The following post is an essay I completed for my class Introduction to Video Game Studies. It features Brogue, my current favorite game. Enjoy!
Launched in 2012, Brogue is an ASCII character based roguelike dungeoncrawler, much in the theme of its namesake (Rogue, 1980). Ogres, trolls, jackals and Naga inhabit these procedurally generated worlds, and only most cunning of adventurers can return from depth 26 with the amulet of Yendor.
Brogue is a turnbased dungeon explorer. On each turn the player gives a single input. This can be to move to an adjacent square, attack, search, wait, equip armor, quaff potions, apply wands or staves or read scrolls. The player begins on the first, 2d depth of the dungeon, and explores the dungeon by descending further using staircases on each level. Inhabiting the dungeon are myriad dangers, some animate, others not. One can find a huge selection of creatures, ranging from rats to kobolds to dar blademasters to revenants, underworms and dragons.
The layout of each floor is procedurally generated, meaning that the game uses random number generation to dictate the layout of floors, walls, trees, pits, water, lava and items. In addition to the floors being populated with just enemy (and some ally!) creatures, the floors are filled with more complex mechanics, including healing and explosive gases, and various traps. Stepping on a pressure plate for one of these traps can easily lead to a character's demise.
Death is also a central part of any roguelike experience, and Brogue nonetheless. As each character's death is permanent, a single playthrough can last anywhere from seconds to hours. The game's procedural generation however ensures that no two playthrough's are alike, resulting in near-endless gameplay. Additionally, no options, classes, races or attributes are chosen at the start of Brogue, rather, one starts with the same attributes and few items at the beginning of each game.
Expectedly, the monster frequency and strength increases as one descends through the dungeon, requiring more advanced gear and play-styles. The various items one can find are listed more thoroughly here: weapons, armor, scrolls, potions, staves, wands, charms, rings, keys and most importantly; food and gold pieces.
Gold pieces are found in stacks of 50-200 and are scattered along the dungeon at the same rate of other items. The gold pieces however serve no actual function in the gameplay, they are simply estimates of dungeon progress. This is so that when one dies or ascends (programmed end of game, more about that in a bit), one can record a 'score' consisting of the amount of gold collected.
How one can 'win' the game per se is to reach the 26th depth, where the amulet of Yendor is held. Once one grabs the amulet, the player must race back to the 1st depth while being chased by the guardian, an invulnerable creature, and racing against their stock of food. Food, as mentioned earlier, is of critical importance to the player. Similar to other roguelikes like Nethack and Zangband, the player has a 'nutrition' attribute, which goes down by a small amount each turn. Only by eating food can one restore this. When the player's nutrition counter hits empty, the player sustains massive damage each turn, usually resulting in a quick death if the player cannot find food quickly.
As items are of such large importance to the player, brogue appropriate made a similarly deep item system. The most different concept for players new to roguelike RPG's is the item identification system. For each playthrough, every staff, wand, weapon, piece of armor, potion scroll and ring the player finds is unidentified. A minor amount of items will be identified, if found in vaults - essentially loot chests that one can open by obtaining keys.
While exploring through the dungeon, other than the 'nutrition' level, a player has a few other attributes. A player will have an armor value, based on the armor rating they are wearing, their current strength, and the effective level of the armor. (A player can equip a heavy plate mail, but only once they have quaffed enough strength potions will the mail give them adequate protection). Additionally, the player has a stealth range, outside of which monsters cannot detect them. The player then of course also has a strength attribute, starting at a fixed point, and increased by drinking certain potions.
The stealth mechanic in Brogue works as follows: creatures default states are either wandering, sleeping or guarding. For every turn that a creature is n your stealth range, they have a chance to detect you, resulting in most cases (depending on creature behavior) to change to 'hunting' and begin chasing/attacking the player. Many monsters will have alternative behaviors however. Spellcaster creatures will often flee from the player until a certain range, then begin casting spells, or Monkeys for example can steal an item from a player's inventory, and then proceed to flee.
