Alpha Beta Gamer

Skyhill is a stylish turn roguelike point n click turn based survival game about staying alive when there is no reason to.

You are a resident of Skyhill hotel who survived a biological catastrophe. Your goal is to get out of your penthouse in search of other people and salvation. But all elevators in the building are off and floors are flooded with hazards.

The game features an interesting mix of gameplay mechanics, with point and click adventure style puzzle solving, turn based combat, scavenging, crafting and survival tropes. You also have to plan your movements well, as every move uses up some of your energy, the limited resources mean starvation is a constant threat. Although not present in the Alpha Demo, the full version also promises a twisted plotline, multiple characters and procedurally generated level design.

Play the Alpha Demo, Free

Phantasmal is a genuinely terrifying roguelike first person horror game inspired by Dead Space, Silent Hill, Metro and Resident Evil, set in an old abandoned, procedurally generated mansion.

The prevailing darkness makes for a very claustrophobic feeling game, and both the character design and audio are both particularly freaky, but the single most terrifying aspect of it is that the levels are all procedurally generated. This procedural generation means that every playthrough is different and just as pant-wettingly horrifying as the last. You never know what’s going to come at you next, although it’s a safe bet it doesn’t want to be friends.

The goal of the game is to escape the mansion, by making your way through levels full off all manner of creepy ghouls, trying to reach the level exit portal. This is no easy task, resources are sparse and you’re pretty fragile. You have a mixture of traditional weapons and makeshift weapons but a lot of the time, sneaking is your best option, especially with the most common enemy, blind humanoid creatures that hunt through sound.

As if things weren’t stacked against you enough, you’re also prone to hallucinations, looking directly at some creatures with your torchlight turned on will cause you to slowly lose your sanity. Make no mistake, you’ll die a lot in this game, you’ll learn how to take on different enemies, but you can forget about learning level layouts. You never know what’s behind those corners, and most of the time it’s something very bad.

Download the Pre-Alpha, Free

Corridors Of Uncertainty is procedurally generated rogue-like with fully destructible maps, a wide array of weaponry and plenty of violence. The Pre-Alpha gives you one life to shoot, kill and demolish your way to the end of the levels, attempting to get as high a score as possible.

The weaponry is great fun to play around with, from lightsabers to rocket launchers, they all pack a punch. You can use 4 different special powers too (focus, swift, fireball, and flash), they have useful effects, such as slowing down time or stunning enemies, but the most useful by far is fireball. As well as rocket launchers and explosive containers, Fireball allows you to blow up walls and terrain. This means that instead of searching for a key-card for a door, you can just blow your way around the door (you can still search for key-cards if you want, but this is way more fun).

Corridors Of Uncertainty can also be played in 2 player local co-op, with one player on mouse and keyboards and the other on a 360 controller. It’s a great game, gameplay is fast, fun and brutal, with Hotline Miami-Style violence, field of view mechanics, special powers, destructible terrain and lightsabers. Corridors of Carnage.

Download the Pre-Alpha, Free

Barony is a 3D first-person RPG, featuring cooperative multiplayer, dungeon-crawling mechanics, rogue-like elements and real-time action all wrapped up in a glorious retro shell. It’s a rogue-like romp inspired by Ultima Underworld, System Shock and Dagerfall, which you travel through the vast subterranean complex known as the Devil’s Bastion, on a mission to kill the evil Litch, Baron Helix.

You’ll make your way through procedurally generated levels filled with a diverse array of friends, foes and challenges. Creatures are driven by needs (food, sleep, water, etc.) and all have their own personalities. Some creatures would beat you to death for their own amusement, while others prefer only to be left alone.

You have a choice of 10 character classes, from Barbarian to Joker, each with their own skills and bonuses, yet are still able to master any skill with enough practice. Don’t get too attached to your character though, the permadeath system means that when you’re dead, you’re dead, although there’s plenty of loot and equipment to collect that will give you a fighting chance.

The procedurally generated dungeons of Barony mean every game will offer something new, but it’s also highly moddable and comes with it’s own level editor for those that want to customise their experience.

It’s a nice blend of retro visuals, RPG and Roguelike gameplay that’s good fun on your own and great fun with friends.

Download the Alpha, Free

The Hero Trap is a fun, fast paced and colourful roguelike dungeon-crawler, where you can use the souls of great warriors past to aid your perilous journey.

It looks wonderful, with randomly generated maps, nice animation and colourful cartoony character and enemy design. The gameplay is similar to Gauntlet, with characters roaming dungeons, vanquishing hordes of enemies and earning gold.

