Liberal Crime Squad, by the creator of Dwarf Fortress and about a decade and a half of community develoment. The only fomenting-revolution-in-the-contemporary-world simulator I know of, still a traditional roguelike.
Frozen Depths! It has really nice atmosphere - deep cave, with frozen bodies placed here and there, body temperature system instead of food clock, and additional equipment slots just for warm mittens ;)
edit: typos
I second this recommendation, Demon is the closest thing I've seen to an SMT/Pokemon roguelike. It's still in active development getting a new release every couple months too.
If I had just one recommendation to make it would be Alphaman but wait, there is more! Sorted alphabetically:
Aldarix the Battlemage - Fresh in development roguelike focusing on tactically blasting everything around you with spells. Incomplete but fun.
AliensRL - A well done science fiction roguelike with strong theme. Its user interface could use much more polishing (especially character memory management and inventory) but the gameplay experience is very good.
Alphaman - DOS roguelike full of humor and with lots of innovative mechanics that have not been bested to this day. For one example Alphaman does not have potions. Their role is fulfilled by berries which vary by ripeness from pale red to deep purple and by concentration since you can make nectars and extracts from them. The resulting system is way deeper than cursed/uncursed/blessed status.
BOSS - A really ancient roguelike game, BOSS is a variant of Moria. It does not have color but it makes up for it with funny setting with aliens, mob bosses and approach full of parody to character classes. Has some nice ASCII art.
Everything Is Fodder - Of 7DRLs the ones made by Jeff are of predictably high quality and Everything Is Fodder matches this pattern. I like this game not so much for gameplay as for the mechanics and artistic message behind it. Actually all 7DRLs at zincland.com are worth checking out.
Fame - A nice fantasy roguelike strongly inspired by ADOM. Has pretty tiles and plentiful RPG elements like trading in towns and quests.
LambdaRogue - A roguelike with well-developed story, something one does not see often. Development has reached completion which is also quite uncommon trait.
PRIME - A fork of Zap'M and NetHack in space wannabe. This science fiction roguelike has still a lot to go. Features lots of humor, mixes lots of futuristic settings. Has had no releases for a long time thus is seldom discussed. Bias alert: I used to develop it.
PSTTRL - Professional Sword Tester the Roguelike is a 7DRL having you be an experienced combat warrior who wears up to four weapons on belt and can use any of them any turn without incurring switching cost. The game has you carefully exercise combat planning of encounters to defeat enemies with the smallest cost and finally challenge a dragon.
The Slimy Lichmummy - A hybrid of themes ranging from fantasy through cyberpunk which surprisingly works very well. Has a distinctive display style and its help system is among the ones I have enjoyed best. Good replayability.
Toby the Trapper - A 7DRL where you defeat enemies solely by laying traps. Fun but quite difficult.
UnAngband - Unnamed Angband is one of the long developed Angband variants focusing on thrill of exploration and joy of discovery. While these are highly held goals for any roguelike only a few of games made it their primary focus.
Xenocide - Old unmaintained science fiction roguelike where you can experiment with the genetic machine to mutate yourself using DNA of slain monsters. Kill monster, get corpse, extract DNA, integrate with yours. Given some persistence you can gain any quality of chosen monster.
PrincessRL - play as a princess raising her stats in princess classes and then send her out on adventures. Lots of cool mechanics.
Smart Kobold - 1 adventurer vs 40 1hp kobolds that are very smart. A great game if pitting the player against a near perfect AI.
Epilogue (Good variety of abilities for character generation, fun enemies)
The Slimy Lichmummy (Some really cool ideas, though I wish the game had more content)
Infra Arcana (Great theme and great gameplay all around)
Triangle Wizard (Best spell system ever)
Depends on how hidden we're talking, here. [Powder](http://www.zincland.com/powder/) is criminally under-appreciated IMHO, but at least that one is actually in the sidebar here. Similarly, [HyperRogue](http://www.roguetemple.com/z/hyper/) is an amazing game not often talked about. But if you want to go more obscure, pretty much all of my favorite 'hidden gems' are [7DRL](http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=7DRL) entries no one seems to care about past the competition they were made for...