The player can also endure other variations of states, one can call buffs, debuffs or enchantments. These include special powers that one gets from drinking potions. Some of these effects are haste, telepathy (can sense presence of creatures on dungeon floor), confusion, nauseous, weakened, shield, burn, poison, hallucination, paralysis, stuck in web/nets, fire immunity, levitation and more. Creatures can also suffer the majority of these effects (all except hallucination) and other variants that change their AI behavior, such as discord (attack creatures friendly to them), sleep, and silence.
While the retro ASCII character design may look old primitive to some, brogue is a game of surprising depth. One must weigh almost every situation, whether it be how to slay a creature, avoid a trap or continue to explore a dungeon, and must do so in the wisest or most efficient way if the player wants to reach deeper levels.
The most difficult challenges for new players, as stated before, is the identification of items. One can quaff potions and read scrolls recklessly, as this both reveals the function of the magic item and unleashes it, however many items are cursed! There are multiple types of cursed scrolls and potions, which can summon a swarm of monsters, releasing clouds of paralyzing of poisoned gas, or explode in a fireball around the player. The player of course can use the items for their own use, as throwing a confusion potion into a school of goblins and watching them move in random directions (and if there is another goblin in that direction, it will attack it) can be an easy way to deal with a mob of otherwise fatal creatures.
The myriad of options at each turn of Brogue, paired with its procedural generation of floors and items really allow a huge variations of playing styles to be viable. Due to the manner of Brogue however, many times the character is essentially created for you, rather than the player choosing what role they would like to play. This is due to the random items found on each floor. If a player finds a staff of firebolt early on in the game, the player may choose to focus on a staff based class by spending scrolls of enchantment on that, and looking for charms of recharging (staffs are reusable and cast a fixed spell with each use). Alternatively, if a player finds melee gear, it may be wise to keep items that aid in weapon combat options, such as haste potions.
Although the gear is for the most part random, the player is given some degree of choice in their equipment. Primarily, the dungeon will have "vaults" spread throughout it. These vaults are locked by an iron gate that requires a key, found on the same level, to be used to open it. To obtain these keys, the player must outsmart hidden traps or defeat certain creatures on that level. Also, some vaults contain no door, but instead require finding a hidden lever, or using a scroll of wall-shattering at the correct spot instead.
Inside these vaults are 3-7 items that are guaranteed to be uncursed, and if they are a ring, staff or wand they will be identified (but not weapons nor armor). This can give the player a huge advantage in choosing quality gear that will help define their play style, which is constantly changing based on their equipment.
This brings us to the concept of cursed weapons and armor. When a weapon or armor is cursed, it will be less effective than its regular counterpart, and once the player equips it, they cannot unequip it unless they use a scroll of protect weapon/armor, or a scroll of remove curse/enchantment, all valuable items.
Although there is no character 'level', one can improve the character attributes using items scattered through the dungeon. This way, the player will be more powerful as they descend further through the dungeon. These items are sparse among the huge variety of loot, and the dungeon becomes increasingly difficult and complex
as one descends.
These items primarily include potions of life, potions of strength, and scrolls of enchantment. Potions of life both heal a player to full health, and increase their max life by 33%. Potions of strength of course increase the strength of player, allowing one to use more advanced weapons and armor effectively. Potions of enchantment however are the main process of 'leveling' in Brogue. Every staff, weapon, armor, charm and ring have a certain item level. The item level can be increased by one if a player uses a scroll of enchantment on it. This will make weapons do more damage and hit more, armor block more damage, and makes rings', charms' and staffs' magical abilities more powerful. Since these scrolls are relatively rare, one must choose between items on which gets an enchantment. Because the dungeon's difficulty scales much faster than the player, one must consolidate enchants onto a few items that will be strong enough to carry them into lower depths. For example, a +2 axe and a +3 sword is much less effective than a +6 sword.
