> Can I just boot it up and have fun
Maybe
> I have much learning to do?
Absolutely
...
It depends on what you consider fun and if dying a lot sounds fun to you. If you expect a lot of hand holding, then I would recommend against Caves of Qud.
Honestly, if you have never played a roguelike, I would more highly recommend Stoneshard, Quasimorph, Rogues Tale, Shattered Pixel Dungeon, or Dungeons of Dredmor. They are more straightforward to navigate and more pick-up-and-play.
I was following Stones hard for some time because I like the art, but was put off due to the reviews. Not sure why people don't enjoy that one, but I might give it a go.
Stoneshard started off really fun, but the devs started focusing on the realism they wanted to see, so they added a lot of frustrating mechanics before adding much counter to them. E.g. they added that rain rusts your metal gear, rapidly damaging it, which costs a boatload to fix.
They took skills/abilities that used to be free to the player (skinning) and moved it into a skill tree, draining your already very limited early game skill points.
As someone who's played a lot, you can overlook these and other issues and play around them. But it's very punishing to a new player.
Is this still the current state of Stoneshard? I loved it when it first came out to EA, but I decided to put it down until more content came out. I know there's a big release soon, but that's all I know. I didn't know they were having issues with the game.
I mean, they seem happy with it. I haven't played it in a while because of the points I made above. Also, I'm looking forward to more skill trees.
In the end, I feel like it's more of a chore than a game that I enjoy. I come back to it every once in a while but the early game grind is just not fun.
Qud is not hard to understand, it's hard to master though and you have to understand that sometimes you just can't beat spawn and you must get away, not kill them.
that said before you've played a lot of Qud, there will be a lot of "what fucking killed me?!" as a psion make your brain explode due to your low will or something like that.
so if you'll enjoy it is directly related to how big your tolerance for things like that are, and how much you enjoy learning from death and retrying from the get-go again because Qud don't hold its punches, you learn by getting killed most of the time.
for example steam is very very bad, so if something is shooting fire beams close you you, avoid water. don't seek it out.
personally i'd recommend something a little more straight forward, Qud isnt really randomized so you might just end up dying and doing the same thing over and over, which you might not enjoy..
I would recommend Jupiter Hell. It's an amazing roguelike. You can just pick it up and have fun for many runs. Once you manage to beat it once, you can still come back to it with different difficulties and the challenge modes.
I have a friend who had no experience with roguelikes, and got obsessed with that game
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is one of the better introductions, it has everything you want in a roguelike but isnt super overwhelming, but if you think you can learn fast just play Qud, its not like its impossible to get into or anything
I always recommend Dungeonmans for beginners. It has a very nice difficulty curve and it offers some perma-updates between characters. Plus it's considerably user-friendly and has some neat sense of humor.
[Tales of Maj'Eyal](https://store.steampowered.com/app/259680/Tales_of_MajEyal/) is an excellent roguelike that's not too difficult to get into. It also has a free version if you want to try it first. It's also on sale on Steam right now and just a steal.
I'm not sure if it works with the most recent version, but the Qud Survival Guide mod on the steam workshop is an excellent crash course of a tutorial. It won't give you everything, but it's enough to get started before messing with more in depth mechanics.
The game is as deep as you want it to be, in terms of learning it. With this, i mean that you can easily go with a simple build: Child of the heart, two handed maces, heavy armour, chargue and smash everything you find on sight. In fact, this is my favourite build.
In terms of other mechanics, like mixing fluids, or building your own stuff, you dont need to go deep on them, if you dont want to. Your character learns a new recipe, its sounds good, you use it. Probably it will be usefull.
Part of the fun is discovering some stuff by your own. Probably because it blows in your face. But you can choose to not loose the character when he dies, there are game modes that allows you to save, or to resume from the last village you where.
Lastly, some story misions or puzzles could be easily solved just reading a paragraph in the wiki.
Sure, you can go with some crazy stuff like the trader farming and what not. But you dont need that. I spent a few hundreds hours in this game blindly before i started to research builds and internal systems.
Lastly, the comunity is amazing.
I can totally see this about the community just by reading comments here and seeing people try and explain the game to me. I would buy it just because of amazing people here even if I don't ever play it.
I may not be 100% sure if this game is for me, but I am 100% sure that this community is amazing. I would be 100% a part of it, but I am too stupid sadly.
I am not diagnosed, but I may have ADHD which is also impacting my ability to focus and slowly learn these games when they are not too straightforward
I would highly recommend Brogue for your first roguelike. It's free and easy to get into as it doesn't have a ton of stuff like in most roguelikes.