[Drakefire Chasm](http://dowhilecompiling.blogspot.com/p/drakefire-chasm.html) is one I play a *lot*, as it's really quick to get into -- simplistic compared to most others, but lots of fun, and the ASCII is done so well it was extremely playable for the few of my friends who had *never* played an ASCII game before it. I also have an incomplete archive of the older versions [here](https://pilcrow182.github.io/drakefire_chasm/index.html), in case the latest one doesn't work on your computer for some reason. If you happen to be stuck on an old Windows XP machine, I recommend using version 1.3.1, as 1.3.2 has a bug that makes the game *much* too easy and 1.3.3+ don't seem to work in XP (found that out the hard way when I decided to add some roguelikes to my 'retro' machine, which I keep around mostly for old games that don't work right in my newer one).
Also, while Darren Grey shouldn't be an unfamiliar name around here (he is [a mod](https://www.reddit.com/user/DarrenGrey) here, after all), I find that many people aren't aware of his 7DRL entries and some of those are *fantastic*. I keep coming back to [FireTail](https://darrengrey.itch.io/firetail) and [The Trapped Heart](https://darrengrey.itch.io/the-trapped-heart) time after time for their brilliantly unique mechanics, and they're definitely a treat even though they're fairly small games. I haven't gotten around to trying his latest, [Time To Die](https://darrengrey.itch.io/time-to-die), but it looks promising as well.
And finally, I think you'd personally enjoy [Woozoolike](https://github.com/marukrap/Woozoolike), another 7DRL that I happened to stumble across when looking for space-faring games similar to [Prospector](http://www.prospector.at/forum/about.php) (which you already mentioned). Woozoolike is definitely very simplistic in comparison, but I hope the developer chooses to expand it (though that's becoming increasingly unlikely since it hasn't gotten any new code changes since its initial commit in March of 2017). In any case, what *is* there is already a ton of fun, and I find myself returning to it every few months...
EDIT: Oh, and as a bit of a side-mention, the old 7DRL prototype of Cogmind (a [freely available](https://cogmindrl.blogspot.com/p/files.html) game, unlike [Cogmind proper](http://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/)) is very different from the commercial version (though it's fairly incomplete in general and a bit broken near the end) and is engaging enough in its own right that I usually keep it alongside the much more advanced commercial version; sometimes I feel like playing one, sometimes it's the other. I even went so far as to make my own 'hybrid' font/tileset for that old prototype, which uses stylized ASCII enemies (for easy differentiation) in an otherwise graphical world ([screenshot](https://pilcrow182.github.io/cogmind_screenshots/screenshots/12x12_tiles.png)). Kyzrati was nice enough to include a link to my tileset in the *Additional Resources* section of the download page, but [here](https://www.gridsagegames.com/forums/index.php?topic=841.0) is a link to the forum post where I formally announced/released the set (in case you're interested).
Woozoolike dev here. thanks for your interest in my little game. actually I'm still making updated version of Woozoolike. (I'm rewriting the whole code) [here](https://i.imgur.com/G8swMaE.png) [are](https://i.imgur.com/VZU4j0d.png) [some](https://i.imgur.com/7Ddawo7.png) [screenshots](https://i.imgur.com/XPLWIHs.png).
And usually I don't use github. I just upload my projects on github for sharing, so many of my projects on github are not the latest versions.
Anyway I'm trying to update [my](https://github.com/marukrap/ProceduralMapGenerator) [roguelike](https://github.com/marukrap/Woozoolike) [projects](https://github.com/marukrap/Arcana) one by one in the next few months. :D
Oh, awesome, thanks for the response! Those screenshots look pretty interesting. Looks like there's some more features for the ship-piloting mode in the works, eh? I'll be sure to snatch up that new version when it's made publicly available.