It is because of this consolidation that one must choose wisely what type of character to play. If one has powerful staffs, it will be much more useful to pick their ring of reaping (recharges staffs faster) than a ring of health regeneration, as they will increase their offence more. Alternatively, the player could invest their scrolls of enchantment into a scroll of empowerment to increase the strength of the goblin ally they gained by freeing him.
Because of the multitude of tools the player has to solve each encounter, each becoming their own sort of mini-game in a sense, the game incorporates a strategic tone to it. And although the game could be analyzed though a numbers-heavy approach, where one could roll the potential damage, hit % against each monster, the game community (as experienced on the game's official forum) does not. The game remains true to its roots in Rogue. Brogue is a game about adventure. The player must use their guts and cunning to outsmart the enemies and traps in the dungeon, create a powerful avatar, and always venture down further the retrieve the Amulet of Yendor.
One dies in the adventure quite often. If the author were to estmate, approximately .01% of playthroughs of the average player result in retrieving the amulet and returning to the first floor. As of the writing of this essay, the author himself has not even ascended once. Nonetheless, the game has its own way of glorifying dying, as with many roguelikes. Because death is so common, the game gives some satisfaction in its death procedure. Firstly, once the player reaches 0 health it pauses the gamestate, and allows the play to look at all of their items fully identified, as well as the combat log and dungeon floor. It then saves the character's progress on the record board, listed by the score (gold pieces picked up) on each run.
Each playthrough of Brogue teaches the player one more way to die, and how they might have lived, hopefully making a player better. And although there is a mechanical, -simulation-like feeling to the gameplay, nothing can stop the heart-stopping pause I experience when an underworm breaks out from a wall 3 spaces away from me, and I just used by potion of descent to take care of the ogre in the last hallway, nor the scheming, planning mood I put myself in when I find myself one hit away from life against a swarm of enemies, planning which item has the best chance to save my character. Lastly, the process of adventuring deeper than you ever have before, finding your first Fire Salamnder ally, getting horrifically dismembered by a revenant, or discovering a summoning altar for the first time simply instills a sense of curiosity for just what exactly could be next, further down in the dungeonナ If you can get that far!
Launched in 2012, Brogue is an ASCII character based roguelike dungeoncrawler, much in the theme of its namesake (Rogue, 1980). Ogres, trolls, jackals and Naga inhabit these procedurally generated worlds, and only most cunning of adventurers can return from depth 26 with the amulet of Yendor.
Brogue is a turnbased dungeon explorer. On each turn the player gives a single input. This can be to move to an adjacent square, attack, search, wait, equip armor, quaff potions, apply wands or staves or read scrolls. The player begins on the first, 2d depth of the dungeon, and explores the dungeon by descending further using staircases on each level. Inhabiting the dungeon are myriad dangers, some animate, others not. One can find a huge selection of creatures, ranging from rats to kobolds to dar blademasters to revenants, underworms and dragons.
The layout of each floor is procedurally generated, meaning that the game uses random number generation to dictate the layout of floors, walls, trees, pits, water, lava and items. In addition to the floors being populated with just enemy (and some ally!) creatures, the floors are filled with more complex mechanics, including healing and explosive gases, and various traps. Stepping on a pressure plate for one of these traps can easily lead to a character's demise.
Death is also a central part of any roguelike experience, and Brogue nonetheless. As each character's death is permanent, a single playthrough can last anywhere from seconds to hours. The game's procedural generation however ensures that no two playthrough's are alike, resulting in near-endless gameplay. Additionally, no options, classes, races or attributes are chosen at the start of Brogue, rather, one starts with the same attributes and few items at the beginning of each game.
Expectedly, the monster frequency and strength increases as one descends through the dungeon, requiring more advanced gear and play-styles. The various items one can find are listed more thoroughly here: weapons, armor, scrolls, potions, staves, wands, charms, rings, keys and most importantly; food and gold pieces.
Gold pieces are found in stacks of 50-200 and are scattered along the dungeon at the same rate of other items. The gold pieces however serve no actual function in the gameplay, they are simply estimates of dungeon progress. This is so that when one dies or ascends (programmed end of game, more about that in a bit), one can record a 'score' consisting of the amount of gold collected.
