Descension is a graphical roguelike created with RPG Maker VX. 'Roguelike' is an old-school PC gaming term for any dungeon crawling game that is randomized to provide a different experience each time you play. Traditionally, roguelikes offer only one chance to get it right every playthrough, so the enjoyment of the game depends on replay value. A good roguelike is suspenseful, exciting, and full of surprises. With Descension I have tried to capture this feeling in an RPG Maker game unlike any other.
Roguelikes have been in the spotlight recently, with games like Dungeons of Dredmor, Spelunky, The Binding of Isaac, and FTL reaching wide audiences and receiving. Indie game developers can use Game Maker Studio to create an RPG / Roguelike like Nethack or Binding of Issac. This course will provide the instructions you need to. Roguelike Game Maker is a precompiled, standalone application that can be used to edit roguelike worlds. It is currently in an early stage of development.
Descension features completely custom graphics (hand-drawn animations and icons to come in later releases) and a custom soundtrack by talented ambient trackers Binary Beats and Cold Warning. The game is built on Omegazion's fantastic roguelike battle system script and every effort has been made to use it to its fullest potential. Not only that, but the dungeon itself is completely randomized, picking each floor from a wide selection of hand-crafted floors ranging from spacious rooms to claustrophobic winding labyrinths. This demo only scratches the surface of the variety and surprises the full game will have in store. Furthermore, the demo only consists of one mode of play. The full version will feature a longer quest, more classes, more items, more monsters, more traps, more floors, more maps, more.everything! But until then, give this demo a try and please give me any input you may have!
I have an open door policy on constructive criticism. Hey, I gave this a few playthroughs a while ago. Apart from the deaths, I had two problems of note: 1) The Knight class is pretty underpowered, since his Double Slash attack didn't seem to be any more useful than a regular attack, which left him without a means of easily dispatching enemies without taking damage. 2) The Skeleton Keys and key-needing doors aren't any good, in my opinion. The game already has other means of blocking off doors temporarily until you can encounter a lever/monster, and I had to quit twice because I was stuck behind a door with no key and trying to destroy it seemed like a waste of time. I didn't like some of the music either, but that's more personal.
The game has potential, though, and I'd enjoy seeing more content.
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A friend will be buying me the tier one humblebundle soon which contains VX ACE. I've been wondering can one make a proper roguelike with it? Now of course I did some research and I know the software isn't designed for that and that it would take a lot of scripting to make it happen. I've got a lot of time on my hand so I wouldn't mind learning Ruby (That's what VX Ace uses from what I've read so far) and try building a roguelike.
But I'd like to ask the more experienced of you, is this possible? Would it be too hard? The game would play like classic roguelikes. Turn based movement and combat, enemies wondering around the dungeon that would fight you, procedurally generated dungeons, etc. Also any idea are there already scripts for that? It's definitely possible to make Roguelikes, but there are no full rogue-like kits as of yet that will give you what you want with just a few clicks.
It's probably a better idea to think of rogue-like features that you want in your game and look up how to make them instead. If you want to e.g. Have fog on your map that doesn't reveal unexplored areas and/or areas that aren't in sight, try looking for 'fog of war' scripts, for example. You should also think about whether you want your rogue-like to be turn-based or not, stuff like that. There are definitely ways to get what you want! I also suggest looking up tutorials on roguelikes, though I'm not sure if any exist at the moment.