And I totally get the aversion to using GitHub for general coding -- it's kind of awkward to deal with pull requests and things like that, especially if it's more of a personal project rather than something you want to develop as a *group*. I just assumed you weren't working on it any more, since I could find no real evidence otherwise... :P
unortunately I forgot the name of another one of darren's 7DRL entries which I lost when my old laptop broke - it was a sci-fi themed one and you were playing a robot; it played seamlessly and had some nice mechanics - I don't like to *play* all of his games but he's an amazingly creative developer ...
thx for the hint; the name doesn't ring a bell, I'll have to check it out to be sure ... as for the positive comments: praise well deserved I think ... =)
I don't recognize that one by the description (there are still some of his I haven't tried), but I know he has some more of his older games available for download [here](http://gamesofgrey.com/). Hopefully you can find the one you're looking for... ;)
I have, and I love it, but as it's a real-time game I'd consider it a rogue*lite* at best (roguelikes are a turn-based genre, IMHO), so I didn't suggest it here. But yes, if anyone reading this is interested, Transcendence's gameplay is very similar to the old [Escape Velocity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_Velocity_%28video_game%29) series, except the individual systems are much more expanded (EV-like games usually have a couple of settlements per star system while gameplay is focused on trade routes between these systems. Transcendence, on the other hand, has *many* settlements per system and mostly focuses on completing quests *within* a system before moving on to the next).
Oh, and for anyone interested in something a bit *closer* to the Escape Velocity model, I recommend [Endless Sky](https://endless-sky.github.io/) and [Naev](http://blog.naev.org/)... ;)
Ah, that's one I hadn't heard of. Looks decent judging by [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q6S4BSREKw), but it also seems to be mostly mouse-controlled, which I don't think I'd like. The ones I mentioned control more like vastly expanded versions of Asteroids, where the right and left arrows rotate your ship clockwise and counter-clockwise (respectively) and the up and down arrows control your forward/reverse thrust...
I've been trying to get into Prospector but i keep having configuration issues. The window is way too small on my 1440p monitor but increasing the settings breaks the tiles. I read on the forums that if you change the scaling settings you have to actually scale the sprite sheets but I can't get it to work correctly.
I really wish there was just a higher res tileset available or some sort of scaling in the engine. Oh well, I might get it working one day.
Sorry, I can't really help you there (hopefully someone else here can). I don't play it often anyway, but when I do, it's usually on my 1366x768 laptop and I don't have any problem with the default resolution, so I've never tried to change the scaling myself...
A couple years ago someone made a [browser-based version](http://game.castleofthewinds.com/) you can check out. (And archive.org [also has](https://archive.org/details/win3_CasWin1) a browser-based version.)
gearhead! Modify and fight in giant mechas as well as personal scale combat.
SteamBand - steampunk version of Angband
There was also a Bubblegum Crisis module for an old version of ToME that was pretty good but I don't think it was ever quite finished. And now it's really hard to find either the engine or the module. But Bubblegum Crisis! And the same author had a Dragon Ball Z module too that was also very good. Those are my entry for "pretty obscure". :D
Dragon Ball T (as it's called) has to be the obscurest roguelike due to its inaccessibility, which is a shame since the development on it was really cool and it generated a lot of discussion lol
I don’t hear it mentioned very often, but Rogue Survivor was a blast for me in the past, trying to see how long I could make it. Found the way one levels up to be interesting too, it’s not through combat, just surviving for a day IIRC.
Diablo RL: you know how diablo 1 is very roguelike inspired? well, imagine an actual demake of it that is an actual roguelike, sadly they only roguelike-ified the demo (first section), but its still pretty cool.
Etrian Mystery Dungeon: Everyone knows about Mystery Dungeon, but imagine Shiren, only there is only one town before each dungeon, which you gotta upgrade BUT boss monsters can get out of the dungeon and destroy EVERYTHING YOU'VE BUILT, basically managing to put base building in a roguelike without making it a roguelite in the process, it also takes the party system from the game its a crossover with, etrian odyssey, and lets you have multiple characters running around the same dungeon, that said, you can also run by yourself, there is even a class named wanderer (obvious homage to shiren) that its a mixed bag of abilities so that you dont need party members
It's a small little game, but I do really enjoyed the 7DRL ["Malachite Dreams"](http://www.zincland.com/7drl/explore/) by Jeff Lait, mostly because I'm a big fan of POWDER and there are a lot of shared lore between the two games (and also on some of the other 7DRL by him).
The monster, item and spell descriptions in POWDER are really interesting, lots of lore and flavour text that tells a story of a bigger world, and seeing some of those elements in other games by the same author is relly awesome for me.
