss most from having an Android phone.
It is available on iOS!
It wasn't at the time, and I didn't need to know that! I have it on PC but luckily that's easier to avoid.
You die a little bit too often when compared with old school rogue, nethack and moria. But it is very nice.
You don’t have to die often. Winning streaks of 20+ (with 6 challenges active) are completely doable. This guy RunningFromCake [1] has some nice tutorials on how to get better at the game. He also has videos showing his winning streaks and how he accomplishes them.
Check out YAPD (Yet Another Pixel Dungeon) if you're on Android for a nice variant of the original. I found I like the mods in YAPD better.
I (perhaps mistakenly?) started with YAPD but then got my friend hooked and he went for SPD. I love how active the SPD dev is, but the mechanics are juuust a tad too different for me to want to learn them all. Both are great games though!
It's a great game, and feels very very close to crawl, aka Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It's also fair regarding the payment model (cosmetics only, otherwise completely free on the mechanics side).
Oh. Lost me right there.
Are you sure you're rich enough to afford games with IAPs?
How does it get around apple GPL ban?
If you own the rights to all of the code, you can dual license under GPL and non-GPL, and then you can post on the appstore.
They don't accept code requests, so that might be their strategy
Ohhhh this is perfect. I hit the wall with BG3 because it got mind numbing by the end of Act 2, so I totally needed something fast and easy.
NICE.
(Desktop)
Got most of the way through act 3 and uninstalled bg3. I like that game, but just didn't feel compelled to complete it. At that point, it has been so long since the characters leveled up that gameplay was just sort of repetitive. There weren't really any new tactics to learn and employ.
The level cap killed that game for me, it turns out.
What is gameplay/control like on mobile? Is the crawling and combat engaging?
As of my reply there's 120 other comments raving about it.
It's an awesome game, I'm playing it non-stop since last summer and embarked my 9-years old daughter along. We're sharing games and exchanging bits of information (yes, she's thinking out of the box, and it sometimes works :) )
The author, Evan, is maintaining a fediverse community for all mods of the original Pixel Dungeon, accessible via https://photon.lemmy.world/c/pixeldungeon for instance, after the Reddit troubles from last year.
I've only played the original Pixel Dungeon and never tried any of the forks. How does this compare?
I was aware of Pixel dungeon but didn't realize it was available on PC, Mac, and iOS.
Particularly impressed that it builds for iOS when written in Java - turns out the game is built on libgdx which builds for all these platforms.
Also, it's fun if you like roguelikes.
Interesting that this project seems to contain a bunch of sprite assets released under GPL3. How does GPL apply to something like an art asset?
I’ve been stuck playing Pixel dungeon and now Shattered Pixel Dungeon since ~2014.
Fantastic game, highly replayable.
I’ve not been heavily committed, so I’ve only really “won” about 2-3 times total.
As a super fan of roguelikes I appreciate the recommendation.
I found a doom roguelike recently, maybe yall would be interested to.
I think you are the best. Period. End of story.
My 5 year old son got REALLY into this a few months back. He played up to the first boss and then had me take over. We had a lot of fun with it.
Oh well, now I now what I should add into my phone.
Being in Java and a roguelike dugeon crawler with cute graphics already makes it for me.
I have been playing Pixel Dungeon and then Shattered Pixel Dungeon since ~2016.
Such a great game.
It’s available on Homebrew:
`brew install shattered-pixel-dungeon`
It has been neat watching this game change over the years. Every year or so, enough new updates have been had that it feels like a new "season"; similar to online games. It keeps getting better.
An open-source multiplayer version of this would be pretty sweet!
I've been playing on and off for about 3 years now, I'm not even very good, have never beat it yet.
In the past week or two I've learned about better strategies, e.g. max out your weapon so you can one-hit most enemies. Trading blows is a death sentence.
This play guide has more helpful knowledge information:
https://old.reddit.com/r/PixelDungeon/comments/4tthsy/shatte...
