290 roguelikes have qualified this year: this is only a slight increase of 7 roguelikes from last year and begs the question: 'Have we reached peak roguelike?'. More importantly, there's a significant difference in the included roguelikes as I have included all the 7DRL entries this year. I have not done this in previous years, so the figures could hide an actual drop in the total roguelikes released in 2013. However...
How did the games qualify?
The list was taken from the roguelike releases announced on the Rogue Basin news section between December 16th 2012 and December 16th 2013 and the 7DRL rogue likes that were rated by the challenge evaluation process. Unfortunately the list of Actively Developing Roguelikes is no longer maintained, so I instead included roguelikes listed on the last 6 months of posts on the roguelikes subreddit. This undoubtedly misses more rogue like releases than in previous years. I especially note that the Rogue Basin news section appears to be heavily biased against commercial releases - whereas the roguelikes subreddit is biased towards commercial releases so in summary it probably evens out. However, more eclectic releases will undoubtedly be missing from the list.
If there is a roguelike you want to vote for which is not on the list, please post in the comments and I will include your votes in the final totals.
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.
Tuesday, 17 December 2013
Request for Votes: Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2013
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
91 comments:
FYI, the voting doesn't show up when browsing on my phone.
Could you rename T.o.M.E 4 to its real name please: "Tales of Maj'Eyal" or "Tales of Maj'Eyal (ToME4)"
Some people had trouble finding it :)
Thanks!
I always vote for Nick's FAangband, and your variant, Unangband. I don't care if they don't qualify. I wants to vote for 'em! ~~ HM
The word "Regum" in "Ultima Ratio Regum" has no "n".
I would again suggest for next year to also browse at the very least the Announcements, and maybe the Early Dev, boards on Temple of the Roguelike when reckoning this fine poll---I and others try to mention all manner of things whenever possible.
Also, my streak continues as I broke the poll again, even trying to be all extra selective--"results too large". :/
Unfortunately I can't edit the poll. Darren Grey passed me the initial list and this was how ToME 4 was written in it so I assumed it was fine. My apologies for misspelling Regum.
Ah well, no worries :)
However it is named, I am pretty sure Tome4 is still gonna blow everything else out of the water, especially as this poll coincides with its recent Steam release, and the great year of updates it had. Hoping that Adom gives it a run for its money (since it too had some nice updates), common - where are all the Adom fans?!?!
Yeah, I'm thinking this years results will be similar to last years, with ADOM and TOME4 kicking butt.
Last year I thought maybe there were some better games out there, maybe ADOM and TOME4 were a bit overrated, but this year their advancement has been fantastic.
Oh no Getter it happened to me too. I thought I was very selective...but I did play and like at least 100 games this year. :-)
Even if some of the same games win, we did an analysis last year by category that was really fun. Best new game, best commercial, best ascii, etc...
For me that's the real strength of having the poll be this way. Playing with the numbers can give some great information.
Sorry to spam...
+1 vote for Tower of Despair.
Whoops... I copied the list from RogueBasin - ToME must be named incorrectly on there. Doesn't seem to be struggling for votes though :)
I would never vote for a roguelike who argues that "a Lucerne hammer is blunt weapon, yet even if it is a pole-arm, this is my fantasy game so reality doesn't apply."
+1 for Brogue
I'd like to do a write-in vote for One Way Heroics.
It's got an interesting mechanic in that a shadow constantly follows you from the left of the screen, so you have to constantly travel to the right. It also has some interesting online interactions (such as a designated daily seed where you can see the progress of others on the side of your screen) and progression of things that can carry over or be unlocked between runs (take a few key items with you, or unlock new classes and perks.) It kind of came out of nowhere and is unique despite some of its flaws. Worth checking out, IMO. :-)
Please add Iter Vehemens ad Necem(IVAN) to the list www.attnam.com
+vote for Iter Vehemens ad Necem(IVAN) www.attnam.com
I was introduced to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup by a friend, and I have to say it's the second best roguelike experience I've ever had (after Nethack). It updates frequently, has a broad range of play styles, and has built in measures against scumming of any sort, so all you do is play til you die (or succeed, but mostly its just til you die).
