XLarn
Now - that’s a game I remember from the good old days(80’s) of text-graphic and console-commands to play your game.
XLarn is a nice refresh of the old concept of Larn. Crawl though the dungeon, bash monsters, gather loot, avoid traps other nasty things and and recover the potion to save your daughter and win the game. That’s about it. And ofc. there is perma death and paying taxes - if you succeed and try again ;-)
Graphics are simple tileset’s and sound is non-existing. Which is nice bc. it helps the game to stay true to it’s origin.
– Real player with 132.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Classic Roguelike Games.
If you enjoy Diablo, you’ll probably like XLarn. In essence, Larn is Diablo. So much of the gameplay of Diablo so closely resembles Larn that Blizzard’s game is at least a homage: level layouts randomly selected from a pre-designed list; persistent monsters appearing in random locations when first entering the level; random loot drops; being able to both cast spells and wield weapons (melee and ranged); health and magic that regenerate over time; spam combat that involves repeating basic attacks over and over again with more powerful weapons/spells; distinct, powerful boss monsters at the bottom of the dungeon… A lot of these elements are commonplace now, but they were first brought together in one game in Larn, and didn’t appear together again until Diablo.
– Real player with 36.3 hrs in game
Super 3-D Noah’s Ark
This game is probably the best game from the Wolf3d engine which you never heard of in the 90s. When this first hit steam and I came aware of it, I looked and instantly recognised the engine. I knew it was going straight to my wishlist and soon got it.
I didn’t play it at first for a few reasons. The screenshots show a hell of a lot of brown to rival Quake. Partly the religious side of things and you need to be in the right mood for an old game in the days when you have lots of other things you can play.
– Real player with 139.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Classic Cult Classic Games.
This is actually a really fun game. I’m having more fun with it than I originally thought I would be.
Super 3-D Noah’s Ark is a labyrinth FPS from the DOS era which used and upgraded Wolfenstein 3D’s engine. It added a few cool things like MIDI support and texture-mapped floors and ceilings. This version on Steam has been repolished and ported over to modern operating systems, so now there’s no need to use DOSBoX to emulate it!
The quality of this port is really good. The sound quality has been bumped up significantly, it can play in 1080p with true 16:9 aspect ratio (no stretching), the mouselook feels natural and it supports mods. This release also has achievements and trading cards, which is more than what most re-releases or remakes get.
– Real player with 12.8 hrs in game
Vulture for NetHack
IMO this is the king of the rouguelikes. There is no question in my mind. The amount of stuff you can do, the amount of careful planning it takes to get far, dying sometimes on your first step of the journey… this is roguelike perfection. This is just an adaptation of the classic NetHack, for the most part it is simply a graphical overhaul, or basically an isometric tileset. However, there are a couple game mechanics that are very slightly different. But for you purists, I really don’t think it affects the gameplay. This is basically classic NetHack but with better graphics than have ever been seen before. Sadly, they are still not very good. I would love to see some really good graphics on NetHack someday, but I’m not sure there is enough interest for that these days. The devs of this game say they have graphical updates coming, and from what I’ve seen they look amazing, but the project seems to have stalled out, so who knows if we’ll actually get them.
– Real player with 164.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Classic Roguelike Games.
I spawned in to my adventure as a Human Tourist. Great start. I then walked into the next room, and found a box on the ground. On inspection, no traps were detected and it was not locked. I opened it, only to find that there really -was- a trap. A giant pillar of flame erupted from the box, killing me as well as my pet. The game made note that I was a sinner, presumably because my pet would not have died if I didn’t set the trap off, Total life time: something like 60 turns. That’s the Nethack we all know and sometimes claim to love.
– Real player with 24.1 hrs in game
Uplink
Out of a lot of the hacking games I’ve played in my time, this has to have it’s seat right next to Hacknet, as one of my ‘Two best hacking games I’ve played’.
To some extent, it is pretty much an RPG, just for hacking.
