Sunday 16 December 2012

Request for Votes: Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2012

283 roguelikes have qualified this year: this is again a record year on year number and 98 more than last year.

How did the games qualify?

The list was taken from the roguelike releases announced on the Rogue Basin news section between December 13th 2011 and December 15th 2012 and from the list of Actively Developing Roguelikes maintained by Michał Bieliński, plus other sources as discussed on a thread on Rogue Temple. Notably, despite the discussion period, several games were missed from the list - hopefully I've picked up everything.

What about 'x'? Why isn't it on the list?

Make sure you announced your roguelike on Rogue Basin for next year.

What about 'y'? Why is it on the list?

As roguelikes become more popular, the term is used to increasingly describe a broader type of game. This list has expanded to embrace that idea, but mostly to ensure that we don't miss any actual roguelikes. With this many entries, I'd rather be inclusive rather than exclusive, as I cannot possibly play every entry. You are free to not vote for a game if you don't consider it a roguelike.

What's the prize?
Pride. And a sexy logo - if you want one. You can see the winning 2007 logo on the Dwarf Fortress links page. Other winners are free to request them, but haven't done so. Logo designs for this year are welcome.

Having a competition is a dumb idea/offensive/stupid when you can't police the results.

Yep. Doesn't stop it being fun. You can vote for multiple different roguelikes. The idea here is that you will be encouraged to go out and download a roguelike that other people consider interesting, not that there is any kind of real competition element involved.

42 comments:

Antônio Da Mala said...

damn so many roguelikes this year D:
i wish i could have played at least half of them.

Andrew Doull said...

And it turns out I've already missed one: apparently @Starwars and the HTML 5 Star Wars roguelike I linked to recentky are two different roguelikes. I do accept written votes in the comments - have to count my own vote for the latter.

Linaniil of the Kar'Krul said...

Hey BTW I never found your email (I admit I didnt search much :< ) hwo do I get my awards for the previous years ? :)

Linaniil of the Kar'Krul said...

Err and since my google account is not very explicit, this is DarkGod

Joseph said...

TOME4 out to a huge lead early. The ADOM guys haven't showed up yet. I think when they do it'll be a real heated race.

Darren Grey said...

I have notified the ADOM community and told Thomas to instruct his followers. Let battle commence!

I've decided that this poll should now be about generating publicity for roguelikes in general whilst encouraging two sides to fight rabidly against each other ;) I started up a nice fight between ToME and Dredmor last year - this year we have a new challenger :D

Unknown said...

My two favourite roguelikes for 2012 are X@com and Triangle Wizard. Both very different genres of roguelikes, both in very different stages of development.

1st: X@com for the simply amazing scope of the game and the engine that Kyrzati is developing. Yes, a fully made ascii'ish port of the original Xcom will be made from this, but no, that's not even remotely the limit. The time, work and effort that has been put into X@com this year, with expandability, modding, user requests and interface has been truly significant. X@com and the engine it's running under will be the "squad-based roguelike" engine to turn to for now and in years to come.

2nd: Triangle Wizard. What can I say? Realtime roguelike, fully moddable, with such awesome support for suggestions of the players from the developer. Wouter has made such an amazing game from such what is normally considered a "simple-game language" that I can't fathom how it's not more popular. Quirky, ascii'ish, randomly generated death for all. With so many releases, bugfixes and developer feedback to the players that it astounds me. I actually don't know why more people don't have a go of it. God help us all if he adds multiplayer or a sound engine to the mix.

An honourable mention for third goes to DoomRL/AliensRL. One for nice updates, one for the future. One day aliens, we'll shoot you in non-ascii. Then I'll do what I did in DoomRL, and put you back to ascii mode. Still, good work Kornel.

Unknown said...

I know ToME has a lot of votes, but the addons is one thing that I simply love about it. The fact that people with very little programming knowledge can change the game in ways so they can enjoy it more.

I believe there are already close to 100 addons to ToME, and although many of them probably very small, the fact that they are welcomed and well supported adds more dimensions to the game.

I have a couple of things I don't like about the main game, and I just created an addon to remove/change them.

Anonymous said...

I have trouble viewing poll results, their container is too narrow and all I get is roguelike names and the beginning of the % bar :(

Joseph said...

You have to decrease the text size in your browser and you can see it all. Worked for me anyway.

Darren Grey said...

And ADOM has pulled ahead! Now it gets interesting :)

Eric Michael Wykoff said...

Not really Darren. After Andrew basically accused Darkgod of cheating I think the Tome community basically quit giving a f***.

ADOM can have it as far as I'm concerned. The poll is way to easy to cheat.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, thanks for dark cloud around the poll, Andrew, and taking all the fun out it by giving one of the nicest and friendliest online communities out there a collective "f*** you!". Maybe next year you'll get your act together and make a more sensible poll that is hosted somewhere that is more difficult to cheat.

Andrew Doull said...

Eric, Tiger: Can we keep the bitching to the other two posts on the topic?

Unknown said...

I see that Incursion's not included; it's still under development as far as anyone can tell (the release timeline stated multiple years before next release, and everyone's quite used to waiting), and still the only roguelike of its type. Protest!

Andrew Doull said...

Please reread the rules - Incursion doesn't qualify.

Anonymous said...