I second Iter Vehemens ad Necem.
I can't accept nominations for comments for games which didn't have a release in the last 12 months.
I appreciate your sentiments
Dwarf Fortress now. Dwarf Fortress for ever.
Oh man Adom is heating up! Looks like we have a real horse race folks.
I like to ask, if there is a game, which does allow (but its not required) to play it with a permadeath, can it be considered a roguelike?
I am speaking of Malevolence. I know it can't be in this pool, because its still not released, just in beta, but i like to know that.
ToME is winning and doesn't have mandatory permadeath, so I suppose the answer is yes.
Can someone please make the number of people that voted number a darker grey? It's very hard to see the number, and high lighting them is annoying.
Must say...big surprise to me is how Cataclysm is really shooting up...that is some respectable numbers - I might have to give it a go!
Y'know I think there'd be less of the silly competition between the top titles if the results weren't visible before the end. Right now it's easy for vote-spamming to be encouraged.
In general I think a simple top 10 list (without ranking) is far more interesting than a top 1. The roguelike genre is too diverse to be able to say only 1 game deserves praise. If you compare with the 7DRL entries, though we end up with a top spot there is never any real distinction for the top-scoring game - all the good games get praised. Would be nice to see more of that atmosphere with this poll instead of "winner" and "runner-up".
Darren, I certainly agree it should not be only top 1 list, but rather maybe top 5 (top 10 might be overdoing it).
I was torn between T.o.M.E and Cataclysm. I'm sorry Cataclysm, but T.o.M.E has my vote this time.
Hey Darren remember we can take this information and squeeze it until it screams. With lots of 'best of' lists generated.
We did it last year and we'll do it again this year:
http://forums.roguetemple.com/index.php?topic=2884.0
I've already started the post for this year here:
http://forums.roguetemple.com/index.php?topic=3784.msg33004#msg33004
Joseph:
The page http://forums.roguetemple.com/index.php?topic=3784.msg33004#msg33004 is not available. :(
well actually the whole http://forums.roguetemple.com is down
+1 for ADOM (via phone)
+1 for ADOM II
wow...really close now :) (4 votes difference!)
Noxico?
Yeah, Jo, didn't you know Noxico has thousands of fans over at http://www.onehandedroguelikes.com? ;)
As always,
Minotauros
Well Beef-lord (ha!) I just tried the game. It plays okay, not fantastic, hard to see really. I might need to play with the resolution or something.
I was about to quote "jam it in" on a 'foxgirl' after an extended foreplay session when the game crashed.
Not seeing how it would get that many votes, but that was my first play through.
There will not be another.
wow...noxico almost overtaking ADOM, this could be the sleeper hit of the comp!
Noxico is proving that you just need one determined person to ruin this poll.
Darren, have you got any evidence of this accusation? I'm quite happy to remove unusual outliers on this poll. Given we have more than twice as many votes this year as last year, I...
Actually, I won't finish that sentence. Anything I say at this stage will provoke the masses.
In which way is Noxico an "erotic" roguelike? Is it in the way that every 1bit is as sexy as you can imagine, or is there some "impropriet" behavior?
I didnt really played it just looked on some images.
Seeing this game getting over 2800 votes in one days looks very suspicious.
Tsusaku obviously the poll has been hacked and the game is going to have to be removed from competition.
The game is ascii but allows you to interact with NPC in a sexual way through conversation trees.
You should play it. It's not a terrible game but it's not popular enough to earn that many votes.
If it were maybe 10 or so Noxico fans can post and tell me I'm wrong.
The Noxico forums have 38 registered users and less than 700 threads total. So...
