I knew Caves Of Qud was an ambitious old-school roguelike that’s in early access. I didn’t know you could start as a teleporting multi-limbed psychic pyromaniac with hooks for feet.

I’ve never played Qud before, but I’ve had my eye on it for a while. What better way to tell you about the procedurally-generated villages and quests it added in Tuesday’s update, I wondered, than to jump in and try to find one of them?

How hard can it be. (more…)

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Look, the way this normally works is that I ask “have you played [name of game]?” and then I sort of assume that you haven’t and tell you why you should. It’s a little different this time though because even though I have> played Caves of Qud [official site], I’m hoping you lot can tell me why I should go back and play it again, because I’ve barely managed to scratch the surface. … [visit site to read more]

Free games are great and roguelikes are the best of all games, so a torrent containing more than 700 of the blighters is a lovely thing to discover on a Thursday morning. The collection is the work of ‘foamed’, a Reddit moderator and roguelike curator, and it’s more than a big pile o’ fun. As well as containing some of the greatest games ever made, this is an important archive – there are variants and minor games included that are no longer available elsewhere, and as long as there are seeders, any future disappearances will be protected until our computers turn to dust.

… [visit site to read more]

Each week Marsh Davies sniffs out advantageous evolutions among the many horrendous deformities of Early Access, and comes back with any stories he can find and/or succumbs to a gruesome fate in a Darwinian dead-end. This week, every which way he turns is a genetic cul-de-sac in Caves of Qud [Steam page], an uncompromisingly old-school Rogue-like set in a doggedly lo-fi post-apocalyptic sci-fantasy world, heavy on simulation and mutation both.>

… [visit site to read more]

There is the roguelite, where the ideas of permadeath and difficult combat are played with to create something that has those same values but appeals to the less patient player. There’s the roguelike, which at this stage in gaming history is usually so far flung from its low-bit routes and ascii art to be almost unrecognisable. Then there’s something like Caves of Qud [official site], which is so sure of the old school appeal it’s got a CRT filter on its display. At least it uses colour, I suppose. Set long after the destruction of all civilisation, adventurers start to roam into the old territory of the long-dead races that ruled there, seeing it as a promised land.

In development for 10 years and counting, it promises to kill you, confuse you and wonder you in equal measure as it arrives on Steam Early Access.

… [visit site to read more]