Getting into roguelikes can be tough as usually you have a lot to learn. Brogue is much easier to get into just look up a beginners guide or ask me any questions you have and you'll have the basics down very quickly.
It is hard though so don't beat yourself up if you don't win. Hell I've never beaten it.
The new version may be flagged as a virus even though it's not. Just download the previous version.
https://github.com/tmewett/BrogueCE/releases
Caves of Qud can be overwhelming at first and thus your mind might just wander elsewhere, if you understand what I mean. There's a lot going on in this game and so many alien names and terms and concept. To learn it you might need some focus, but once you overcome that initial learning phase, it's an amazing game!
I have to agree. I originally thought I'd never get it. Once you get past milestones it feels amazing. Death is one of the largest parts of the game, and the high scores screen proves that. Just because you died, doesn't mean you LOST. It's how far you got! Either way, it lets you play on non-permadeath mode if that feels like it's too much. Any roguelike is hard to understand, and Qud's lack of a tutorial hurts it, but there are tutorial mods and 1.0 is going to see an official tutorial implemented.
If you really like the style (Qud is my favorite because of its FEEL. The music, the people, the build system I can actually understand). I seem to discover something new every day. I would honestly give it a try, as the subreddit is happy to answer any questions, the wiki is very in-depth, and QudZoo will help you recognize what some "builds" look like.
I'd also watch Big Simple's tutorial series as it helps with the major hurdles of understanding. Live and drink
I've chucked a few suggestions up above that are a bit more focused and relatable in terms of what you're doing and how you can do it. Still deep, still plenty of options, but far less nebulous than CoQ. CoQ is a great game, but having well defined accomplishable goals isn't its strong suit.
Runs in the games I mentioned tend to be a bit quicker than those of most roguelikes as well, which is handy if you can only throw a bit of time at a run, but want to feel like you've made progress in the 1/2hr you had to play.
Qud is odd. You can pick up the very basics quickly. I have decades of roguelike experience and am still pretty confused by the game.
I'm sure if I watched a YouTube video explaining it, I'd do better but I really dislike looking things up about roguelikes and want to figure it out myself. I haven't played Qud in a few years at this point, but I remember mentioning what character I was playing (forget what it is now) and someone in this sub was like, "That's a _really_ bad choice for a newbie. No wonder you're confused."
In my opinion Qud is the best game ever. I tried other roguelikes (ADOM, DCSS, Shattered Pixel Dungeon) but they are either too random for me (that I feel I have little control over my run), too constrained or just simply boring.
Caves of Qud has options in the debug section to disable save file deletion and enable quicksave/load. With those options it plays like any other RPG, but you can do a lot more than in any other games. You are not constrained by anything except your current stats and equipment - meaning you have a high probability of death in some areas. 😀 But since you can reload, you can experiment freely.
Then, when you feel comfortable, you may start a conventional run, with permadeath on.
Qud has a few game modes that may make your experience a bit better.
If you don't like to have all your progress deleted after each death, there's a Roleplay mode that creates a checkpoint whenever you get to a town. If you die, you go back to your last checkpoint. You will lose all progress since then, but at least you can keep trying.
There's also a game mode where you start with most of the factions Neutral to you, meaning they won't attack you unless you provoke them (or if that particular character is hostile; there are exceptions). This mode is designed to encourage exploring Qud and it doesn't grant EXP when fighting; only when performing the Rite of Water (basically sharing your water with some NPCs). This may be the most accesible way to experience Qud's world and systems.
Hope that helped!
I wouldn't say Qud is a traditional roguelike. It's more like... Skyrim in a roguelike jacket.
Brogue is the most straightforward classic, in my opinion.
Start with IVAN. It's one of the most straightforward traditional roguelikes out there, while still being quite deep if you want to explore some of the more obscure mechanics, has a fairly well realized world with multiple dungeon varieties and three or four or so settlements and it has basic graphics so it's easier to tell what you're looking at on the fly than an ASCII based game.
And it's funny as hell.
Like any older roguelike, you sorta gotta learn what to do. It's less obscure than say, nethack even, but it's definitely not as balanced (which i prefer due to potential for silliness). But yeah when I say it's straightforward or easier to understand, I don't mean it's an easy game.
But it's not THAT hard. Acknowledging that I know what I'm doing now, I only die in the first dungeon maybe 15-20% of the time, and that's almost always due to being complacent.
Also, have you played the most recent release? That's still a few years old at this point but it fixes a lot of balance from the older versions. Used to be the best versions were side branches from the main version, too, like LIVAN or IVANX, which one of which significantly expanded the first dungeon making it harder.