Lol the Noxico forums don't even mention Andrew's poll.
Joseph: Well the thing is i don't play ASCII RL games they are too much confusing for me, i see it only as an blend mix of letters. I know that's a heresy, but tile based ones are ok for me :D
Anyone know where to download Lambda Rogue: The Book of Stars? The official page is probably selled to some japanese or chinese fashion butique and only links i can find are on softonic and i dont want to download anything from there. Thanks for any help
Well, it's a tricky situation since there looks to be obvious vote-rigging from ADOM and ToME fans too. If you remove Noxico should you remove them?
Anyway, I think Noxico needs to be removed as the poll just looks like a complete farce otherwise. If you do that then a polite apology e-mail to the developer would be necessary, and a mention in the poll results posts. I think next year the whole poll needs a bit of a rethink if you want it taken seriously.
Thankfully I have no intention that the poll should be taken seriously.
Other people take it very very seriously :)
Maybe as a middle finger to them just state that the poll is over without declaring a winner? ;)
ADOM and TOME aren't getting 3000 legit votes apiece? Say it ain't so!
LMAO, I like Darren's idea and the fallout that would be sure to follow...that is really going to get people's rocks off!!! ...hehe...
Andrew! Cheers for sticking to the idea that "[people cheating in the poll] doesn't stop it being fun." Maybe the wisest course of action, considering last year's flamewars and how, as Darren pointed out, we can only assume games like ADOM and ToME have the occational multiple voter, ahem. This poll continues to be one of my personal December highlights, the very embodiment of the holiday spirits, actually :)
As always,
Minotauros
I think someone should create a serious poll. Clearly there is demand for one.
Darren, why is Noxico the farce and TOME4 and ADOM the legit ones?
A: You have no evidence other than suggesting "it is inPAWsible" for it to have that many votes.
B: The furry community online may in fact be several orders larger than the roguelike community, in which case a rally by them could easily be legit.
C: And what about all the people who just want anything BUT TOME4 to win, or want to see new IP's in the mix. Last year, the top 10 rogulikes included what, 1, maybe 2 new IP's? Should things be disqualified if they are a new IP? Seems like new blood and new ideas in the mix is the very thing roguelikes need, or they will be no different than CoD year in and year out.
I have told 10 people about noxico being in 1st, and 8 of them, looked it up, didn't like it, and then voted for it anyways because it isn't tome4.
For LambdaRogue folks, don't worry, the project is just at an interim stage---this page is still good:
https://code.google.com/p/lambdarogue/
Really, I think what needs to happen is to have a select panel of a few nominate what games are to be included in the voting.
It is somewhat silly to vote on over 50 roguelikes and makes it unwieldy to even look at the list of candidates. Have a panel select ~20 candidates from the best contenders put forth by the community and then have those 20 entries be voted on.
As for voting oversight, I am not sure what you can do about duplicate voting and spamming and such, but it is obvious there needs to be a bit more regulation.
Unfortunately this poll has become a joke. Shall I make AliensRL win this year, just to prove it? I can still make it :P
But not to be a naysayer - here's one solution -- a google form instead, where you enter an email, and at least a 200 character reasoning why you think your nominee will win. And of course, the e-mail needs to be validated. This solution can still be gamed, but noone in the RL community would want to invest that much effort to do it.
Or **at least** an IP-locked vote platform.
I'd offer to implement it myself, but can't do it the next year, cause the RL of the year 2014 will be Jupiter Hell, so people would say I cheated :P
You know what? I've changed my mind.
This is hilarious.
I really like the add-on poll at the top... "Tome4" or "Not Tome4" :)
For those people who think this poll is a joke and are making serious alternative suggestions, please be aware that people have opening discussed using VPN tunneling to mask IPs when voting for this poll in previous years, and describe how your alternative voting system would block this.
Then go read the last two sentences of the post that I have made every year when announcing the poll, and have a long think about what that means, and what a popularity contest in an artist medium actual entails.