Gold can be used in shops to purchase various upgrades - or more intriguingly - the souls of fallen warriors. These warriors, each feature their own signature attacks and follow you around the levels, you’re then able switch control to them instantly by pressing their attack button. In the finished game you’ll also be able to use these characters in multiplayer co-op.

Even in these early stages of development The Hero Trap is great fun. With charming cartoon visuals a unique hero switching mechanic and challenging gameplay, there’s certainly a lot to like about this roguelike.

Download the Pre-Alpha, Free

Stones Of Sorrow is an ultra-violent action-roguelike based on historical cave paintings with cooldown based combat mechanics and buckets of blood (or paint).

The levels in Stones of Sorrow are all procedurally generated, with you having to pay a gatekeeper with gold to get lower into the cave. You’ll find some of this gold scattered throughout the levels, but you’ll earn most of it through killing enemies. This gold also comes in handy when you die, through a nice Rogue Legacy-style perks system that allows you to purchase upgrades that will aid your next playthrough.

Enemies tend to continually spawn from set locations, causing them to bunch up together in large groups which you can then run into and wipe out in a huge bloodbath. You can also use bombs which can be bought from a shop, or grab and execute an enemy for a nice +666 gold bonus. The combat system takes a little getting used to as every move (even crawl) has a cooldown period with a count-down at the bottom of the screen indicating when you can use them again. Once you figure it out though, it’s great fun, and adds a tactical element to the fighting.

The current build is still early in development and contains 1 level, 1 weapon, 4 enemy types, 3 different executions on one enemy, 6 stat changing items, a trader, a gatekeeper and lots of violence. The full game will contain at least 10 levels, 20 weapons, 15 brutal executions, 23 enemy types, 60 stat changing items, many different traders, eating corpses, weapon modifying and a story about a power struggle within an ancient tribe.

Coming to Windows, Mac & Linux, Stones of Sorrow has just started an IndieGoGo campaign with a very modest €4,000 Goal. Contributors who pay €4 or more will get access to the full blood-soaked version when it’s released.

Play the Alpha, Free

Shattered Planet is a great looking survival-exploration RPG for tablet and PC that’s set for release next month.

It’s a turn-based RPG with randomly generated levels and lots of powerful items to find. Shattered Planet has a great isometric art style, similar to Bastion, and it’s influenced by some great recent Roguelikes, such as Rogue Legacy and FTL as well as classics like Rogue and Nethack. It’s a pretty challenging game, with thoughtful and strategic gameplay, that’s almost like Chess, in that you have to plan several moves in advance for you to stand a chance of winning.

Visit the Official Website HERE

We have 20 Early Access Keys to giveaway for iOS, we’ll be giving them out through our official Twitter page HERE

Illuminascii is a great new FPS with a wonderful ascii text based visual style that features randomly generated content and roguelike elements. It’s a very silly game, great fun to play, and like any good roguelike, you never know what’s going to happen next. It’s probably best to explain what happened during my first game:

My randomly generated character, ‘Killroy the Gaunt Vegetable Wizard’, was wandering around admiring the scenery (it is an oddly pretty game) when a large blue ‘J’ set upon me, I promptly shot it a few times, and was told ‘you have killed a deformed burrito’. I came across many such monsters, including a ‘ruinous water pistol’, a ‘pompus corpse’ and ‘lumbering hermit’, and completed a few levels, each time with a strange randomly generated cutscene playing. I found another gun, a fruit machine, a vending machine, ammo and food. I was doing rather well, until I got to a wooded area similar to the one above, and was promptly wiped out buy a ‘lecherous motorcycle’ and an ‘aggravated bearded cat’. ’Killroy the Gaunt Vegetable Wizard’ was no more!!

You have to play this game, it’s still in early Alpha, but already in these early development stages, it’s 100% pure, weird random fun.

Download the Alpha, Free

The Consuming Shadow is a procedurally-generated horror adventure game with a Lovecraftian theme and gameplay inspired by FTL: Faster Than Light, Eternal Darkness, and the board game Arkham Horror.

The game is played from a 2D, side on perspective, with characters being depicted through their silhouettes, making the game feel like you’re playing through a graphic novel. The game features procedurally generated dungeons to explore and fight your way through, roguelike perma-death mechanics, random events, upgrades, sanity mechanics and an interesting storyline.

Try not to go mad and shoot yourself. This is important!

Download the Beta

Posts tagged roguelike