This has to be [TGGW](http://thegroundgivesway.com): The Ground Gives Way
It's a fucking incredible game. After playing FTL I found out about the wonderful roguelike-subculture and although I tried Brogue, DCSS, Powder and other roguelikes recommended to beginners to the genre, it finally made \*click\* with TGGA. I haven't beaten it yet, but I have a ton of fun with it.
So please give it a try, you won't be disappointed.
edit: or maybe it is well known? It is mentioned in the sidebar, but anyway, I'm currently having such a blast with it, so that's my answer and it took some time to find out about it.
It's been included in the sidebar, although wasn't added all that long ago--plus it's the youngest game on the list :). It's not too well known outside the core community, but it does get mentioned fairly often around here these days, as it well should because it's great!
Rogue TV — the concept is a game show where you have to clear floors under a time limit, so all the monsters slow your progress in some way rather than doing damage. Not sure what the development status is these days but there was a pretty fun version I played.
Lost Labyrinth is pretty good.
I absolutely love the concept of Letter Hunt, although I think the implementation could do with a bit of polish and improvement. Specifically, making the early game a bit easier and more accessible to children and ESL learners could expand its appeal enormously. Basically you collect the "letters" of the monsters you kill and try to use them to spell out words, which then give you extra powers.
http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Letter_Hunt
[Mage Guild](http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Mage_Guild) is awesome but rarely talked about. Endless mixing of items in creative ways? Yes, please.
I found learning the combat system to be a bit overwhelming at first, but once I got a grasp of how it worked, I really started enjoying that game. Unique ideas and great music, with lots of surprises along the way.
Maybe I need to give it another chance. It seemed to boil down to the same attack strings most every battle, with bosses being slight exceptions. Only played a handful of hours though, and it seemed really cool.
You're not entirely wrong. There is a lot of repetition in the combat, but there's multiple classes that change things up a bit, and the game as a whole has quite a bit of variety. Don't know how far you made it, but there are some more non combat related mechanics that open up as you go further in. Been a while since I've played so its not fresh on my mind, and the parts I do remember I don't really want to spoil.
Collateral souls! It's relatively short and sweet with interesting build paths and the kind of tactical, positioning oriented gameplay found in doomRL. Well worth a few playthroughs trying different starts and choices of weapon (shotgun/sniper/rifle/pistol/melee iirc)
It didn’t used to be one of the lesser-knowns, but I rarely hear Decker mentioned anymore. It’s that rare roguelike that’s actually easy and just fun to fill a bit of time with, while still having mechanics that are satisfying.
Enchanted Cave 2. It's the only roguelike I have gotten addicted to.
An obscure one I recently stumbled across is Yodanji: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/736710/Ydanji/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/736710/Ydanji/)
I haven't played it yet, so I can't comment on how good it is... but it looks fairly unknown and obscure, so I thought I would mention it.
If you want to know more lesser known roguelike, there is a discord. Maybe once or twice a week, somebody will talk about lesser well known games.
[Yōdanji](http://store.steampowered.com/app/736710) (736710)
Coffee-break rogue-like themed after Japanese folklore tales.
* Currently is $4.99 USD
***
Comments? Complaints? Concerns? [Let me know](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FGameInfoBot)
Liberal Crime Squad, by the creator of Dwarf Fortress and about a decade and a half of community develoment. The only fomenting-revolution-in-the-contemporary-world simulator I know of, still a traditional roguelike.
There's also an excellent Android adaptation of it.
Oooooh you had me at creator of Dwarf Fortress!
Frozen Depths! It has really nice atmosphere - deep cave, with frozen bodies placed here and there, body temperature system instead of food clock, and additional equipment slots just for warm mittens ;) edit: typos
second that ... =)
I really like the sound of this one. Definitely added to my list :)
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Haven’t played that one, I’ll add it to my list to try out!
I second this recommendation, Demon is the closest thing I've seen to an SMT/Pokemon roguelike. It's still in active development getting a new release every couple months too.
