I’ve been designing roguelike games for almost ten years now. As much as they are replayable, they are also redesignable. There is almost an endless variety of design concepts that can be brought out in an equally endless variety of ways. It makes creating a roguelike something that never really gets boring. Rogue Party is my newest and is the first to have “Rogue” in the name.
Rogue Party is the spiritual successor to Endless Quest, a game that was just too big for me to continue to support. Rogue Party takes the quest out of the adventure and focuses more on what roguelikes are really good at: an endless supply of randomly-generated dungeons!
If you’ve never played one of my games, one thing I try to put into my RPGs is a flexible class system that really lets you build the character you want to play. I’ve double-downed on this idea in Rogue Party. There are over 250 different abilities spread out in a system that allows you to multi-class at will.
In fact, calling them classes doesn’t do the game justice. I think of them more as ability categories. Weapon skills are grouped in the Warrior “class”. The Adventurer class has a mixture of melee abilities that require finesse, stealth abilities, bowcraft, and other miscellaneous skills such as throwing flasks of flaming oil or poisonous darts. Cleric classes are defined by the god they worship, and while magic spells are broken into three categories (sorcery, elements and necromancy), you can mix-and-match betwen them.
The game also features a crafting system that allows you to craft the best weapons and armor in the game. This means you can plan for a dual-wielding thief or a quarterstaff-spinning bard right from the character creation, honing your abilities to your weapon style.
Dungeon delving happens in chunks. You are given a choice between a normal adventure, an easy one or a hard one. The adventure can be in a dungeon, cave, underground fortress, crypt or ruins. Each level of the area can hold various surprises and can be multiple levels. And if you survive, you get adventure points to spend crafting new items.
Adventure points are global and stay with you even if you experience the dreaded Total Party Kill. So while you might miss your halfling sorceress, you can use her adventure points to build the ultimate demon lord cultist!
You can Download Rogue Party on the Apple App Store
Rogue Party Is Also Available on the Google Play Android Store