Devil Daggers.
"Inspired by 1990s FPS and arcade games, Devil Daggers is a fast-paced shooter"

No it's not. It's a garbage rogue-lite tech demo, and the over produced trailer shows the entirety of the game. There are no levels. KKreiger was better, and it's FREE.

Immortal Redneck
"The game mixes old-school first-person shooter action with rogue-lite mechanics."

The "rogue-lite" mechanics completely RUIN the game. I think total biscuit did a review ripping it a new one. The biggest problem is the total imbalance. You have multiple classes, but the healer is the only viable character due to negative scroll modifiers making all the other classes worthless. You don't know what the scrolls do, but they are both necessary and can instantly ruin a playthrough. Devs were forced to improve certain aspects, but I don't think they ever fully fixed the imbalances.

I haven't bought Warlock yet, because while I am intrigued, I am NOT a fan of rogue-likes anymore. It is an overplayed, cheap, and dead genre that totally sucks the fun out of playing a game. Rogue-likes are also often nostalgia cash grabs, devoid of content and features, cheaply developed by indie devs, and are vastly overpriced for the content.

You know what I want in a "Retro" shooter? A Retro shooter. NO ROGUE-LITE ELEMENTS. Also, MULTIPLAYER, GAME SAVING, COOP, AND MOD SUPPORT.

You know what? SCREW IT. What I want already exists. It's called Brutal Doom, and there are thousands of FREE map packs on the internet. Ion Maiden also seems interesting. Warlock will be dead in two months, and I won't even consider it until prices drop to $5. /Rant

This game has no procedural elements whatsoever. It even says so in the description.

>Brutal Doom
You go play your abomination somewhere else lol.
props for Sergeant_Mark_IV and his dedication but Doom didn't need aim down sights, jumping and reloading.

So you are so mad because you died and lost progress? I bet you play in god mode and with all weapons enabled. Also screw multiplayer and your coop BS and may the dark lords bless this developer for making an entertaining and brilliant Singleplayer game in 2018.

Jumping is built-in with almost every source port though. It's not Sergeant_Mark_IV's doing.

Not possible when I haven't bought the game genius. Also, having multiplayer and mod support is a hallmark of classic retro games that keep them alive long term. This game doesn't have any long term longevity. Especially with only 6 hours of content. There will be a short term popularity bump for being retro, and then it will fall off the face of the earth for not having content worth playing more than once. Exactly. There are also tons of other mods with similar gameplay, making brutal doom a non argument. That said, there is no legitimate argument against the mod itself, and only personal attacks against Sg Mark because he isn't politically correct. Some of his additions are meh, but he popularized next gen doom modding and even inspired Doom 4. We wouldn't have the awesome reboot without him. Yeah, but it has similar elements like no saving and leveling up. So it's an extra lite rogue-lite. The problem with no saving is that I can't quit in the middle of a game when I need to do something, and that's a red flag for practical enjoyment. You also can't go back and replay levels you like without starting from the beginning.

So maybe this game isn't completely worthless, but I've watched review videos criticizing the dark areas for being too dark, especially the sewer levels. (ggmanlives) Also he criticized the levels for being too much like wolfenstein 3d and Catacomb 3d, and the hard difficulty mode for wiping your progress. He also mentioned you can't replay areas you've beaten, and mentioned the lack of CO-OP. GGman gave it a mostly positive review aside from these nitpicks, but he also compared it to brutal doom for the good parts. (lol @ BD haters)

Yeah, if the brightness is fixed, that would be my biggest concern for purchase or not. Doom 3 kinda proved people don't take well to that. Also, VA panels suffer from "Black Crush", making dark games difficult for VA users.

As for the other stuff, it definitely is a light FPS/RPG Rogue-lite. You don't do things like no save and permadeath unless it's a rogue-like. This game just shaves off the other negatives. That said, it still retains enough of the elements for me to consider it part of the genre. Permadeath needs to be removed, save games need to be added, and there needs to be full access to the levels for newgame+.