I have a suggestion, based on the idea that, as you said, the point of the poll is to encourage "to go out and download a roguelike that other people consider interesting, not that there is any kind of real competition element involved". From next year on, instead of a doing the poll, start a blog-fest: propose the list of roguelikes and invite people to try a roguelike they have not played before, write a post about their experience and send you the link of the post, within an established period (a month, let's say); at the end, you make a summary post with all the links. The linked posts could be from blogs, but also from a thread created for the occasion in a roguelike forum. This way, we get to celebrate the roguelike world and discover and enjoy new games, avoiding a lot of negativity and bitterness.

Sergio said...

Dear Andrew, thank you for your commitment for the RL cause! :)

I was going to complain for this post as I was unable to see the roguelike list and how to vote?!?! Then I realized I was on an android device and I imagine I was seeing a reduced version of the page post. Now I am on a desktop and I see all! :)

Cheers!

HunterZ said...

One of the contestants I voted for was ProspectorRL. I really like it, but unfortunately the author seems to have gone missing at the beginning of 2012, leaving the game in quite a buggy state.

The source is on Google Code; someone should fork it :p

Rune Biskopstö Christensen said...

Tales Of Maj'Eyal: Age Of Ascendancy.

Rune Biskopstö Christensen said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rune Biskopstö Christensen said...

Somehow I missed the poll on the right :)

Rune Biskopstö Christensen said...

Somehow I missed the poll on the right :)

Rune Biskopstö Christensen said...

Argh, WTF is up with all these doubleposts...the first one was a mistake made by me, but the second I only posted once.

Breakdance McFunkypants said...

Keep up the wonderful work and don't let the trolls make you feel bad. Keep spreading the love! You are awesome!

One very minor feature request: There's no vote list or link to a list on mobile. Since all modern devices can render html perfectly, the day and age of "mobile versions" of websites has come and gone. Just serve up the full site for everyone! I searched desperately for way too long.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

I vote for TOME 4 :)

Unknown said...

ToME on the lead.
Kinda sad that Path of Exile (ok, it's a ationRPG/hack'n'slash) and Binding of Isaac (ok, it's just roguelike-ish, not a roguelike) got so little attention - both are kinda cool games.

onyhow said...

It's good this year we have full range of commercial roguelikes to vote for...shouldn't be problematic like the last year's extremely stupid controversy regarding Dungeons of Dredmor and it being a commercial title...

Unknown said...

Why can't I vote from a mobile device?

Unknown said...

I don't know. I just changed my votes then, and voted originally off a mobile device (nokia E63). The voting thing is to the right-hand side, maybe you could drag it over if you're on a touch-screen thingo? Or you're in some word-wrap or single-column view thing that doesn't line up you could turn those off? Who knows? Opera Mobile seems to deal with it easily, even with a horrible clipboard (my beef with opera). If my POS phone can do it, your's probably can to. The voting thing is to the right, just scroll there.

Anyway...........

ProspectorRL. I can't believe I forgot it. How many people have finished this game? I always get to the point of having an amazing crew, an alien ship, more guns and armour than I can count, dammit, I can kill everything. Including swarms of robots and all that.

Then I can't be bothered to get the few things I need, shoot one of the things with my ship that I have to shoot, then I do it all again a few months later because I can't remember wtf I'm up to on my savegame.

Prospector RL: showing that BASIC still makes awesome roguelikes. Yes, you can help program this. I hope the developer chucks a quick update at it for the new year. It's written in basic. It's awesome.

Kyzrati said...

Thanks for the kind words earlier, Sambojin.

About voting from a mobile device, anyone can just use the "view web version" link at the bottom of the mobile version which blogger sends you to by default.

Joseph said...

Holy crap sauce am I crazy or does ToME4 already 2x as many votes as last year! And a bigger share!

ADOM is kicking ass too, but way to go Dark God. Your game continues to evolve and it looks like it's going to continue just edge out the competition. Last year Dredmore, this year ADOM.

It may seem that a poll is a bit stale if one game wins for 3 years in a row, but I don't think so. It's been a tight contest for the 2 years I've been following, more people vote every year, and a deserving game wins too.

Also the top 20 or so is also very very interesting. You can see which ASCII games are still popular, the best of various sub genres (hybrids, 7DRL, 'coffee break', etc...). I especially like to see who still remembers the 7DRL entries and votes for them.

You know you have a sweet game if people are voting for you game jam game nearly 9 mos later.

Thanks again Andrew and Merry X-Mas!!!

Kana said...

The poll is rigged hard by both ADOM and TOME developers pressuring people to vote for their game and spamming all possible outlets for their votes.

They should both be disqualified for this matter.

Unknown said...

UnReal world is by far the best rouge like this year.

SEARGEANT LION said...

Noooo, where's Ragnarok ;-;

The_Vagabond said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
The_Vagabond said...

I still feel that, though some Roguelikes may be more classic, as far as atmosphere goes, you really can't do better than Unreal World!

Jolly Roger said...

Hello!
FFHtR and Fall From Heaven is one roguelike.
It is not much of a problem, because Fall From Heaven doesn't lay a claim for this title...
Yet. =))

Joseph said...

You know Vagabond I never did play Unreal World.

I'll have to check it out I guess, put it on my list of like 20 other games I got over Christmas.

Kyzrati said...

@Jolly: Apparently Fall from Heaven is more popular than FFHtR =p

KurzedMetal said...

No love for Dungeon Crawl? :'(

Very active development, balanced, unspoilerish (I personaly hate spoiler based games), deep,, multiple playstiles (classes, dungeon branches), cool tiles (god forbid!), nice IRC, telnet/ssh servers, webtiles (playing through http), tournaments.

What more could you ask to your roguelike? :D