POWDER - A Roguelike RPG

[Deozaan]

I just came across a roguelike today called POWDER. It was originally designed as a homebrew game for Nintendo Game Boy Advance but has been "ported" to Nintendo DS, Windows, Mac, and Linux, with the source code available under a Creative Commons Sampling Plus license.

POWDER is a roguelike developed specifically for the Gameboy Advance (GBA). It is not a port of an existing roguelike as the controls of the GBA are very different from the traditional keyboard, and the screen imposes some additional limitations. It is built around replayability and long term ergonomics, not short term learning. It uses actual graphic tiles (16x16) rather than the traditional characters. You may wish it didn't as I drew the tiles and am not an artist.

I created POWDER for one simple reason: I wanted a roguelike on my GBA. The standard RPGs were annoying me with endless battle screens against weak enemies to unfold a drug induced plotline. I wanted a game I could just jump into, and start killing things. Having had more hours than I'd care to log playing Nethack, ADOM, and the Diablos, I knew the exact type of game I wanted. The problem was I didn't see anyone publishing it any time soon.

-http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=about

What is a "roguelike"?

To understand POWDER, you should first understand roguelikes. "Roguelike" is a term applied to a wide variety of games which share a common inspiration from the game Rogue. A non-exhaustive list of such games would be: ADOM, Nethack, Crawl, Diablo (I & II), Moria, and Angband. My apologies to the many excellent roguelikes I didn't list. What characterizes these games? The exact specifications are a matter of debate - indeed, I may receive hate mail for including Diablo - but I shall try to write a few:

    * Tactical play. The unit of action is based on the individual adventurer. The game is not twitch oriented (like Quake, rewarding reflexes & well trained actions) nor is it strategy oriented (like Civilizations or Warcraft, requiring working on the large picture)
    * Based in Hack and Slash. A roguelike isn't primarily about plot development or telling a story. It is about killing things and acquiring treasure.
    * Random games. A roguelike is a dungeon crawler where no two games are the same. The maps are different, the items are different, there are no guaranteed win paths.
    * Permadeath. You die, that is it. No restoring a savegame. Good roguelikes delete your save game after loading them. This is compensated by the replayability of the game.
    * Complex interactions of properties. While the commands for a roguelike are simple, the potential interactions are not. My favourite example is equipping a silver ring as a weapon in order to damage a creature vulnerable to silver, but not one's other weapons. [Editor: This matches the Hack branch of the roguelike tree, not the Angband branch]
    * Steam rolling monsters. If a critter is in your way, and weak, you shouldn't even notice it is there.

For more information about roguelikes, there is the Rogue Basin, a Wiki documenting this genre: http://roguebasin.ro...likedevelopment.org/

-http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=about

Download POWDER

The screenshots are from older versions and the default graphic tileset has just been updated, made by a fan known as Akoi Meexx. It's worth a try if you enjoyed any of the games mentioned or Castle of the Winds as mentioned in The Best Games You've Never Played.

from http://www.zincland.com/powder/

[Deozaan]

I've been playing the DS version so I couldn't take any screen shots. I decided to download the PC version and give it a little bit of a run for some screengrabs.

POWDER - A Roguelike RPG
It's not much but at least it keeps the stomach pains away... mostly.

POWDER - A Roguelike RPG
Deozaan the master adventurer conquers an insect!

POWDER - A Roguelike RPG
Oops! A fire beetle killed me.

I'm enjoying the game. The difficulty is a mystery to me. Sometimes I'll smash through every enemy I see and then suddenly one enemy will take me out from full health. Not a one-hit kill, but he'll wear me down and I can't get a hit on him or I don't hurt him fast enough.

Overall very fun!

[iphigenie]

This post just got me on a whole nostalgia trip across about 20 sites about roguelikes and made me download about 5 or 6.
You wasted my Saturday 

[Deozaan]

Heh heh. On floor 15 or 16 there's a minotaur boss. He probably would have killed me but I petrified him. Easiest way to kill enemies I've found--if you have the MP for it. Then again, you don't gain any xp for petrifying monsters (because they can be revived using a Stone to Flesh spell), so it's more like a failsafe against most of the really hard enemies.

Baezl'bub is on floor 25 so I'm getting close!