You take up a contract - Or a ‘Quest’ - You do what the contract says - Destroy a mainframe, or change a social security record, et cetera - and then you get paid with a handful of credits - Or “Gold” - which you then use to upgrade your system, be it a Gateway upgrade, a new processor, or applications that will further unlock your hacking capabilities. - Or in terms of the RPG comparison here; You level up your character, you get new weapons, and unlock new skills.
– Real player with 269.6 hrs in game
This is really everything I wanted from an indie hacking game. It is a vast and glorious sandbox brimming with opportunity. To tell its tale, let me start the story about twenty-five years ago, with a little gem from Interplay called “Neuromancer.”
Neuromancer was an amazing piece of work, for its time. A point and click adventure game, yes, but with a vast collection of BBS-like “sites” in “cyberspace,” which could be accessed and navigated spatially, a sea of semitransparent polygons on a sprawling grid. They called the book “prophetic” in its vision of what a global computer network might be like, but the game was similarly visionary, in that it offered a classic milestone-and-unlocked-door-driven main story, but with a vast and layered world of enriching side stories and tiny details easily overlooked, that add depth and character to the world in which your character lives. This was a level of detail and nuance and supporting gameworld-enrichment that Bioware would go on to become famous for, in its epic D&D games of the Nineties, and in its later adventure games, but in the Eighties, on computers that were much more limited in resources, this was a bigger feat, and a bigger surprise to the player. You could just play Neuromancer to win it, or you could play it to learn about it, follow the exchanges on the PAX and on private sites, the private message exchanges between AIs. You could learn so much more that way, if you were clever and patient enough to retain it, to piece it together, and to make sense of it all.
– Real player with 109.0 hrs in game
Fine Sweeper
50 hours in and I think it’s time to write a review. Been playing it on and off rather addictively for the last month or so, most of that due to my unrelenting addiction for minesweeper (and achievements) as well as just wanting to top those leaderboards to make my life seem less worthless…
This is the best minesweeper remake I’ve ever played, it is a hell of a lot better then the windows remake that was on the windows store (not sure if they actually made it) which was a tragedy.
Like that one this too had pickups, which is an obviously new addition to the classic minesweeper formula and whilst I was pretty skeptical at first it’s a very well incorporated addition unlike the other version. There is also classic mode where you only have 1 life and therefore you hit a bomb you die (just like in real life!).
– Real player with 254.5 hrs in game
It’s a good Minesweeper remake! There are dozens of levels now instead of just three, Steam leaderboards to show off with, and the options and controls are just like how you remember them. (Plus, it’s got a nice background track that sounds roughly like a cat playing Team Fortress 2.)
That being said, Minesweeper is much more boring than I remember it. It’s mostly just a game of matching: spotting which numbers on the board are equal to the amount of adjacent tiles or flagged mines. The only real puzzle aspect to Minesweeper comes when you’ve spotted all the possible matches, and the only way to progress is to use some deductive reasoning on the remaining numbers. But no matter how hard you try, if there are too many mines clustered together in the wrong way, you’re eventually going to have to start guessing, and that’s ultimately Minesweeper’s biggest downfall.
– Real player with 54.4 hrs in game
Hookshot
I have completed this game in a total: 41 minutes
The Game: Hookshot
-Is it worth it to get : yes
-is the game hookshot Easy : no / if you are fast you can do it
-Their is only 24 level’s in this game and dose that make the game bad ? : no
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
this is a great game. it’s short and simple, but it does A LOT right given that. the person who made it should be proud
– Real player with 0.4 hrs in game
Super Orb Collector
Stars received: 4.1/10 _ Note: v.5 [0.0 to 1] = personal impressions
[0.7] Controls & Training & Help
[0.3] Menu & Settings
[0.5] Sound & Music
[0.4] Graphics
[0.4] Game Design
[0.3] Game Story
[0.5] Game Content
[0.6] Completion time (level/game)?
