Grid Sage Games

Reminds me a lot of Cogmind's[1] level entry visuals, love it! [1]: https://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/

You probably know all this, but for others: Cogmind is a lot of really thought out small touches that sum up to an engaging experience despite at first glance looking like any other roguelike. It's got great animations/explosions and an intuitive UI. The developer is the main mod of r/roguelikedev, has been running a great blog for years where he dives deep into aspects of roguelike dev (https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/), and is also just a wonderful human who genuinely loves supporting the community and playing roguelike games.

Josh is a great guy who's made tons of contributions to the community, not least of which is his REXPaint ASCII editor: https://www.gridsagegames.com/rexpaint/

Since we're recommending, Cogmind [1] is awesome. [1] https://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/

I suspect that you will appreciate rexpaint (and also the game it was created for, Cogmind): https://www.gridsagegames.com/rexpaint/ If you are a fan of this aesthetic and would like to visit it in audio form, it’s more “Lofi inspired” but it checks all the right boxes for me; I also recommend checking out SunVox: https://warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/

The entire dev blog [0] here is really great for anyone interested in game dev, roguelikes, graphics, etc. etc. Lots of in depth information and great images/gifs. Such a nice resource and to give to a community of small game developers, lots on there on my reading list! (It is from the developer of Cogmind, Josh Ge, who also has a nice video [2] on their journey to becoming a game developer. I love how the game looks, but haven't yet tried it.) [0] https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/ [1] https://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yJflbg0V38

Cogmind might be worth a look too, the author's dev blog is also superb. https://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/ https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/

It turns out this guy has a really excellent blog, and a good lead-in to it is a talk he gave on how to get started developing Roguelikes: https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2018/10/how-to-make-a-roguelike/ This talk came dangerously close to derailing my 2-week work-cation plans; if libtcod-go had actually built, I might have been in serious trouble.

Can confirm it's great as a roguelike. This page is a nice summary of some of the new features it brings to the genre: https://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/innovation.html

I suspect it's all about whether your game is mainstream or niche. The latter probably will earn more with a slightly higher price point. It won't achieve mainstream success anyway, and you also do not have to worry about scaring the dedicated core audience away. Cogmind is a good example of this[0]. Traditional roguelikes are typically in the "completely free" category. But that core audience that loves the genre is a lot more likely to pay twenty dollars for such an extremely polished and well-crafted game in this genre. EDIT: Of course, whether or not clicker games are niche games with a hard core audience is highly questionable. If anything they are surprise addictions for casual players browsing the web. [0] http://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/

I was clued into this from this[1] post, which mentions: And I’m not just going as a spectator--I’ll be giving a talk alongside a great cast of other speakers, including devs from Dwarf Fortress, DCSS, Brogue, Caves of Qud, and… the original Rogue :P I imagine that's of interest to a few people here. :) 1: http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2016/07/roguelike-celebration/

The best series of maze generation that I know is in Cogmind's dev blog: http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2014/06/procedural-map-generation/

After seeing the demo, I felt like the Reddit commentator who wrote, "I've never gone so quickly from seeing something to buying it" [or wanting to!]. Unfortunately, the buy page is pretty complicated: http://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/buy.html The page has a lot of graphics and characters using strikethrough which confused me and looks somewhat unprofessional. I suspect the author might be losing conversions due to the complexity of this page. I would prefer a simpler buy page that put the actionable content right at the top. (I'm just looking for a regular commercial-type purchase of an early access game, not being a backer per se.) I'm sharing this as constructive feedback in the hope the author might see it. A customer like me will appreciate a simpler, direct buy page that doesn't require a lot of thought from "oooo this looks fun" to making the purchase. Capitalize on impulse buys coming out of your demo. Anyway, very polished and fun from the few minutes I've had to play it so far. Nice work! This game is easily as polished as, or more polished than plenty of games on Steam Greenlight. Steam was the first place I looked for it, actually, after reading the article. A game like this should attract huge interest among the right audience if it's replayable. You have flashy and normal enough graphics with an easy-to-understand interface that regular gamers can enjoy it, and it also seems like it will appeal to the hardcore roguelike gamers. I'd highly recommend…

Absolutely sublime attention to detail. Reminds me of the series on fonts in Josh Ge's blog on Cogmind (https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2014/09/cogmind-fonts/)

Taking advantage of this thread to ask: have anyone here tried Cogmind? What did you think of it? I’ve found that traditional roguelike fans always have strong opinions about the course of a games development, and there’s often an older version of the game that’s held in higher regard by the community than the current one. https://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/

While not exactly the same use case, I'd also like to point to REXPaint [1]. Same same, but different. And Windows only, though Wine might help under Linux. [1] https://www.gridsagegames.com/rexpaint/

I'm not pizzathyme, but if you like reading about game design, iirc the developer of Cogmind had a tremendously good dev blog talking about designing their game: https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/

Cogmind (https://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/) has those sorts of animations

The developer also released the ASCII art editor he used to make all those nifty designs: https://www.gridsagegames.com/rexpaint/

Reminds me of REXPaint, which is a pretty cool project. https://www.gridsagegames.com/rexpaint/index.html

The original article is here: https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2018/10/how-to-make-a-roguelike/ The author is the creator of the popular commercial roguelike, Cogmind.

1) Games should be able to operate in more moral ambiguity than clear black and white prescription 2) Game mechanics should violate your expectations more. 3) More variations on theme see https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/gsg-content/uploads/2018/10/rogueli… most games operate in a very narrow rangen of expectations that lead to a staid and predictable experience. Almost all first-person games suffer from this sort of homogenization.

The development blog https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/ is a fascinating look into the design of the game that goes back years.

Check PabloDraw [1] or REXpaint [2]. [1] http://picoe.ca/products/pablodraw/ [2] https://www.gridsagegames.com/rexpaint/ Decent online one here as well: https://asc-paint.glitch.me/

The developer diaries for Cogmind are also a treat: https://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/

Dropping 32bit support is game-over for gaming on macOS. The numbers already didn't add up for indie developers [1]. Even AAA game developers often ignore macOS because the ROI is just too low. And from the $5/month subscription how much will end up to the developers [2]? Essentially what Apple Arcade will end-up hosting is ports of run-of-the-mill mobile games. And I'd bet the advertised number of developers will diminish as soon as the agreements they secured for the launch expire. But if this is the kind of gaming you're interested into, you already have your iPhone/iPad. [1]: https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2019/09/sorry-mac-users-apple-doesn… [2]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43k4ww/its-hard-to-use-apple-arcade…

I think this looks more consistent than both: https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/gsg-content/uploads/2018/10/python_…

Poking around the site and this game and blog look awesome. Also: how to build a Roguelike https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2018/10/how-to-make-a-roguelike/

I would have said that "gorgeous ASCII particle effects" was an oxymoron, before I saw Cogmind. https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2014/03/particle-effects/

REXPaint is not based on .Net, and works flawlessly under Wine on Linux. Although there's no native build, there are a bunch of users on both Linux and OSX (especially since a sizeable portion of the roguelike dev community uses non-Windows platforms). REXPaint also comes with a lengthy manual covering all of its features in detail: https://www.gridsagegames.com/rexpaint/manual.txt