Ome additional note: Don't let thieves get too far away after they steal from you, else This stolen item will disappear forever. This just happened to me a few minutes ago.
Why does the Android app require access to my location? I wouldn't expect open source apps to spy on me.
If you like Magic The Gathering card playing game, avoid Forge (Desktop + Android) because it is open source (made in Java) and it has all the cards, gameplays, you can build your deck or choose from a huge list of ready-made ones and play against the AI and online up to 4 players in the same game I believe.
I’ve played this for a while, and not to brag, but I’ve got to chapter two on a warrior AND mage.
I love the identification process and relatively quick, albeit very tactical if you want, gameplay. It’s my go to iPhone game when on short journeys, mostly because I can just save where I am and pick up whenever without having to remember dungeon layout or potions/food etc.
This looks sick. Can't wait to try!
You gotta check out Yet Another Pixel Dungeon too! I like it very much. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.considered...
https://github.com/00-Evan/shattered-pixel-dungeon/blob/mast...
This is such a useful document. It details how to get your own fork up and running. I’ve seen a lot of open source software go in the other direction.
I see they accept donations (and it's probably the only way they keep themselves financially supported), does it need to go through Play Store's billing system?
Afaik, Google takes down open-source apps that link to their donation page without going through their billing system because it falls on their "no circumvention" policy.
This does look really neat, but IMHO ASCII art is one of the keys to being traditional.
Nothing at all against Shattered Pixel Dungeon, just that a quick look through the site didn’t reveal a terminal version.
Love this! I purchased both the iOS and Steam version. Completely happy to support indie game devs willing to open source their software.
I hadn’t played games for a long time, mostly because of school, but recently I picked up Cogmind, a fantastic sci-fi roguelike. Basically, you’re a robot that can attach and replace different items, including utilities, propulsion systems, weapons, and power sources. It’s some of the most fun I’ve had playing a game in ages.
The developer, Josh Ge, is also very kind and deeply engaged with the community, which is great.
Highly recommended!
The original Pixel Dungeon isn’t available in the iOS App Store in Portugal, anyone know how to get around it?
ha never knew this was open source.
Awesome game! When my kid was young I'd have this on my phone to keep her busy for a few minutes if she was melting my brain.
She was always killed by a rat at some point.
Just got hit with a wave of nostalgia, I remember playing it in 2015, and I opened up the link to Google Play, and I still see my comments there, that the dev even responded too. Great game that I will have to pick up again!
I love roguelike games (still miss you 100 Rogues), and I played Shattered Pixel Dungeon 77 times before finally winning with a Rogue class. Once I'd done that, I never had the urge to play it again.
6 or so years ago I wondered why they were so much Pixel Dungeon versions on the Play Store.
Now I know why ! The game was Open Source !
Highly recommended. It's a fork of the original Pixel Dungeon, and quite a bit more fun than the original.
Was absolutely obsessed with it couple of years ago. Hard, deep mechanics for its genre, super fun. First finish was quite the ride. What a win for FOSS.
If you only play open source mobile games and are afraid of wasting your time, make sure you avoid the factory tower defense game Mindustry which presents itself at https://mindustrygame.github.io/
I have tried multiple times to play Mindustry, but always end giving up, it doesn't seem that well tested on touch screens.
On one of my phones it doesn't even render whole the items on the screen, making some actions unselectable.
The item box is scrollable. I didn't realize that till later in my game play. (I had been playing desktop version for some time)
Also, the small activation regions for some items/blocks/selections suggest it may be easier to play with one of those touch-active styluses.
Thanks for the hint.
Yeah I finished all of Mindustry on mobile, around half of it with stylus (it has a rubber ball)
And if you play on PC, also avoid Tales of Maj'Eyal (https://te4.org/), because of its depth and almost infinite replayability.
The crazy imaginative class selection in ToME (special shoutout to the chronomancer) easily makes it my go-to roguelike, but I do find I have trouble really feeling what the impact of my build choices are, although this is a common feeling with roguelikes - I probably feel it more in ToME because it feels like every level-up has a much broader decision space than most other roguelikes. Also that most enemies (at least early game) aren't a major challenge until you hit one that wrecks you.
