Barony

I had been reading a bit about Barony when researching roguelikes, so when it suddenly appeared on GoG, I instabought it. The game is easy to get into - no drawn-out intro sequence or tutorial missions. Just start a new game and you're in a dungeon, trying to survive. (Spoiler: You won't!) The dungeon felt solid and dangerous, with enemies that actually scared me. There is something about this game that makes it more real than a lot of other titles. Maybe because the gameplay is founded on the proud traditions of PC gaming, as opposite to those console-wannabe PC games that mostly come off as some linear tech demos. Like the gameplay, the retro graphic really captures the era of DOS gaming. It doesn't take more than a few hits to kill an enemy, but you can't take many hits yourself either. The game has a good balance. It is hard, but not so hard that it spoils the fun. The rules are fair, and I always have the feeling that each death was something I could have avoided. To sugarcoat things a bit, most modern roguelikes unlocks new content when you die. Not this one! I could do with a bit of sugarcoating, but it ensures that your success in the game is purely about your own abilities, and not about having unlocked stuff. I guess I should mention that multiplayer is not yet fully impemented outside of Steam: You need to manually type the port address of the player who hosts the game. Me, I never cared much for multiplayer. Even if some of the characters are designed mostly for co-op, the singleplayer mode is really solid. The game is quite modable, with open formats: .ogg .vox, .png and .txt files. The level editor is way easy to use. Still, what we can do so far is mostly cosmetic, the good stuff being hardcoded in the executeable. However, the source code should be released 'soon'. Barony is one of the few modern roguelikes that really nailed it. There's lots of depth, the atmosphere is solid, and the game is just plain fun!

I took a risk by buying this one because I usually get annoyed by roguelikes. In fact, I got annoyed at this one as well but then I saw that in the game settings you can disable pretty much all the "hard" aspects of the game. So I disabled the hunger and the Minotaur because I like to take my time exploring the levels. I disabled random traps because I just find them unfair and distracting; I just don't get their appeal. I know you can see them but I think it just distracts from the game to be looking at the ceiling all the time. I bought the game for two more friends as well so soon I'll try some multiplayer, but I know it'll be even more fun. Many thanks to the developers for letting us play a softcore version of the game that I can truly enjoy.

I bought this game the other day when I came on to GOG to see what was on sale. I saw this game and at first was a little hesitant to buy it. After I finally talked myself into it I broke down and bought it and I had no regrets after I started playing. I played at least 20 rounds trying to make it as far as I could in the dungeon. Just when you think you are doing good you get smashed by a boulder or a giant Minotaur busts through the wall like the kool-aid man and stomps you to death. It has a good challenging/ strategic mix you have to have in order to make it past each level. My only complaint as of now with the GOG version is the only way to play multiplayer is to play LAN. Hopefully this will change in the next update. Give it a try if you want a challenge.

As a fan of the genre, and of retro-looking 3D graphics, this title caught my eye. But after finally beating the game's big boss I can say that the whole experience was rather bland. The Good: Many of the main staples of rougelike games are present here. Randomized levels. Unfair traps. All kinds of equipment to collect. And lots of dying. I also personally found the graphics to be fun because they reminded me of older games, even down to the stiff walking animations. With the voxel graphics and classical gameplay style it felt like a 2D game that suddenly grew a third dimension. But I know that aesthetic might not connect with everyone. It is also worth mentioning that this game has multiplayer support through LAN and direct-connect over the internet. That's a feature I wish more games of this genre had, but I didn't get a chance to try it out so I can't say whether it really added anything to this particular game. The Bad: Basically this game felt lazy. I'm not saying the game developers actually were lazy, but that feeling was still communicated to me as the player. To begin with items were scattered unceremoniously all across the levels. They were not in boxes or barrels, on pedestals, in chests, or otherwise presented to the player in any kind of interesting way. What's worse is that when I did find chests they were often empty or had nothing of value inside. There was just unblessed bits of armor, a piece of cheese, a decrepit torch, or something like that. It got to the point that I would often ignore chests if I had to do any kind of work to get them, especially on the rest levels between worlds (they were literally not worth the single lever I had to pull to open them). The hunger system of this game also felt tacked-on and unpolished. I understand that the developers wanted to increase the number of tough choices the player would have to make with their limited inventory space, but after a dozen runs it just felt silly to have to gorge on cheese and meat every five minutes. This game is just not expansive enough for thirst and hunger to make sense. It would have been better to just get rid of some of the player's inventory space and the whole hunger system at the same time, if they were trying to make inventory management more strategic. These are only a few examples of the problems I bumped in to with this game's design, and all of it left me feeling a little bored by the whole experience by the time I finished. The Verdict: This game lacks imagination and inspiration in a lot of ways, so don't expect any innovative mechanics or interesting aesthetic style. But in other ways it is also a solid example of a rougelike in the classical sense. There will be tense moments, tough choices, crushing defeats, and thrilling victories. But not much of it sticks after you finish the game because there is nothing to make it a memorable experience. The game is just not robust enough to create the sort of emergent stories that are so important to rougelike games and that make you want to share this game with your friends. To put it another way, this game lacks soul. So for fans of the genre who have nothing else to play I would say that this is a good little title to get you through until something more interesting comes along. I would definitely wait for a sale though. Bonus: I played with the level editor a little bit too. It was mildly fun to be able to build my own maze using the Barony engine, but all I could really do was place enemies and tiles. There was no ability to use any kind of scripting or to place specific items as far as I could tell, so all I could really do was build a maze in the simplest sense.