Friday Timewaster

Caves of Qud may be the best roguelike ever made. It combines classic mechanics with a more modern, streamlined interface, (though still keyboard-based; keep your filthy rodent away from my roguelikes), to produce an eminently playable game, even for newbies to the genre.

Of particular note is the setting: it's a post-apocalyptic world of nearly 1 million maps, (a "map" in roguelike parlance is a screen), with heavy influences from pen-n-paper classics like Gamma World and Rifts, along with a healthy dose of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. While Caves of Qud is unapologetically a roguelike -- which means you'll die a lot and death is permanent; roll another character and be more careful next time -- it has a feel that I haven't encountered in many years, not since I played games like Ultima and Wizard's Crown in the early eighties, in fact. A rich world and back story combine with complex character mechanics like mutations and skill trees to create a truly unique game.

I have an overclocked monster of a gaming computer at the house, with triple monitors, TrackIR and every peripheral you can imagine, yet I've spent uncounted hours playing this simple game which would have run quite easily on the old Apple ][ over thirty years ago. It simply proves once again that gameplay trumps shinies, and that the most powerful graphics processor in the universe is between your ears.

You can click below for the free version, which is classically ASCII-based. If you'd like it jazzed up a bit with a colorful tileset and faux-CRT image filter, (kitschy but cool), you can also buy it for $10 on Steam. Personally I play both versions, as they each have their own charms. Either way, you'll have great fun as you build memories of dying a thousand unique deaths in the Caves of Qud.




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