As for randomly generated levels, that by itself is not a bad thing if done right. The concept is just ruined by the games that have overused it and are generally terrible, so we associate random levels with bad games. It's not the levels that are bad though, it's the gameplay. Warlock doesn't seem to suffer from poor gameplay, but it sounds like the content is limited, so it could potentially benefit from having random levels after the campaign is finished.

I don't know, there are a lot of concepts in rogue-likes that aren't even that bad. It's the general unfairness, lack of user control, and poor gameplay that ruin them. Like the random scrolls in Redneck. Redneck would be a lot better without the scrolls and some basic control of the game. Not being able to save mid-game is a big turn off. Redneck would also have benefitted from allowing the player to portal out to the shop during a level, but that wouldn't be masochism.

You know what? I just had an epiphany. Rogue-likes are catering to masochists. It is the deliberate removal of control from the user and subjecting players to extreme abuse from random punishments. That's what it is. A masochist's game. I now have such an averse reaction to that style that I simply cannot stand any aspect of it. If the original Doom can include save support, there isn't any excuse for modern devs to not include it other than punishing the player. Not including in-game save functionality is a big F-U to the player, and non-masochists don't take such insults lightly. I probably woulndn't even feel this averse to it, if rogue-likes didn't completely sour me to the concept. Those games should have put advisories in the description that they were catering to such an audience, but it makes more money to not admit it. The only answer to this problem is to properly cater to the audience you're targeting, and be up front about it. Hell, you could even make rogue-likes I would enjoy, if the masochism aspect was completely removed.

I don't know. Warlock seems to be only partially catering to the retro audience. It just needs to take that additional step to be what they claim it is. Add a few features that the old games had, and I would be happy. You could even make it optional for the people who want more masochism, but that stuff is all a no-buy for me, so the options need to be there.

Again, Doom 2016 had a permadeath option and an upgrade system, so that must be a rogue-lite too.
You also completely ignored where I said Project Warlock does, in fact, have a save system.

I mean my game saves after each level and nothing is procedural or randomly generated so..............

Funny how I see no one mentioning the random loot drops from enemies.

It has saving. It saves between levels. It doesn't have MANUAL saves. It also has a level select menu, so not sure why you think you can't replay levels. Not that it would be required for a retro shooter to have one. Most only let you select episodes.

That you're conflating simple RPG mechanics like leveling up with "roguelite" games is really where your argument falls apart, though.

Because a reviewer pointed it out. It's possible that he didn't notice it, or the devs added that later.

You know what this game really reminds me of though? Intrude. It's $4 on steam, and that's what games of this caliber are worth IMO. Both games seem to be cashing in on similar concepts, and both fall extremely short of actually being decent games. The Store page has a review recommending Ion Maiden instead, and I would have to agree.

Rogue-light isn't the best description now that some of these features have been cleared up, but that doesn't discount that many rogue-lites have a similar look. What would be more accurate is calling this an Indie Retro FPS like Intrude.

Regardless of how I "label" the game, the negative aspects still don't warrant a purchase.
*No manual saves.
*More expensive than Intrude.
*Boxy level design and environments that mimick wolfenstein 3d, when Doom was a much better game.
*No multiplayer or modding, meaning limited play value.

Regressing to Wolfenstein 3d levels of Retro is BAD. That game had a limited timeframe that came and went, while doom and duke nukem had far more lasting playability. Copy doom if you want a retro game. I would love to see a Retro doom-clone with improved graphics. Chex Quest was a cool doom clone. You don't even need to write your own engine from scratch considering doom is open source, but monetizing that might be questionable. Not that building your own doom clone would be hard today, either. Just make sure your features are on par with doom, or the game will not be successful long term.

OK, then play Brutal Doom. Ok, then do it yourself.

Oh, and thanks to the Developer for Project Warlock (this thread is about this game).

Have a nice day everybody.

nvm