How one can 'win' the game per se is to reach the 26th depth, where the amulet of Yendor is held. Once one grabs the amulet, the player must race back to the 1st depth while being chased by the guardian, an invulnerable creature, and racing against their stock of food. Food, as mentioned earlier, is of critical importance to the player. Similar to other roguelikes like Nethack and Zangband, the player has a 'nutrition' attribute, which goes down by a small amount each turn. Only by eating food can one restore this. When the player's nutrition counter hits empty, the player sustains massive damage each turn, usually resulting in a quick death if the player cannot find food quickly.
As items are of such large importance to the player, brogue appropriate made a similarly deep item system. The most different concept for players new to roguelike RPG's is the item identification system. For each playthrough, every staff, wand, weapon, piece of armor, potion scroll and ring the player finds is unidentified. A minor amount of items will be identified, if found in vaults - essentially loot chests that one can open by obtaining keys.
While exploring through the dungeon, other than the 'nutrition' level, a player has a few other attributes. A player will have an armor value, based on the armor rating they are wearing, their current strength, and the effective level of the armor. (A player can equip a heavy plate mail, but only once they have quaffed enough strength potions will the mail give them adequate protection). Additionally, the player has a stealth range, outside of which monsters cannot detect them. The player then of course also has a strength attribute, starting at a fixed point, and increased by drinking certain potions.
The stealth mechanic in Brogue works as follows: creatures default states are either wandering, sleeping or guarding. For every turn that a creature is n your stealth range, they have a chance to detect you, resulting in most cases (depending on creature behavior) to change to 'hunting' and begin chasing/attacking the player. Many monsters will have alternative behaviors however. Spellcaster creatures will often flee from the player until a certain range, then begin casting spells, or Monkeys for example can steal an item from a player's inventory, and then proceed to flee.
The player can also endure other variations of states, one can call buffs, debuffs or enchantments. These include special powers that one gets from drinking potions. Some of these effects are haste, telepathy (can sense presence of creatures on dungeon floor), confusion, nauseous, weakened, shield, burn, poison, hallucination, paralysis, stuck in web/nets, fire immunity, levitation and more. Creatures can also suffer the majority of these effects (all except hallucination) and other variants that change their AI behavior, such as discord (attack creatures friendly to them), sleep, and silence.
While the retro ASCII character design may look old primitive to some, brogue is a game of surprising depth. One must weigh almost every situation, whether it be how to slay a creature, avoid a trap or continue to explore a dungeon, and must do so in the wisest or most efficient way if the player wants to reach deeper levels.
The most difficult challenges for new players, as stated before, is the identification of items. One can quaff potions and read scrolls recklessly, as this both reveals the function of the magic item and unleashes it, however many items are cursed! There are multiple types of cursed scrolls and potions, which can summon a swarm of monsters, releasing clouds of paralyzing of poisoned gas, or explode in a fireball around the player. The player of course can use the items for their own use, as throwing a confusion potion into a school of goblins and watching them move in random directions (and if there is another goblin in that direction, it will attack it) can be an easy way to deal with a mob of otherwise fatal creatures.
The myriad of options at each turn of Brogue, paired with its procedural generation of floors and items really allow a huge variations of playing styles to be viable. Due to the manner of Brogue however, many times the character is essentially created for you, rather than the player choosing what role they would like to play. This is due to the random items found on each floor. If a player finds a staff of firebolt early on in the game, the player may choose to focus on a staff based class by spending scrolls of enchantment on that, and looking for charms of recharging (staffs are reusable and cast a fixed spell with each use). Alternatively, if a player finds melee gear, it may be wise to keep items that aid in weapon combat options, such as haste potions.