[0.4] is it Enjoyable & Fun?
[0] Could it hold a spot in Favorites? (& if the Game can be repeatedly played again)
[0] BONUS point: Multi-Player related
[0] BONUS point: Review for VR
[N] - if Registration is required with providing PII
Game description key-points: move mouse pointer avoiding obstacles
– Real player with 19.5 hrs in game
Super Orb Collector is a 2D puzzle game were the movement precision and patience counts a lot. In this game the player needs to collect all the orbs to make the exit portal to appear, and then he can travel to the next level. A really nice idea is if the player did a mistake, a new orb will spawn and collected orbs will remain collected, so, the player can continue like nothing happened.
– Real player with 2.5 hrs in game
UnReal World
This may be the best game I’ve ever played.
You may be wondering why I’m about to give this game such a glowing review when I have under an hour of play time on Steam. That’s because it’s free. It’s been free on the internet for ages. Unreal World, developed by Sami Maaranen, and Erkka Lehmus, is a low fantasy roguelike set in Iron Age Finland. Of course, you know that from the description. To get to know this game, you need to immerse yourself in the world. And it’s a big, complex world. URW has been updated regularly since its release in 1992. That’s 25 years of frequent updates. The most recent version is 3.40, which just left alpha this year. I bought this game to support the devs, and it was worth every penny I paid for it. I’ll do a quick rundown of pros and cons.
– Real player with 776.4 hrs in game
I am absolutely ashamed of myself.
I’ve never considered graphics an issue. Many of my favorite games are pretty old, and I’ve never minded motionless sprites or minimal animation. I played Spiderweb Software’s Exile back in the 90s (and sank countless hours into both of its remakes), along with obscure RPGs like Realmz and TaskMaker, and I enjoyed some truly ancient roguelikes found on shareware CDs that came with magazines. I never had any problems with putting myself into my characters' shoes, graphics notwithstanding. I feel as if the minimal graphics give my imagination more freedom to roam and create on its own, much like reading a book.
– Real player with 588.4 hrs in game
Endless Maneuver
I took me quite some time to get used to the contros, the game is not intended to set highscores of 20 minutes or something. The 2 difficulties don’t get harder over time and there are no things to collect or anything. The only clear difference between hard mode and easy mode is that in hard mode you also have to jump, but you get often a jump right after 1 jump which you can’t survive, or else you get some blocks that hit you while you’re still floating since you can’t steer when you’re in the air.
– Real player with 41.4 hrs in game
Oh-my-gosh! This game reminds me so much of Flappy Bird… mainly because it’s equally as frustrating to play.
And I run and I run and I run…
Endless Maneuver is a rather nice-looking endless runner where your character gets to run on a thin strip of path that’s somehow suspended in midair. Your role in this game is to help your character avoid running into the many pillars that litter the path and to avoid falling from the path into the great abyss down below. The further you are able to run, the more points you’ll gain - it’s that simple!
– Real player with 3.6 hrs in game
Roguebreaker
It has been a pleasure working with Josh Bergasse to playtest Roguebreaker and watch it develop from the earlier builds. The game has come a long way, and I honestly believe that Josh has created a product worthy of your time and attention.
Roguebreaker is a passion project that Josh wanted to see come to fruition long before coding even began. The concept of an 80s themed arcade game with modern conveniences and features (level editor, workshop support, incredible powerups, etc.) was one that he knew would be a perfect blend, and he was right.
– Real player with 22.4 hrs in game
This review was not sponsored by, or paid for by, any entity or being in all of creation. There was a free key given to me, simply because they wanted exposure. so. here it is.
RogueBreaker is a hellishly fun game that aesthetically takes you back to the NES days of Arkanoid (if you remember that). Its music is absolutely immersive and brutal, but also light hearted. Its gameplay is friendly to start off with, but it gets harder…and harder… and harder… AND HARDER until it goes absolutely APE!@#$ insane!.
– Real player with 8.9 hrs in game