Caves of Qud is a science fantasy roguelike epic steeped in retrofuturism, deep simulation, and swathes of sentient plants. Come inhabit an exotic world and chisel through layers of thousand-year-old civilizations. Decide: is it a dying earth, or is it on the verge of rebirth?
NOTICE: a complete de...
Caves of Qud is a science fantasy roguelike epic steeped in retrofuturism, deep simulation, and swathes of sentient plants. Come inhabit an exotic world and chisel through layers of thousand-year-old civilizations. Decide: is it a dying earth, or is it on the verge of rebirth?
NOTICE: a complete development roadmap can be accessed here.
Who are you?
Play the role of a mutant indigenous to the salt-spangled dunes and jungles of Qud, or play a pure-strain descendant from one of the few remaining eco-domes—the toxic arboreta of Ekuemekiyye, the Holy City; the ice-sheathed arcology of Ibul; or the crustal mortars of Yawningmoon.
You arrive at the oasis-hamlet of Joppa, along the far rim of Moghra'yi, the Great Salt Desert. All around you, moisture farmers tend to groves of viridian watervine. There are huts wrought from rock salt and brinestalk. On the horizon, Qud's jungles strangle chrome steeples and rusted archways to the earth. Further and beyond, the fabled Spindle rises above the fray and pierces the cloud-ribboned sky.
You clutch your rifle, or your vibroblade, or your tattered scroll, or your poisonous stinger, or your hypnotized goat. You approach a watervine farmer—he lifts the brim of his straw hat and says, "Live and drink, friend."
What can you do?
Anything and everything. Caves of Qud is a deeply simulated, biologically diverse, richly cultured world.
Assemble your character from over 70 mutations and defects and 24 castes and kits—outfit yourself with wings, two heads, quills, four arms, flaming hands, or the power to clone yourself—it's all the character diversity you could want.
Explore procedurally-generated regions with some familiar locations—each world is nearly 1 million maps large.
Dig through everything—don't like the wall blocking your way? Dig through it with a pickaxe, or eat through it with your corrosive gas mutation, or melt it to lava. Yes, every wall has a melting point.
Hack the limbs off monsters—every monster and NPC is as fully simulated as the player. That means they have levels, skills, equipment, faction allegiances, and body parts. So if you have a mutation that lets you, say, psionically dominate a spider, you can traipse through the world as a spider, laying webs and eating things.
Pursue allegiances with over 60 factions—apes, crabs, robots, and highly entropic beings—just to name a few.
Follow the plot to Barathrum the Old, a sentient cave bear who leads a sect of tinkers intent on restoring technological splendor to Qud.
Learn the lore—there's a story in every nook, from legendary items with storied pasts to in-game history books written by plant historians.
Die—Caves of Qud is brutally difficult and deaths are permanent. Don't worry, though—you can always roll a new character.
Copyright (C) 2015-2017 Freehold Games, LLC
Goodies
Contents
Standard Edition
Dromad Deluxe Edition
Soundtrack (MP3)
Soundtrack (FLAC)
Soundtrack (WAV)
System requirements
Minimum system requirements:
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Why buy on GOG.COM?
DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play.
Small Warning: There is no Tutorial but, there is a help list in the game.
Huge open world RPG you can run on any potato PC.
I think the map size is Infinite, and there are tons of quests. You can create your own character or have a randomized one.
If you like Rogue, Nethack or any other traditional Roguelike this game is for you.
Game is still in development but gets frequent updates, Hope it gets finished soon.
CoQ is a weak roguelike as it is. Plenty of balancing issues, overcomplicated controls, especially in 2020, playing with the UI in the settings causes plenty of problems with custom controls. Ineffective playstyles caused by dev nerfs isn't appealing (Esper nerf.) Playing espers is awful, as many spells have cooldowns up to 200 turns without being an aoe. Some items appear useless, but they have info that just isn't included in the game, which is a staple in roguelikes of course, but in this game, it seems more like an oversight.
To come back to the balancing issues, this causes the game to have awful pacing issues. You need to grind in the early-game on defenseless creatures to level-up and then finally start fighting enemies that can fight back. The starting quests would actually kill you if you decided to do them. The mid-game is boring. Again, because of the balancing issues, at this point, you either kill creatures in one hit, or they kill you in one hit. In the late-game, you would think you would finally escape this, but you don't. Now you just one-hit kill everything.
The game is GoG unfriendly.
And, finally, to explain the 1 star review. I owe this to the community. Mentioning change to other users in the community or the devs is impossible, they'll either ignore you or probably offhandedly call you off. The whole drama that recently happened because of a certain video made this community seem even more unlikable. They're quick to insult you. A fair share of the community is very elitist, and sadly, the devs are also quick to insult and elitist.
The best review of the game is a certain video online. Just search Caves of Qud on YouTube and you'll find it.
Have a great day!
Minor mispellings here and there do not otherwise mar an amazing experience. BUY BUY BUY. If 10 out of 10 meant perfect, and 9 out of 10 meant "if this game was a thousand miles away, do whatever you can to travel to it"... I'd give this an 8.8
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