Then watch this, not because of any kind of message, but because it is a kick ass song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUPYIShaX1s
This isn't about how 5000 people like one game more than anything else. This is about how one person liked a game more than anything else that 4999 people ignored.
Andrew, I seriously doubt you are going to change human nature with sound logic and wise words. Go-With-The-Flow :)
And btw...I'm pining for Noxico to win (even though I voted Tome4), because I've never heard about the game before a few days ago, and isn't that the purpose of this poll? :P
"This isn't about how 5000 people like one game more than anything else. This is about how one person liked a game more than anything else that 4999 people ignored."
That's a good aim, but it is lost in the static I believe. There are just too many entries to sift through and find that one game that everyone else ignored.
I was reading through the Reddit thread for this year's poll and someone offered a great suggestion about limiting the participating roguelikes to games that have only released in the last year.
It would stop the poll from being a popularity contest (yay ToME, yea, we already know) to being the place to discover the best new roguelikes. Of course popularity would still play a part, but it would be somewhat diminished with little known and new games competing rather than mainstays like ToME and ADOM.
So instead of ToME 4 and ADOM going rounds this year, it would be something more like One Way Heroics and Dungeonmans going at it.
It would definitely make things much more interesting and much more fun to discover new games, rather than wading through a dense list of entries.
Stephen: The poll is only roguelikes released this year. What I think you mean is roguelikes only first released this year. That is a lot harder to measure especially in this day and age of early access, and I'd end up complicating the selection process immeasurably.
For the curious, I just tweeted the current Google Analytics referral stats for the last 30 days. Take them with a grain of salt.
Abe: This is me going with the flow. I was considerably more grumpy and less zen last year. And the year before that...
I think being able to choose your pet, almost-unknown roguelike is the best thing about this poll, I wouldn't want to see it go away.
Vote spamming can be alleviated by requiring an email to confirm votes or a Facebook registration. Of course it's still not exactly rocket science to game that, but at least it should take some more work.
The poll is great for finding out about those little games that get 10-100 votes each. The top few are boring, everyone knows aboutnthem already.
That's why I say don't declare a winner. People have become too obsessed with first place when it's the 20th place guys that really count. This poll should be "Roguelike Highlights of the Year" rather than "Roguelike of the Year".
Also the ability to see the poll results before the end is just a recipe for disaster. We wouldn't have this crazy vote-pushing without that.
The joke poll I put up 8 hours ago now has more votes than the 2009 poll had in its entirety...
What? Wait... you are saying that "Not TOME" is not an actual RL? :(((
What? Wait... you are saying that "Not TOME" is not an actual RL? :(((
I concur with Darren, this travesty of a poll doesnt deserve a winner post.
I dont concur with Darren about how to fix it though. Hiding it will just allow the bots to do their stuff in the shadows, without even people able to notice it.
Make the poll require the voter to pay 1cents on paypal, exclude votes from the same paypal account. Now that will be way harder to script.
PS: And fuck google I'm darkgod not linaniil!
I still think that a Review New Roguelikes Month would be more fun than a poll. Rather than reformulating what would be basically my comment from the request for votes of last year, I'll just quote that comment here:
> 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.
Maybe also put a Random Roguelike Generator which people can use to get the name of a roguelike to try out.
Since the number of forum threads may become overwhelming, you could ask that each forum which joins the roguelike-blog-fest sends you just a single link of a summary thread, which contains the links to the other relevant threads in the forum.
Abe, he is saying that both adom and noxico are actually part of tome since they are not "not tome"! :)
Darkgod - I dunno...I reckon suddenly deciding not to award anyone is sending the wrong message. As much as I wanted your game to win, I now think Noxico SHOULD win - not only because of pure numbers and the burden of proof, but also to spur some interesting discussion in the next RLR episode about the nature of open polls and the competitiveness of the community.