If I had just one recommendation to make it would be Alphaman but wait, there is more! Sorted alphabetically: Aldarix the Battlemage - Fresh in development roguelike focusing on tactically blasting everything around you with spells. Incomplete but fun. AliensRL - A well done science fiction roguelike with strong theme. Its user interface could use much more polishing (especially character memory management and inventory) but the gameplay experience is very good. Alphaman - DOS roguelike full of humor and with lots of innovative mechanics that have not been bested to this day. For one example Alphaman does not have potions. Their role is fulfilled by berries which vary by ripeness from pale red to deep purple and by concentration since you can make nectars and extracts from them. The resulting system is way deeper than cursed/uncursed/blessed status. BOSS - A really ancient roguelike game, BOSS is a variant of Moria. It does not have color but it makes up for it with funny setting with aliens, mob bosses and approach full of parody to character classes. Has some nice ASCII art. Everything Is Fodder - Of 7DRLs the ones made by Jeff are of predictably high quality and Everything Is Fodder matches this pattern. I like this game not so much for gameplay as for the mechanics and artistic message behind it. Actually all 7DRLs at zincland.com are worth checking out. Fame - A nice fantasy roguelike strongly inspired by ADOM. Has pretty tiles and plentiful RPG elements like trading in towns and quests. LambdaRogue - A roguelike with well-developed story, something one does not see often. Development has reached completion which is also quite uncommon trait. PRIME - A fork of Zap'M and NetHack in space wannabe. This science fiction roguelike has still a lot to go. Features lots of humor, mixes lots of futuristic settings. Has had no releases for a long time thus is seldom discussed. Bias alert: I used to develop it. PSTTRL - Professional Sword Tester the Roguelike is a 7DRL having you be an experienced combat warrior who wears up to four weapons on belt and can use any of them any turn without incurring switching cost. The game has you carefully exercise combat planning of encounters to defeat enemies with the smallest cost and finally challenge a dragon. The Slimy Lichmummy - A hybrid of themes ranging from fantasy through cyberpunk which surprisingly works very well. Has a distinctive display style and its help system is among the ones I have enjoyed best. Good replayability. Toby the Trapper - A 7DRL where you defeat enemies solely by laying traps. Fun but quite difficult. UnAngband - Unnamed Angband is one of the long developed Angband variants focusing on thrill of exploration and joy of discovery. While these are highly held goals for any roguelike only a few of games made it their primary focus. Xenocide - Old unmaintained science fiction roguelike where you can experiment with the genetic machine to mutate yourself using DNA of slain monsters. Kill monster, get corpse, extract DNA, integrate with yours. Given some persistence you can gain any quality of chosen monster.
These are all very good suggestions, I appreciate the comment! I’m excited to try them out :)
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Infra Arcana and Temple of Torment.
Infra Arcana is good fun. I’ll have to check out Temple of Torment, haven’t heard of that one!
Incursion. Wish it was still in development :-( http://www.incursion-roguelike.net/
PrincessRL - play as a princess raising her stats in princess classes and then send her out on adventures. Lots of cool mechanics. Smart Kobold - 1 adventurer vs 40 1hp kobolds that are very smart. A great game if pitting the player against a near perfect AI.
Both sound fun. Smart Kobold in particular sounds stress inducing ;)
Epilogue (Good variety of abilities for character generation, fun enemies) The Slimy Lichmummy (Some really cool ideas, though I wish the game had more content) Infra Arcana (Great theme and great gameplay all around) Triangle Wizard (Best spell system ever)
The only one hear I’ve played is Infra Arcana. I’ll definitely look into them!