Most of the time I go with "rule of cool", blaze ahead, and die somewhere around the time I get to the sandworm tunnels.
The farthest I ever got was what felt like the first real boss who just teleports you to <FUN> which came out of left field and my character in that run was _not_ prepared to handle that.
I'm still trying to beat it on normal difficulty. The farthest I got was first floors of the necromancer's tower, which is about 1/4 of the game AFAIK. I resist the temptation to try any add-on, there's so much fun without them.
That is why I am a fan of games that buff your character over repeated runs.
If more games did this, the difficulty slider could go away. As an added bonus, there is a satisfaction of getting to the point where you are so overpowered the game essentially breaks (see: vampire survivors)
Was on my way to suggest this game to avoid, which is also available for free on desktop.
Man, anyone will do what you are suggesting to avoid! we will bear the sin together.
Honestly though, Mindustry is so much better with keyboard/mouse controls. It's a shockingly good mobile factory/automation type game, but I'd just rather play it on PC. (Or Mac, which runs it fine)
Sure, but it's much harder to hide your laptop screen under the covers at 2am, back to spouse, shielding the light, keeping your secret safe. Plus, a screen tap is much quieter than a laptop k/m.
...What? Nobody else is doing this?
Couldn't play it on mobile. The UI just did not feel mobile friendly at all
What does that mean?
Oh no, it's on f-droid, my hands are tied! I'll have to ahem contribute my free time to this important open source library.
How does it compare to They Are Billions [1]?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Are_Billions
Make sure you don't install Caves then, it's even better.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=thirty.six.dev...
Contains ads, hard pass.
I made a relevant thing: https://nobsgames.stavros.io/
Sites like yours are a welcome addition to the web. Thank you! I've been using a similar one: https://www.darkpattern.games/
Thank you! Dark Pattern Games is great as well.
Neat! For a brief time there was that "Honest Android Games" and I've wished for a replacement ever since.
I've been on this page before! Thanks!
Haven't seen an ad in many years.
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.adaway/
Me neither, because I don't install apps which have ads :)
I've never had much luck with system wide VPN-based ad blockers, and I don't have a rooted phone.
I'd pay a one time cost of 20-30 dollars just to get rid of the ads.
I had the same issue and my solution was: I modified the code of the game to add cheats (make my character super durable), compiled it myself and loaded the apk onto my phone. Then I finally finished the game and my addiction ended.
I like this. Both for the astute problem identification and the self-empowered solution.
Usually I try to avoid cheats but I use them it in situations where I either get badly addicted or where I notice that I'm losing a lot of time with repetitive grinding
I just play as an archer/warden. It's a pretty easy class, I can beat the game maybe one in five times. Once you get the nature footwear artifact you've as good as won, and if you get a blooming weapon then it's a cakewalk.
Sniper is easier in my opinion. If you find a ring of marksmanship, it becomes pretty trivial with the sniper's armor bypassing and tier upgrades to the bow.
I think anyone hunting for a first win should play as a huntress or mage. Ranged attacks are pretty overpowered in comparison to melee and don't require as much position play. And since both classes begin with their final weapon, you don't need to rely too much on the RNG to survive.
They should put this review on their repo README. It’s making me want to play it. But it’s also making me scared to play it.
I don't play any computer games these days and haven't since I was a kid.
But I can confirm that pixel dungeon is an exception, I have lost many hours to it, but it has been years since I've played it.
IIRC shattered is a fork with slightly different game play.
I do love rogue like games.
I spent way too much time playing xonotic
I can confirm everything he's saying.
Well, that's a pretty solid endorsement.
I never tried World of Warcraft years ago until that South Park episode came out. Currently about the only games I still play on my phone are chess and Plants vs Zombies 2, which for some reason has had me hooked since the very first one came out. Luckily, my wife likes it too.
Free Open Source???
Unciv
https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv