Dungeons of Dredmor Released

By: Alehkhs

On: July 13th, 2011

Dungeons of Dredmor (Windows, Mac, and soon Linux)
Released: July 13, 2011
Price: $5, on Steam

Gaslamp Games’ indie roguelike, Dungeons of Dredmor, has finally been released today and is currently available on Steam. With addictive gameplay and tons of replay value, it’s a steal at only $5.

A while back I gave my enthusiastic impressions of my time with the Dungeons of Dredmor beta. Changes have been made to the game since then (ensuring an even finer experience since I played) but if you’d like to hear what I thought back then, be sure to check out my preview.

Game’s Steam Page
Developer’s Website

Posted in Highly Recommended, Linux, Macintosh, Roguelikes, Steam, Windows | Tags: GaslampGames

http://www.facebook.com/people/Klrtcnwqkle-Wehwjswl/1052050690 Klrtcnwqkle Wehwjswl

Magnifico.
http://twitter.com/bengrue Ben McGraw (Grue)

This game has literally stolen hundreds of hours of my life during the beta. And now it’s loose upon the unsuspecting public.

If roguelikes are your thing, you are doomed. In a very enjoyable way.
Honest Guy

I don’t see what all the fuzz is about, this game is obviously a minecraft ripoff…
Ddb

Gameplay is way to simple to call this a roguelike.
http://twitter.com/GabrielVerdon Gabriel Verdon

Looks cool, I love how dialed-in the style is. Will probably pick it up.
Laserdracula

Played a through one floor. It’s pretty rad so far.
You momma

I guess this would fit a little better the dungeon crawl genre than roguetlike?
Brian Jeffears

Nope this is indeed a Roguelike. Spiffy one too.
w.ws

I’m enjoying it so far, but I’m having a hard time getting used to the slower pace of it, at least as compared to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Also, the controls are a little sluggish – when you’re walking to a destination square and click on something else the Hero doesn’t always immediately stop and turn. And other suchness.
Laserdracula

If it helps, you can also use the arrow keys when you want to move faster
Derekyusucksballs

Linux is where?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001718121048 Michele Marolla

The song reminds me Aladdin..
Aswallow

First
Narvius

It crashes randomly a lot for me. But the game itself seems to be enjoyable. I’m certain they’ll iron out these bugs over the next few weeks and don’t regret paying, even though it’s mostly unplayable for me right now (a crash equals loss of ALL progress >.>).
Narvius

Update: Was fixed a few minutes ago.
w.ws

The bug on OS X where you can’t load your saved game is…epic.
Anonymous

Roguelike is a subgenre of the Dungeon Crawl genre.
Mitch Weaver

That’s what you get for trying to play video games on a Mac.
Phubans

It reminds me of the castle theme in A Link to the Past… Maybe also Warcraft II.
WTFguy

I am assuming sarcasm…
http://coja.in.rs Mrmotinjo

The most fun I’ve had in years. Also, wand of LASER :)
Honker

God I hate the perspective they chose to use. The art style is nice, but that camera angle is just ridiculous. (Also graphical roguelikes are for scum.)
Honker

God I hate the perspective they chose to use. The art style is nice, but that camera angle is just ridiculous. (Also graphical roguelikes are for scum.)
Riccardo Quagliarini

and the gameplay is SLOW. It’s not possible to play keyboard only, I always have to click everywhere. That’s boring. Hope they fix it with an update
http://www.bywombats.com Ryan Szrama

Roguelike enthusiast, guilty as charged. Just doomed myself and feel very good about it so far. : )
AMan

nerd
Phubans

I am That Embarrassing Dude whose only reference for art, media, and culture, is other videogames. Oops.
Wilks

You know what would be great? VERSION NUMBERS. So you could know if finicky Steam updated it or what. I thought this was practice was well understood by now.

Version numbers.

And, when you communicate with players, there’s no “is it the latest version?” Just say the numbers on the screen, all confusion gone. Version numbers!
Raigan

I have a few problems:

-how do you “use” objects (i.e pull levers) using the keyboard? this had better not be some sort of fucking mouse+keyboard deal… seriously, WASD+mouse is for 3D games people! (actually, the meta-question is “where is the manual/readme for Steam games?”)

-how do you advance the tutorial screens one-by-one? pressing enter for some reason skips forward by two pages at once :(
Raigan

agh, I’m on the second tutorial now and I’m trying to attack the enemy by moving into it… and I can’t?! WTF?!?!?!?!? I have to CLICK on the enemy? What is this bullshit?!
Raigan

Okay, how is this in ANY way a “roguelike”? It’s just an RPG! See for example “The Summoning” and other DOS-era games. Man… I feel seriously cheated here.
Raigan

Okay, I give up — this game has terrific personality and style, but the interface is seriously tedious and awkward. First of all, mouse-based in general for this sort of game is stupid and slow, but also some things are just weird — I have to click to pick up an item, click to place it in my inventory, and then click to use it?! That seems a bit wrong. This sort of interface works great for e.g Eschalon, but in a “roguelike” it’s too tedious.

There are also little things like right-click is used to equip items in your belt, but left-click is used to equip spells…?!

I’ve been thinking about this ever since I tried 100 Rogues (which was also a disappointment) and animation+roguelike seems like a fundamentally awkward combo because animations imply time, which means you can’t instantly perform moves and the game grinds to a slow and tedious pace.