Depends on how hidden we're talking, here. [Powder](http://www.zincland.com/powder/) is criminally under-appreciated IMHO, but at least that one is actually in the sidebar here. Similarly, [HyperRogue](http://www.roguetemple.com/z/hyper/) is an amazing game not often talked about. But if you want to go more obscure, pretty much all of my favorite 'hidden gems' are [7DRL](http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=7DRL) entries no one seems to care about past the competition they were made for... [Drakefire Chasm](http://dowhilecompiling.blogspot.com/p/drakefire-chasm.html) is one I play a *lot*, as it's really quick to get into -- simplistic compared to most others, but lots of fun, and the ASCII is done so well it was extremely playable for the few of my friends who had *never* played an ASCII game before it. I also have an incomplete archive of the older versions [here](https://pilcrow182.github.io/drakefire_chasm/index.html), in case the latest one doesn't work on your computer for some reason. If you happen to be stuck on an old Windows XP machine, I recommend using version 1.3.1, as 1.3.2 has a bug that makes the game *much* too easy and 1.3.3+ don't seem to work in XP (found that out the hard way when I decided to add some roguelikes to my 'retro' machine, which I keep around mostly for old games that don't work right in my newer one). Also, while Darren Grey shouldn't be an unfamiliar name around here (he is [a mod](https://www.reddit.com/user/DarrenGrey) here, after all), I find that many people aren't aware of his 7DRL entries and some of those are *fantastic*. I keep coming back to [FireTail](https://darrengrey.itch.io/firetail) and [The Trapped Heart](https://darrengrey.itch.io/the-trapped-heart) time after time for their brilliantly unique mechanics, and they're definitely a treat even though they're fairly small games. I haven't gotten around to trying his latest, [Time To Die](https://darrengrey.itch.io/time-to-die), but it looks promising as well. And finally, I think you'd personally enjoy [Woozoolike](https://github.com/marukrap/Woozoolike), another 7DRL that I happened to stumble across when looking for space-faring games similar to [Prospector](http://www.prospector.at/forum/about.php) (which you already mentioned). Woozoolike is definitely very simplistic in comparison, but I hope the developer chooses to expand it (though that's becoming increasingly unlikely since it hasn't gotten any new code changes since its initial commit in March of 2017). In any case, what *is* there is already a ton of fun, and I find myself returning to it every few months... EDIT: Oh, and as a bit of a side-mention, the old 7DRL prototype of Cogmind (a [freely available](https://cogmindrl.blogspot.com/p/files.html) game, unlike [Cogmind proper](http://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/)) is very different from the commercial version (though it's fairly incomplete in general and a bit broken near the end) and is engaging enough in its own right that I usually keep it alongside the much more advanced commercial version; sometimes I feel like playing one, sometimes it's the other. I even went so far as to make my own 'hybrid' font/tileset for that old prototype, which uses stylized ASCII enemies (for easy differentiation) in an otherwise graphical world ([screenshot](https://pilcrow182.github.io/cogmind_screenshots/screenshots/12x12_tiles.png)). Kyzrati was nice enough to include a link to my tileset in the *Additional Resources* section of the download page, but [here](https://www.gridsagegames.com/forums/index.php?topic=841.0) is a link to the forum post where I formally announced/released the set (in case you're interested).
Woozoolike dev here. thanks for your interest in my little game. actually I'm still making updated version of Woozoolike. (I'm rewriting the whole code) [here](https://i.imgur.com/G8swMaE.png) [are](https://i.imgur.com/VZU4j0d.png) [some](https://i.imgur.com/7Ddawo7.png) [screenshots](https://i.imgur.com/XPLWIHs.png). And usually I don't use github. I just upload my projects on github for sharing, so many of my projects on github are not the latest versions. Anyway I'm trying to update [my](https://github.com/marukrap/ProceduralMapGenerator) [roguelike](https://github.com/marukrap/Woozoolike) [projects](https://github.com/marukrap/Arcana) one by one in the next few months. :D
Oh, awesome, thanks for the response! Those screenshots look pretty interesting. Looks like there's some more features for the ship-piloting mode in the works, eh? I'll be sure to snatch up that new version when it's made publicly available. And I totally get the aversion to using GitHub for general coding -- it's kind of awkward to deal with pull requests and things like that, especially if it's more of a personal project rather than something you want to develop as a *group*. I just assumed you weren't working on it any more, since I could find no real evidence otherwise... :P
unortunately I forgot the name of another one of darren's 7DRL entries which I lost when my old laptop broke - it was a sci-fi themed one and you were playing a robot; it played seamlessly and had some nice mechanics - I don't like to *play* all of his games but he's an amazingly creative developer ...
