BASIC ROGUE delivers a punishing indie RPG challenge with permadeath iron man saves that wipe your progress on every death. Players wield melee weapons, shooting and throwing arms, and manage inventory while eating and drinking to fend off hunger, thirst, and escalating damage. Enemies hunt, shoot, steal gear, smash walls, and poison you amid randomized item and enemy placement on a massive map where you upgrade equipment, barter, assign skill and attribute points, and geoengineer structures like forts.
Quality-of-life updates add WASD movement, zoom controls, post-victory play, and turn-counted win screens for scorecards. Hardcore oldschool gamers thrive on the steep learning curve, endless wandering to uncover objectives, and competition for efficient runs.
BASIC ROGUE
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by Indie Jon S. & the Studio of Doom
(c) to infinity and beyond
etc.
RELZ3 - BALANCING AND BEN TILES UPDATE
My brother whipped up a brand new tileset for the game which is a huge improvement, and I made some further balancing tweaks and minor fixes.
* Ben Tiles! The new art looks great, and the old tilesets are still included as .ZIP files in the data folder if they are desired.
* Hunger and thirst damage gets more intense over time.
* First aid is less effective if you are starving or parched.
* Level progression has been slowed a bit.
* Now you only get 2 skill points per level up instead of 3.
* 8 skill points and 8 attribute points to assign at start.
* Less money in the world.
* Poison damage changes with level to keep it relevant.
* Black Knights now have 20% chance of smashing through walls.
* Minor tweaks and bug fixes.
RELZ2 - PLAYER REQUESTED QOL UPDATE
Thank you guys who tried out BASIC ROGUE after release! You have given me some great feedback, and here's an update adding all the stuff you asked for.
* Added WASD keys for aiming and movement.
* ESC no longer immediately exits the game. Instead it closes menus or takes you to the quit/restart menu.
* Upon death or victory, you can either quit or restart the game.
* Win message now includes number of turns that it took you to beat the game.
* You can keep playing after winning if you like.
* The game map can be zoomed in or out using the [] keys.
* Help messages and starting messages were changed to reflect the above.
* Randomized item and enemy placement; each game will now be different.
* Capped maximum armor at 90% for balancing.
* Fixed a minor bug with some items carrying over after restarting game.
RELZ1 - ORIGINAL RELEASE
So here's what you are getting yourself into. Pay attention, because I don't want to hear any excessive whining later on. BASIC ROGUE is a 100% functional and playable game, but it was never intended to be publicly released. I wrote it years ago for my kid brother. Years after that he told me he played it for hours and hours until he beat it and that he thought it was worth a few bucks on Steam. Years after that, here we are, releasing it on Steam for a few bucks.
I'm a self-taught programmer who has been coding for about 25 years now. I'm actually working on a big game project right now, but I feel like I have run out of time and I need to actually make some money if I'm going to justify continuing to develop that game. So this release of BASIC ROGUE is kind of a test to see how well my work is received, to get some feedback on how well my software runs on peoples' computers, and hopefully to make some money.
Don't get me wrong, BASIC ROGUE is a complete game. It's just not THE game that I really wanted to make; it was more of a fun little tech demo and something for my brother to enjoy. And let's be honest, it's HARD. The map is HUGE. It's an IRON MAN save system; when you die, your save gets wiped out. You'll spend a fair bit of time dying and screaming out your rage until you figure out a working strategy. You'll also spend a lot of time wandering around, completely lost, wondering what you have to do to win. There IS an objective. It will take you a while to figure out what it is, but once you uncover the first step, it will become obvious. Then it will take you even longer to get the job done.
Winning this game is one thing. Winning it in the fewest number of turns possible is another. I'll probably fire up some kind of BASIC ROGUE Reddit so people can post their scorecard, which is a screencap of your win screen that the game saves automatically when you win. I imagine this game will appeal to hardcore oldschool gamers who like a real challenge, and who like competing with others for a more streamlined playthrough.
Anyways, more about the game of BASIC ROGUE itself. There are melee weapons. There are shooting and throwing weapons. There's an inventory system. There are ways you can geoengineer the map to build your own house, town, fort, whatever. There are stats. There are skills. There's an equipment upgrade/barter system. There are enemies that hunt you, shoot you, steal your stuff, and kick through doors. There's a poison mechanic. There are status effects. You have to eat and drink to survive. That won't be easy.
Currently there's no sound or music, so play your own tunes in the background to either help you cope with the incessant failure your own incompetence will bring in the world of BASIC ROGUE, or to hone your aggression and focus your adventuring skills. Just don't come crying to me about how hard it is, or about how much time you waste playing this game, or how lost you are, or how you keep starving to death and your favorite weapon keeps breaking. No one likes a whiner. And if you buy this game, I demand perfect 5-star ratings only. Just so you know.
The game engine is fully portable, so you can copy the folder anywhere. If for some reason you don't have root access to your Steam games folder, you might have to do this in order to play since the game saves right in its own directory. But you can copy this to a portable drive and play off that too. Whatever floats your ale bubbles.
Don't laugh at the pathetic-but-somehow-charming art. The art I used for this game was done when I was a little kid. I just upscaled it and did a nice oil paint pass for this Steam release. You can check out the truly horrific original tiles which are zipped in the data directory. You can also easily just use your own art if you want. Feel free to release art packs for this game if you feel so inclined. Sigh. But then the game won't be so BASIC anymore. Ah, whatever.
Oh, and the game automatically saves a screenshot whenever you exit, so you have a record of either your victory, death, or current situation. You can take your own screenshots with the DEL key ingame.
If you aren't literate, this readme will not help you in either life or BASIC ROGUE. Sorry.
Have a nice day. Don't get bit by a serpent.
TROUBLESHOOTING
This game engine is very stable and it has been extensively playtested. The most likely issue to arise would be permissions involving your Steam apps folder, since the game saves screenshots and the save file in its own directory. If you play a session, but the game does not save your progress, this may be the problem; the game did not have permissions to create a save file. Run the program with administrator privileges or simply copy the whole BASIC ROGUE folder somewhere else and run it from there. This will solve 99% of issues. In the event that you are getting problems when starting up the program, you may be having an issue with save file corruption. I have not experienced this but it could happen if - for example - the program is interrupted while it is creating a save file or something like that. Simply delete the MAP.SAV file from the BASIC ROGUE/data directory.
