After Action Reporter

Dungeons of Dredmor is a new roguelike currently in development by Gas Lamp Games. If you’re a fan of Dwarf Fortress, or reading this because I’ve written about Dwarf Fortress, you should keep reading as both games share a common heritage and Dredmore is sure to tickle your fancy!

Dredmor, unlike many roguelikes, eschews simple ASCII text representations of stuff for graphics and a good dose of humour. The game still has depth, like a lot of roguelikes, but also has a little of that graphical gravy we’ve all come to love. It’s also lethal, as a good roguelike should be, and I expect to die many times before I get to grips with it.

To share the fun of losing I’m going to liveblog my first game and share with you some observations!

Character Creation

Character creation is relatively simply. Chose seven skills from a list of 36. Being able to mix-and-match interesting combinations should make for a lot of variety. Oh, I’m also playing permadeath!

Dungeons of Dredmore character creation

Since I am made of sex and awesome I chose axes, dual wielding, berserker, master of arms, Viking magic, master of arms, assassination and finally, vampirism. The axes and dual wielding, assassination (crit strike) and berserker should synergize well and make me a killing machine. Viking magic, I don’t know, it sounds great! Who wouldn’t want to be a magical Viking! master of arms gives me some unknown defensive powers and vampirism lets me regain health from sucking on the dead. Hey, I plan for there to be a lot of the dead to suck on! My hero, who I shall name “Erik the Vikin” (not enough characters for a “g”. aww), is going to rock some dungeon!

Game Start

I’m trapped in a jail cell. Oh no! Someone did drop a ring of +a bit of armor (I think). So I add it to my character sheet. There’s a dispenser in the room, but I’m broke. I’m informed that this is the Wizardly Tower of Breakfast Cereals. Looks like I’ve been right all these years to never trust grain-based breakfast products.

Dungeons of Dredmor - the starting jail

I kick down a door to escape because that’s how hard I am. Egad, what is this! Small creatures awake and attack!

Dungeon of Dredmor - exploring

I kick them also!

With these pitiful creatures quickly dispatched I explore the dungeon and continue exploring, dispatching a few more critters before discovering a shop! Pity I am broke. Oh, I also discovered that, as I am a vampire, I can’t eat food to recover health, I can only recover health by bashing creatures. And maybe potions? Oh well. This could be tricky.

RPG fans love to shop!

Continuing onwards I bash another diggle (the creature thing) before something terrible happens! I step on a trap.

And die.

Hmm.

You R Dead

I did wonder why that dungeon tile looked a little different… and I was a bit low on health… Heck, better try again!

But for now, other duties call. Next time I’ll try and survive longer than five minutes.