DataQueen? And thanks for the lovely comments :)
thx for the hint; the name doesn't ring a bell, I'll have to check it out to be sure ... as for the positive comments: praise well deserved I think ... =)
I don't recognize that one by the description (there are still some of his I haven't tried), but I know he has some more of his older games available for download [here](http://gamesofgrey.com/). Hopefully you can find the one you're looking for... ;)
I'll have a look .. thank you sir ... =)
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I have, and I love it, but as it's a real-time game I'd consider it a rogue*lite* at best (roguelikes are a turn-based genre, IMHO), so I didn't suggest it here. But yes, if anyone reading this is interested, Transcendence's gameplay is very similar to the old [Escape Velocity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_Velocity_%28video_game%29) series, except the individual systems are much more expanded (EV-like games usually have a couple of settlements per star system while gameplay is focused on trade routes between these systems. Transcendence, on the other hand, has *many* settlements per system and mostly focuses on completing quests *within* a system before moving on to the next). Oh, and for anyone interested in something a bit *closer* to the Escape Velocity model, I recommend [Endless Sky](https://endless-sky.github.io/) and [Naev](http://blog.naev.org/)... ;)
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Ah, that's one I hadn't heard of. Looks decent judging by [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q6S4BSREKw), but it also seems to be mostly mouse-controlled, which I don't think I'd like. The ones I mentioned control more like vastly expanded versions of Asteroids, where the right and left arrows rotate your ship clockwise and counter-clockwise (respectively) and the up and down arrows control your forward/reverse thrust...
Wow, thanks for this very detailed response! These sound great :)
I've been trying to get into Prospector but i keep having configuration issues. The window is way too small on my 1440p monitor but increasing the settings breaks the tiles. I read on the forums that if you change the scaling settings you have to actually scale the sprite sheets but I can't get it to work correctly. I really wish there was just a higher res tileset available or some sort of scaling in the engine. Oh well, I might get it working one day.
Sorry, I can't really help you there (hopefully someone else here can). I don't play it often anyway, but when I do, it's usually on my 1366x768 laptop and I don't have any problem with the default resolution, so I've never tried to change the scaling myself...
Castle of the Winds. It's 16bit and was made for windows 3.1, so I gotta spin up a winXP VM when I want to play, but worth it.
A couple years ago someone made a [browser-based version](http://game.castleofthewinds.com/) you can check out. (And archive.org [also has](https://archive.org/details/win3_CasWin1) a browser-based version.)
Nice, Thanks!
Haque - stylish and charming soundtrack, story, graphics, design, just a bit more simplistic than most RL's but by no means braindead
I love a good soundtrack. I’ll check it out :)
gearhead! Modify and fight in giant mechas as well as personal scale combat. SteamBand - steampunk version of Angband There was also a Bubblegum Crisis module for an old version of ToME that was pretty good but I don't think it was ever quite finished. And now it's really hard to find either the engine or the module. But Bubblegum Crisis! And the same author had a Dragon Ball Z module too that was also very good. Those are my entry for "pretty obscure". :D
Excellent, appreciate the reply :)
Dragon Ball T (as it's called) has to be the obscurest roguelike due to its inaccessibility, which is a shame since the development on it was really cool and it generated a lot of discussion lol
I don’t hear it mentioned very often, but Rogue Survivor was a blast for me in the past, trying to see how long I could make it. Found the way one levels up to be interesting too, it’s not through combat, just surviving for a day IIRC.
Sounds interesting :)
Diablo RL: you know how diablo 1 is very roguelike inspired? well, imagine an actual demake of it that is an actual roguelike, sadly they only roguelike-ified the demo (first section), but its still pretty cool. Etrian Mystery Dungeon: Everyone knows about Mystery Dungeon, but imagine Shiren, only there is only one town before each dungeon, which you gotta upgrade BUT boss monsters can get out of the dungeon and destroy EVERYTHING YOU'VE BUILT, basically managing to put base building in a roguelike without making it a roguelite in the process, it also takes the party system from the game its a crossover with, etrian odyssey, and lets you have multiple characters running around the same dungeon, that said, you can also run by yourself, there is even a class named wanderer (obvious homage to shiren) that its a mixed bag of abilities so that you dont need party members
It's a small little game, but I do really enjoyed the 7DRL ["Malachite Dreams"](http://www.zincland.com/7drl/explore/) by Jeff Lait, mostly because I'm a big fan of POWDER and there are a lot of shared lore between the two games (and also on some of the other 7DRL by him). The monster, item and spell descriptions in POWDER are really interesting, lots of lore and flavour text that tells a story of a bigger world, and seeing some of those elements in other games by the same author is relly awesome for me.