Also: what’s up with the insanely huge resolution? Seriously? About 10×10 tiles fit onscreen at once, that just seems like a big waste — and thanks to the mouse-based interface, this means I have to move across vast distances to click on things. AND, you can’t click on dark/shadow tiles and move there, you can only click on visible tiles — a more sensible thing to do is allow clicking anywhere, but the player stops as soon as they see an object/enemy. That sort of thing is super-standard in roguelikes ffs!!

If they had made a proper roguelike with this style and personality, I think it would have been great. Sadly this is definitely a mouse-based coffee-break RPG sort of thing.
Jafegg

“The Summoning”

Oh man, I love that game.
Guest

Instead of getting all huffy because its not everything you’ve ever wanted in a “near-roguelike experience” perhaps you should do something constructive and perhaps request the ability to play the game mouseless to gaslamp games in a non-whiny, intelligent way. That way perhaps gameplay elements such as that can get implemented in a future update. I mean I agree, the inventory screens etc. are a bit cumbersome but its not the end of the world and certainly doesn’t make the game unplayable.
Raigan

I would agree, if there had been a demo so that I could have found out what sort of game it really was without feeling tricked/betrayed! I’m huffy because if there had been a demo I would never have bought it. Is this unreasonable?

I definitely agree that it’s not such a bad game if you’re not expecting something very different from what you get — “casual CRPG”/”Eschalon-lite” rather than “graphical roguelike”.

I don’t see the point in asking the developers to make fundamental changes to the game — in order to support a mouse-less interface, all of the inventory/crafting would have to change considerably to a hot-key-style interface — when it’s clear that they made what they wanted to make, it’s just not at all what I was expecting.

Randomly generated dungeons does not a roguelike make.

Also there are definitely a lot of awkward UI/UX decisions.
Phubans

guys watch while i pee into my own mouth
No

Have any of you even touched a Mysterious Dungeon game or a Shiren game?
Raigan

Yes! That’s exactly what I was expecting — something fast+simple, i.e d-pad and a couple buttons, but with humour and style. It would have been AMAZING.

I’m getting used to the whole CRPG-inspired mouse-driven inventory-tetris-a-thon clickfest of it all, but it definitely would be sooooo much better if it was more Shiren/Izuna and less Eschalon/Diablo.

There are also a million little things that irk. The way the walls/doors obscure things is pretty awkward. It feels like the art direction dictating things rather than being subservient to the functional requirements of a fast-paced streamlined roguelike.

Another good example is the same golden sparkle effect being used for both good things (gold, items) and bad (traps). Okay, this is a nice solution to showing players objects that are hidden behind a wall. But using the same colour just makes it tedious/annoying — if an object is obscured by a wall and you can only catch a bit of sparkle, you need to play hunt-the-pixel and mouse-over it to figure out if it’s good or bad. Why not have different coloured sparkles for “good” and “bad”? Or (even better) draw the silhouette of the object so that I can see what it is, coloured e.g red/green for bad/good.

And also, the mouse-over itself is applied in a very awkward/archaic “point to the tile the object is above” way instead of allowing me to mouse over the actual sprite of the object… if you’re going to burden me with a stupid mouse-based interface, at least really go for it and use the mouse properly!
Fram

He´s not ´getting all huffy´, you condescending… person, you.
He´s raising several valid points. I like how you´re calling the game a ´near-roguelike experience´, as if that’s what it was marketed as. It wasn’t.
Honker

“The way the walls/doors obscure things is pretty awkward. It feels like
the art direction dictating things rather than being subservient to the
functional requirements of a fast-paced streamlined roguelike. ”

God, thank you. People have been circlejerking about how this is SO FUNNY, INDY AS HELL, BEST ROGUELIKE EVER etc that it’s become somewhat hard to point out flaws in the game that could be improved upon for their next game. (Well, if they ever decide to try and make another roguelike.)
http://www.facebook.com/people/Remus-Cellion/100001593763398 Remus Cellion

I love it. I like to use both mouse and keyboard.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Remus-Cellion/100001593763398 Remus Cellion

o_O Wtf?
I dislike Minecraft but this is so unbelievably cool and addictive.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Remus-Cellion/100001593763398 Remus Cellion

Make your game then and leave the rest of us alone.
I like it as it is, with keyboard and mouse. You know, we aren’t in the primeval age of gaming. For the love of god, techonology has evolved. The mouse has been invented.
Ok, you’re a fan of old school roguelikes. I’m not. And most kids these days aren’t. Also, games are made for profit (too). So don’t bash the creator just for making it more appealing for today’s times. And it *is* more appealing, I’ve showed this game to a bunch of ppl who are like “ewww not 3d game = lame” and they pretty much liked it.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Remus-Cellion/100001593763398 Remus Cellion

Loving the game it’s so funny and full of wit. The graphics are awesome too, reminds me a bit of MI. It’s the best game I’ve played in 1 yr or so.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Remus-Cellion/100001593763398 Remus Cellion

How could I have forgot? The music is killer, it just gets so well with the atmosphere, be it funny, creepy, mysterious or heroic.
o0o

uh, did you ever play rogue?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Remus-Cellion/100001593763398 Remus Cellion

Ew it would be fugly to draw the silhouettes, all of them, even without pointing your mouse to the small area.
And imo the reason they’re all colored the same is exactly to make the game interesting and unpredictable,
like the potions which you don’t know what will do, or the basins.

I don’t think the creator should destroy exactly this interesting part for a fugly graphic overlay-silhouette for the… lazy? not eager to explore? boring? player.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Remus-Cellion/100001593763398 Remus Cellion

“Man… I feel seriously cheated here.” I don’t. It’s the best game I’ve bought in the past 1-2yrs.