http://solsticeroguelike.weebly.com/ For Windows, Freeware, ASCII all the way
http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=SolsticeThe Story
Far to the east, beyond the reaches of the Throne of the Jade Dragon, beyond the imperial ambitions of the Empire of Imar, lie the Sunrise Islands. For many years, these islands were inhabited by a scrappy lot, content to fish, forest, and live off the natural resources of the volcanic islands, with limited trade with the mainland. However, 100 years ago, a strange phenomenon arose - the Barrier - a persistent, deadly wall of raging storms that no one could penetrate, isolating the islands completely from the west...until now. The Barrier has suddenly dropped - both the Jade Dragon and the Empire scramble to send expedition, along with the lesser nations. Why did the Barrier arise so many years ago, and why did it suddenly drop? What has happened to the original inhabitants of the Sunrise Isles? It is your mission to find out...
The Game
A non-graphical successor to the basic hack n' slash roguelike Lords_of_DarkHall, Solstice has a much larger scope, attempting to simulate a massive amount of completely randomized, persistent terrain. A large world is generated each playthrough, and allows for exploration through many biomes, from sailing the oceans to climbing the mountains. Many different features exist to be explored, including villages, caves, dungeons, towers, ruined castles, volcanic peaks, misty graveyards, strange pyramids, and isolated huts. ANY location can be explored, from the most complex castle to the most featureless isolated coast.
Currently there are several classes to play with tightly coupled skillsets, including the Imarrian Centurion - a strong warrior and leader, Monks of the Jade Fist - mystical martial artists tied closely to nature, the Alchemist of Zin - shunned constructors of black powder devices and strange potions, Priestesses of the Veil - the secretive and fear-inducing sect of female priestesses who control the very shadows themselves, Mindblades - warrior kin to the Monk who eschew the power of nature for the focused power of the trained mind, and the wild-haired Storm Mage - magic users employed by the great empire to control the very winds but feared by even the Emperor himself. It should be noted that while skill sets are initially locked by class selection, there is nothing stopping a player from finding someone to train him in a different skill, allowing for unique play-styles.
Players may establish and build their own town, and a planned future feature is the inclusion of full scale sieges on the players town.
In addition to the main game, there is a bonus mode - the Infinite Dungeon - which acts exactly as the name suggests. The primary focus here is to survive and earn a high score.
The game has been in development on and off over the years, with a notable hiatus while the author attended grad school. Development has recently recommenced, and much work has been completed, but there is still a large list of features that have not been implemented. The game is currently completely playable and explorable, although the story line quests have not been implemented yet.
Solstice is a turn based game in the tradition of Rogue, NetHack, and Dungeon Crawl. Solstice attempts to move the game beyond the cramped confines of the dungeon into an open world, procedurally generated each time you play. Solstice is a world where the Romanesque empire of Imar is at constant odds with the Throne of the Jade Dragon. On the eve of the last summer solstice, the previously impenetrable Barrier in the Eastern Sea has dropped, allowing ships to travel to SunRise Islands, which have been cut off from all contact for hundreds of years.
Solstice has several planned features including:
A completely player designed homebase which will be subject to attack by rival forces. (Partially implemented - you can futz around with creating a homebase if you like already, though you can't populate it with anyone yet.)
Large, procedurally generated, persistant overworld. (Largely done with overworld generation; new submaps added constantly)
Autonomous, customizable allies (Partially implemented - allies are autonomous, you can give them basic commands, but you can't change their items yet.)
Development on this has recently resumed in a big way after a long hiatus(check the Blog section to see a nice little series of meaty recent updates), and who can say no to a Roguelike aiming big?
It is even more impressive considering he's doing all of this while engaged in a death dance with Visual Basic 6 to produce such a sprawling game..
Given that long hiatus though, the need to find the original players again alongside newcomer folks is pretty stark---the dev is very much hankering for such feedback to spur everything along further to Beta and beyond, ferret out bugs, ponder good ideas, and so forth.
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Topic: Solstice: An ambitious Roguelike in Alpha seeking detailed feedback (Read 991 times)