Torchlight Crawlers

[BadRaZoR]

I have to stick up for Wizardry here. How you can leave this game out of your "Torchlight" listing IMHO is wrong. The ONLY part it doesn't meet is the food consumption but considering the game basically was the first real dungeon crawler ever (1981 i think it was) I think it should get a mulligan for this one small part

[Mychaelh]

I'm basically with BadRaZoR here, but have to add some things to 'spread the light':

First Wizardry game ('Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord') was NOT the first.
It was the first commercial successful adaption to home computers.


Oubliette (was one of the early ones on the PLATO system).

Some google-translated french article, that goes a little into this:
-> http://translate.google.de/translate?sl ... 75&act=url

One could make a case that DEMISE - Rise of the Ku'tan / Ascension has deeper roots as Wizardry and a 'purer' game-play.
(It's basically 'early Wizardry' on steroids and can be played in a HUGE (...VERY huge!!!... 90x90x30+ now!) pre-designed Dungeon for ever.)



Long review:

Demise: Rise of the Ku'tan - A hidden gem
Demise: Rise of the Kutan is, in my opinion, the best first-person "old-school" style computer RPG ever made. It is also probably the most underrated, misunderstood and one of the most obscure games in the genre. This game deserves far more than it has been given credit for and, in my opinion, deserves a place among the classics such as Daggerfall, Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, Diablo, and others.

(read on):
-> http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=77962.0

And it has the same basic game play in 2012. (it's still actively developed and a new version is coming out shortly).

You can get it here:

Homepage:
http://www.decklinsdemise.com/news.php

Forum:
http://www.decklinsdomain.info/phpbb/

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/decklinsdomain

Indiegamemag.com feature article written by the developer himself (explains how to get a demo):
http://www.indiegamemag.com/demise-the- ... t-go-away/

From June 18th 2012, you’ll also be able to purchase Demise: Ascension as part of the Indiefort Bundle 2:
http://www.indiegamemag.com/indiefort-b ... 6-minimum/

Demise: Ascension - Introduction Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw8cP55NzqA

[Mychaelh]

...What I am interested to know is how long the term Dungeon Crawler has been in use. Is that really what they called them in the past or is it a relatively modern coin of phrase?

Gamespot Review of Demise from the year 2000:

Artifact Entertainment's Demise: Rise of the Ku'Tan has the straightforward hack-and-slash gameplay of a standard dungeon crawl ...
...
Despite the complex story described in Demise's manual, the game itself is nothing more than a first-person dungeon crawl.
...
The adventuring is done in a node-based first-person view reminiscent of older computer role-playing games like Wizardry and The Bard's Tale.
...
Demise's actual combat is hack-and-slash stripped down to the bone: It's round-based and completely automatic.
...

Source: http://www.gamespot.com/demise-rise-of- ... w-2538585/

[b8w2N7r6Wz0q5e]

I can't comment much on the history, but I want to say two things.

1. Turn-based dungeon RPGs like Wizardry and Might&Magic (the older series) appeal to me more than "torchlight crawlers." Real-time combat often takes away from the puzzles. Since it's annoying to try to solve puzzles while being stalked by monsters, my first goal upon reaching a new area is to clear it of monsters. Then I must backtrack and start "wall crawling." LOL Turn-based combat causes its own distractions but at least I can get up and grab a snack or continue jotting some notes down without returning to a "game over" screen.

2. I agree games should be classified by major features (read: gameplay elements?) and we should have different terms for the subgenres. It's really irritating, for example, to read comments about a new game G where people say how it's like popular games such as X, Y, and Z even though the gameplay is much closer to game C that I never liked much. (I had bought Dragon Age because someone said it was "just like" Oblivion, which is pure bunk. They're very different games even if the engine is similar.) I wish we had proper categories.

[Mychaelh]

...
2. I agree games should be classified by major features (read: gameplay elements?) and we should have different terms for the subgenres. I wish we had proper categories.

It seems it was always convoluted. Just look in this Issue of Computer Gaming World (Issue Number: 2.3
Date: May-Jun 1982):
http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/inde ... pub=2&id=4
(pdf-download)

On page 6 there is the Review for the first Wizardry game - designated as Graphic Adventure.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

Then look up the review of Voyager I - Sabotage of the Robot Ship, designated as 3-D Maze Game on page 16.