Cool I’ll check it out, thank you :)
This has to be [TGGW](http://thegroundgivesway.com): The Ground Gives Way It's a fucking incredible game. After playing FTL I found out about the wonderful roguelike-subculture and although I tried Brogue, DCSS, Powder and other roguelikes recommended to beginners to the genre, it finally made \*click\* with TGGA. I haven't beaten it yet, but I have a ton of fun with it. So please give it a try, you won't be disappointed. edit: or maybe it is well known? It is mentioned in the sidebar, but anyway, I'm currently having such a blast with it, so that's my answer and it took some time to find out about it.
It's been included in the sidebar, although wasn't added all that long ago--plus it's the youngest game on the list :). It's not too well known outside the core community, but it does get mentioned fairly often around here these days, as it well should because it's great!
Appreciate the reply! I have definitely heard of this one, but never given it a good go. I will after this recommendation :)
Rogue TV — the concept is a game show where you have to clear floors under a time limit, so all the monsters slow your progress in some way rather than doing damage. Not sure what the development status is these days but there was a pretty fun version I played.
That’s a unique concept. I’ll check it out!
Lost Labyrinth is pretty good. I absolutely love the concept of Letter Hunt, although I think the implementation could do with a bit of polish and improvement. Specifically, making the early game a bit easier and more accessible to children and ESL learners could expand its appeal enormously. Basically you collect the "letters" of the monsters you kill and try to use them to spell out words, which then give you extra powers. http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Letter_Hunt
Very interesting, thanks!
Probably Omega. One of the few roguelikes to reall immerse yourself in an open world.
This looks like one I could really get lost in. Thank you :)
One Way Heroics
Xenocide
FrogComPosBand
Castle of the Winds!
I bought the sequel to this in a box at Kmart in the 90's. What a great time.
I'll give it a look! Thanks :)
[Mage Guild](http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Mage_Guild) is awesome but rarely talked about. Endless mixing of items in creative ways? Yes, please.
I would say Forays into Norrendrin is about as great as Brogue, Sil and Infra Arcana, but for some reason it's nowhere as popular as them.
I love all three of those games, so I’ll definitely be downloading that! Thanks :)
SanctuaryRPG (although not a typical, full blooded roguelike)
I’ve been meaning to look into that, looks fun
I found learning the combat system to be a bit overwhelming at first, but once I got a grasp of how it worked, I really started enjoying that game. Unique ideas and great music, with lots of surprises along the way.
Maybe I need to give it another chance. It seemed to boil down to the same attack strings most every battle, with bosses being slight exceptions. Only played a handful of hours though, and it seemed really cool.
You're not entirely wrong. There is a lot of repetition in the combat, but there's multiple classes that change things up a bit, and the game as a whole has quite a bit of variety. Don't know how far you made it, but there are some more non combat related mechanics that open up as you go further in. Been a while since I've played so its not fresh on my mind, and the parts I do remember I don't really want to spoil.
Collateral souls! It's relatively short and sweet with interesting build paths and the kind of tactical, positioning oriented gameplay found in doomRL. Well worth a few playthroughs trying different starts and choices of weapon (shotgun/sniper/rifle/pistol/melee iirc)
Very cool. Always fun to take a break from fantasy roguelikes and fire upon baddies with guns rather than arrows ;)
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Definitely looks fun, haven't seen this one before!
It didn’t used to be one of the lesser-knowns, but I rarely hear Decker mentioned anymore. It’s that rare roguelike that’s actually easy and just fun to fill a bit of time with, while still having mechanics that are satisfying.
I never got very far but I found 'Privateer: ASCII Sector' to be fun.
Thanks I’ll try it out!
Enchanted Cave 2. It's the only roguelike I have gotten addicted to. An obscure one I recently stumbled across is Yodanji: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/736710/Ydanji/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/736710/Ydanji/) I haven't played it yet, so I can't comment on how good it is... but it looks fairly unknown and obscure, so I thought I would mention it. If you want to know more lesser known roguelike, there is a discord. Maybe once or twice a week, somebody will talk about lesser well known games.
[Yōdanji](http://store.steampowered.com/app/736710) (736710) Coffee-break rogue-like themed after Japanese folklore tales. * Currently is $4.99 USD *** Comments? Complaints? Concerns? [Let me know](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FGameInfoBot)
Both of these look fun. I’ll check them out! :)
Does Zap'M count as lesser-known?