Darren's "lets not post a winner" is certainly an option in the future, but doing it this year and only after the game he worked on fell out of first place seems rather spiteful. That would be like setting the rules because he didn't like the result.
Also, "'Promotion of this poll from within a game itself is strongly discouraged and will be sanctioned if discovered. This includes using any kind of MotD or in game chat functionality which may already exist in the game.'" obviously andrew didn't go through with this, but for games not acting in spirit with the contest, you can't beat TOME4 for directly going against a request made by the poll's creator.
I'm all for the part of Kornel's suggestion from last year that all previous winners be removed from eligability.
Darren's "lets not post a winner" is certainly an option in the future, but doing it this year and only after the game he worked on fell out of first place seems rather spiteful. That would be like setting the rules because he didn't like the result.
Also, "'Promotion of this poll from within a game itself is strongly discouraged and will be sanctioned if discovered. This includes using any kind of MotD or in game chat functionality which may already exist in the game.'" obviously andrew didn't go through with this, but for games not acting in spirit with the contest, you can't beat TOME4 for directly going against a request made by the poll's creator.
I'm all for the part of Kornel's suggestion from last year that all previous winners be removed from eligability.
Noxico wins! Hilarious.
I agree with your attitude here Andrew. People take this thing so seriously I bet it can ruin it for you, stress you out. This is your hobby, not your job, hobbies should be fun, rewarding, stimulating, not a huge chore.
And all of these people telling you to change things can do their own polls however they want to. I'll vote in those one's too.
Mr. OpenId... I don't recall seeing the ad for this in-game (not this year anyhow), and on tome website the advertising was kept to a minimum (it was much more explicit on ADOM website). In any case, I think Andrew should remove the 2ndary poll (as some people seem to take that even more seriously than the first one - check ADOM site).
In my eyes that's one rather negative aspect of the net community: There are always some people around without any sense of sportsmanship and those people ruin the fun for big parts of the rest.
What about having 2 polls, one for free games and one for commercial games?
The results are not even funny. Its not about that the obvious false voting for Noxico took the win from T.O.M.E., but that it took the third much deserved place from Cataclysm.
The results are not even funny. Its not about that the obviously false voting for Noxico took the first place drom TOME, its about that that it took the much deserved third place from Cataclysm.
PS: How much hours are you in front of me? That doesn't make sense. It's 3,30 PM 31. december here, you can't be 21 hours in front of me. Where did you get the the Time Machine? I want in.
The poll was always as much of a joke as it is this year, it's just that this year the results have highlighted the fact. One couldn't for example claim that this year's result somehow doesn't count, but the results from previous years do.
The poll was always as much of a joke as it is this year, it's just that this year the results have highlighted the fact. One couldn't for example claim that this year's result somehow doesn't count, but the results from previous years do.
Here's an idea. Just have a vote number filter.
The voting is completely bi-modal anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem. Visitors have an option to knock out games that got more than 75% of the winning tally, and kaboom, ADOM, ToME and Noxico are gone.
Those that care about spiking their number still get first place, those that care about hearing about a cool new game just getting off the ground skip the noise and check out the best of the rest.
Sweet fancy moses! I honestly just now highlit the voting numbers. Those 3 games took 85% of all votes.
Forget what I said about 75% of #1, anything with more than 5% of the total should be filterable if the vote stuffing is that bad. A sixth grader could code that up over recess.
And it would keep the 'guys who just don't get the spirit of the thing' away from the people getting bent out of shape about ballot stuffing on a blogger poll dedicated to games most people never even heard of anyway.
I'm a big fan of Rogue Likes, but I feel like this list is a bit unmanageable. In the future would it be possible to split them up in a tournament style where groups of 10 or so are voted on at a time and then move on to the next tier or something similar? This list doesn't seem very user friendly in my opinion.
Liberal Crime Squad!
Cataclysm dda is the best ...
Post a Comment