Although the gear is for the most part random, the player is given some degree of choice in their equipment. Primarily, the dungeon will have "vaults" spread throughout it. These vaults are locked by an iron gate that requires a key, found on the same level, to be used to open it. To obtain these keys, the player must outsmart hidden traps or defeat certain creatures on that level. Also, some vaults contain no door, but instead require finding a hidden lever, or using a scroll of wall-shattering at the correct spot instead.
Inside these vaults are 3-7 items that are guaranteed to be uncursed, and if they are a ring, staff or wand they will be identified (but not weapons nor armor). This can give the player a huge advantage in choosing quality gear that will help define their play style, which is constantly changing based on their equipment.
This brings us to the concept of cursed weapons and armor. When a weapon or armor is cursed, it will be less effective than its regular counterpart, and once the player equips it, they cannot unequip it unless they use a scroll of protect weapon/armor, or a scroll of remove curse/enchantment, all valuable items.
Although there is no character 'level', one can improve the character attributes using items scattered through the dungeon. This way, the player will be more powerful as they descend further through the dungeon. These items are sparse among the huge variety of loot, and the dungeon becomes increasingly difficult and complex
as one descends.
These items primarily include potions of life, potions of strength, and scrolls of enchantment. Potions of life both heal a player to full health, and increase their max life by 33%. Potions of strength of course increase the strength of player, allowing one to use more advanced weapons and armor effectively. Potions of enchantment however are the main process of 'leveling' in Brogue. Every staff, weapon, armor, charm and ring have a certain item level. The item level can be increased by one if a player uses a scroll of enchantment on it. This will make weapons do more damage and hit more, armor block more damage, and makes rings', charms' and staffs' magical abilities more powerful. Since these scrolls are relatively rare, one must choose between items on which gets an enchantment. Because the dungeon's difficulty scales much faster than the player, one must consolidate enchants onto a few items that will be strong enough to carry them into lower depths. For example, a +2 axe and a +3 sword is much less effective than a +6 sword.
It is because of this consolidation that one must choose wisely what type of character to play. If one has powerful staffs, it will be much more useful to pick their ring of reaping (recharges staffs faster) than a ring of health regeneration, as they will increase their offence more. Alternatively, the player could invest their scrolls of enchantment into a scroll of empowerment to increase the strength of the goblin ally they gained by freeing him.
Because of the multitude of tools the player has to solve each encounter, each becoming their own sort of mini-game in a sense, the game incorporates a strategic tone to it. And although the game could be analyzed though a numbers-heavy approach, where one could roll the potential damage, hit % against each monster, the game community (as experienced on the game's official forum) does not. The game remains true to its roots in Rogue. Brogue is a game about adventure. The player must use their guts and cunning to outsmart the enemies and traps in the dungeon, create a powerful avatar, and always venture down further the retrieve the Amulet of Yendor.
One dies in the adventure quite often. If the author were to estmate, approximately .01% of playthroughs of the average player result in retrieving the amulet and returning to the first floor. As of the writing of this essay, the author himself has not even ascended once. Nonetheless, the game has its own way of glorifying dying, as with many roguelikes. Because death is so common, the game gives some satisfaction in its death procedure. Firstly, once the player reaches 0 health it pauses the gamestate, and allows the play to look at all of their items fully identified, as well as the combat log and dungeon floor. It then saves the character's progress on the record board, listed by the score (gold pieces picked up) on each run.
Each playthrough of Brogue teaches the player one more way to die, and how they might have lived, hopefully making a player better. And although there is a mechanical, -simulation-like feeling to the gameplay, nothing can stop the heart-stopping pause I experience when an underworm breaks out from a wall 3 spaces away from me, and I just used by potion of descent to take care of the ogre in the last hallway, nor the scheming, planning mood I put myself in when I find myself one hit away from life against a swarm of enemies, planning which item has the best chance to save my character. Lastly, the process of adventuring deeper than you ever have before, finding your first Fire Salamnder ally, getting horrifically dismembered by a revenant, or discovering a summoning altar for the first time simply instills a sense of curiosity for just what exactly could be next, further down in the dungeonナ If you can get that far!