Voyager I - Sabotage of the Robot Ship

[Mychaelh]

Some more trivia from the 'archaic times of dungeon crawling' taken from Snafaru's Oubliette Fan Page:

I became very interested in Oubliette when I learned from researching the internet that it was one of the games Wizardry was based on. So, there I went finding the game files and fired it up and... my gawd!!! I just couldn't believe how Wizardry-like the game was.
...

Oubliette was first released on the PLATO system on November 18, 1977. It was later ported to the PC platform in 1983. The iPad / iPhone / iPod Touch version of Oubliette was release on August 26, 2010.

Oubliette was one of the main inspirations for the well-known Wizardry series of computer role-playing games. If you play Oubliette and have played the Apple or IBM versions of Wizardry you will see striking ressemblances beteween them. Robert Woodhead, co-author of Wizardry, explains this in this excerpt of a post he made on the Slashdot forum on November 14th, 2001:

"Both Andy and I were active on the PLATO system, which was a tremendous influence on us. PLATO had email, chat, newsgroups, multiplayer realtime game, and much more, all starting in the early 70's. The multiplayer dungeon games were particularly good. Pretty much all of the basic concepts of multiplayer gaming were developed there.

Wizardry was in many ways our attempt to see if we could write a single-player game as cool as the PLATO dungeon games and cram it into a tiny machine like the Apple II."

Source: http://www.zimlab.com/oubliette/

[badhabit]

PS: There is a 'true' 3d-mod for the roguelike IVAN (= Iter Vehemens ad Necem).
-> would match 'torchlight crawler'-definition of this thread (more or less):

(to bored to search out the link for this)

Thanks for mentioning IVAN, I love this game! It has great and inovative game-mechanic and is really worth trying (even in 2D) :c)

Luckily, there is continued development... but splitted up on some forks (which is a pity):

central community page for all Ivan variants
http://www.attnam.com/wiki/Main_Page

I think the most progressed variants are CLIVAN ("Continuation of Lampshade's Iter Vehemens Ad Necem")
http://www.attnam.com/topics/1052/CLIVAN_released
and IvanX
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ivanx/files/

cheers!

[Mychaelh]

Some more nice find: (Doug Bell is one of the original Dungeon Master game devs):

Here's a bit of trivia from someone who was there. Dungeon Master doesn't have anything to do with Tolkien, at least not directly. There are some loose associations with D&D that came from Andy Jaros, the graphic artist. Andy was the only one on the development team that ever played D&D and at least the concept for the Wizard's Eye (the floating eye creature) and the Shrieker were borrowed from D&D. The character classes (fighter, wizard, priest, ninja) were also modeled on D&D. There were probably some other subtle influences, but really not as much as is probably perceived. What we did take directly from D&D was the name Dungeon Master after realizing that TSR never copyrighted or trademarked the term. It was an admittedly blatant attempt to gain some name recognition, although for a while at least, the term Dungeon Master was better known because of the computer game than because of D&D. (As a side note, FTL had brief discussions with TSR about having TSR market the game. During these discussions we showed a prerelease version of Dungeon Master to TSR, so TSR had their opportunity to object to the name and didn't.) -- Doug Bell 07:42, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Dunge ... ideo_game)

[Mychaelh]

Some interesting blog articles:

Forgotten ruins: The roots of computer role-playing games: Sir-tech

http://bitmob.com/articles/forgotten-ru ... s-sir-tech

Ultima, Wizardry and issues of video game historiography:

http://blog.hardcoregaming101.net/2011/ ... video.html

A Brief History of Western Action Rpgs:

http://blog.hardcoregaming101.net/2011/ ... -rpgs.html

[trancelistic]

The thing I kinda miss, having that dungeon creepy feeling is, ghosts that can move trough walls/doors. And that most monster do not open doors. I can just sleep in front of a gate and he just stares at me. Taken away that feeling that i could be in danger at any time.

This/that was the biggest disapointed for me in this game. The rest is fine, i guess, although I was hoping for bigger levels a floor. But thats just me<3