A long history of dumbing down roguelikes
I recently tried out the game Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja for the Nintendo DS. It’s another in a long line of commercial roguelikes (it’s worth reading the article to familiarize yourself with the concept of what a roguelike is). What annoys me about commercial roguelikes is that they do not admit to their heritage (all of the free software roguelikes typically identify themselves as such). And they tend to lack the complexity that makes the real deal so much fun. Izuna, unfortunately, is a pale imitation of a good roguelike.
Izuna is simply too shallow. There are only a few types of items and only three types of equipment (a maximum of two of which can be worn at once). It’s just so simple. I played through the first two dungeons and felt like I had already gotten everything out of the game that I was going to get. So I stopped playing Izuna and went back to playing NetHack, the preeminent modern roguelike and direct successor of the archetypal Rogue.
That’s not to say that Izuna doesn’t have anything going for it. By roguelike standards, its graphics are top-notch (although keep in mind most roguelikes don’t even have graphics). And Izuna has clever dialog and a substantial plot, something that roguelikes also typically lack. But if I’m going to play a roguelike, it’s not graphics or plot that concern me. It’s the gameplay mechanics. And NetHack is far more interesting than Izuna.
I can name one commercial roguelike that I would consider good: Azure Dreams for the Playstation 1. Its mechanics were sufficiently complex and engaging to really interest me. It also had all sorts of fun minigames revolving around the town outside of the tower (the dungeon in the typical roguelike schema). And dare I say it even had a pet system that was superior to NetHack. The problem with Izuna is that I guess they figured since it was on a handheld system, it had to be pretty simple. It doesn’t even have any pets.
My playing of roguelikes is cyclical. NetHack is the only game I’ve come back to over long periods of time, a testament to how good it is. Whenever I stop playing a game that I was previously way into, such as World of Warcraft, and more recently, Supreme Commander, I always end up going back to NetHack for a spell, trying to Ascend another character class that I haven’t Ascended yet. So far I’ve done seven or eight, and I’m working on, fittingly enough, a rogue right now.
If you’re interested in trying out NetHack, go open up the NetHack Guidebook in one window and use a telnet client such as PuTTY in another to connect to nethack.alt.org. That’s the address of the largest public NetHack server. Of course, you can download, install, and play NetHack on your local machine, but I like playing on public servers. It’s not that the game is multiplayer or anything; I just like being able to play the same game from anywhere that has Internet access.
September 7th, 2007 at 18:42
Real men log in to the nethack server on a Mac SE connected through a purple shoebox.
October 8th, 2007 at 12:54
One cynical explanation is that putting in complexity means added development and testing costs. And if your company or industry is built around releasing a new product every six months, you want people buying your latest product, not playing an old product for years and years.
July 3rd, 2008 at 13:17
Fortunately, the DS is not limited to commercial roguelikes. For lovers of Nethack, I must shamelessly promote my own endeavour, POWDER, in which I did not shy from trying to reach for Nethack’s complexity. Since that was true when my target was the GBA rather than the DS, I don’t think anyone can claim that the handheld form factor somehow reduces complexity.
On that note, Nethack exists for the DS.
For an overview of handheld roguelikes: http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=List_of_handheld_roguelikes
arensb’s point is good explanation of the problem, however. Making a complicated roguelikes requires layers after layers of polish. This isn’t something you can just throw more people at - you need to spend time. And then, if successful, and you make a game people can play for years, where is your revenue stream? The answer I think has to be to treat the roguelike more of a service and somehow get people subscribed to it. This then becomes like a single-player MMORPG where you pay a subscription fee to receive a constant stream of updates.