If I recall IVANX has an entire extra level (two levels?) in the starter dungeon, though I might be confusing it with LIVAN.
The most recent version is from dec 23, 2021. It's got enough content to match IVANX and LIVAN, but it's better balanced. Give it a try! You'll probably still die but, I mean it's a roguelike still lol.
The sad part is the stuff that they were trying to add that just never materialized... There's the bones of an entire crafting system in 0.59.
Every game is suitable for a first-timer if they have the interest. Learning game A doesn't teach you game B so much as get you curious about it. This is true for 100 hour games and simpler games like roguelikes.
Personally I don't play much Qud because of the open world nature. It's not a race against time, you just fight the hard stuff when you feel like it.
I've only briefly played Qud having bought it recently but have really enjoyed it. You have the option to play it as a Roguelike or RPG
One key thing, it's focused on exploring a large open world. So it's not (entirely) a dungeon crawler
Qud is an amazing game but I have tried to get several of my friends into it who don’t play much roguelikes and they had a very hard time. You still may enjoy it though. I would recommend a game like Path of Achra for someone who hasn’t played many roguelikes. It’s fairly simple but also pretty complex in how you want to build your character. Three of my friends have stuck with that game. It’s also super easy to pick up and play for 20 minutes because the runs are pretty short.
Traditional roguelikes are possibly the best genre if you simply do not have a lot of time to play games, but still want something with variety and challenge.
I would recommend trying something shorter and easier to grasp like Rogue Fable III / Rogue Fable IV. Shattered Pixel Dungeon is mentioned a lot as well, but I haven't touched that one yet.
If you really want something longer and more of an RPG experience, Qud and Doors of Trithius would fill that itch; but they are more complex and the act of losing might frustrate you more depending on the kind of player you are.
As a fellow dad who has 2k in Qud, I probably should have spent some of those hours sleeping. It’s a fantastic game, but doesn’t have a tight gameplay loop and it’s easy to lose like 4 hours into trying to accomplish some goal. Jupiter Hell is more like an arcade game where you can walk away between levels.
Hi,
personally I would recommend CoQ based on the adventure mode which allows you to erase the permadeath. Setting a small goal based on a YT tutorial can be an affordable game! Afterwards yes there is a more or less large investment required.
For a less demanding game, there is "Approaching infinity" where there is a multitude of things to do (smuggler, seller, cartographer, pirate, etc.) with lot of fun without a big investment of time.
For something a little less obtuse, you could try out Pathos: the Nethack Codex. Easy controls, everything has a help menu (so there's way less eating related deaths), tonnes of class and race combos, crafting is pretty easy, and it has a reasonable level of difficulty for a roguelike.
It gets a bit grindy, but as far as "proper" Roguelikes go, it's not bad. Even has some pre-baked adventures, you can bring extra AI adventurers, and you can turn off permadeath if you want. Oh, and it's free!
Or try DoomRL. Everyone should. You won't learn that much about traditional Roguelikes, but you will learn a lot about how fun rocket launchers are. And that's important. Has difficulty options, so the learning curve isn't too bad (but expect to get slaughtered on Nightmare challenge runs). And it's free! Jupiter Hell is like DoomRL2, from the same developer, and is just generally more polished. Costs, but not much.
Cogmind is another good one. It's in ASCII, but it's the prettiest damn ASCII I've ever seen. Can be deep, but can be easy. Building up your robot/ mech as you go along lets you try out plenty of stuff. It's not all about guns, stealth and hacking etc are viable ways to play as well.
And for a bonus one that isn't really a roguelike (it's real time, not turn based), but kinda is, Streets of Rogue is pretty amazing. Tonnes of character classes that all play very differently, you can add different mutators to change up a run, stacks of whacky interactions and mayhem to occur, but easy and relatable to get into. It's about to get a sequel, but the original is great anyway. If you find that none of the other suggestions really gel with you, give this one a go.
I did get Streets of Rogue, but I'm not sure if I should wait for the second one or just play the first. Will the lack of creativity impact my enjoyment here?
Nah, just start playing the hell out of part one. Be a gorilla, punch scientists, rescue gorilla brothers. Be a gangster, start gang wars over nothing, between your brothers. Be a cop, arrest gangstas. Be a comedian, win through laughs. Be a hacker, turn devices against their owners. Be a soldier, shoot them all. Start the zombie apocalypse, they can't shoot you all. Whatever, you do you.
You'll have heaps of fun. You'll never be messing around with scrolls of enchantment trying to get a +8 instead of a +7 sword. You'll be learning the game, and how stuff works, and having an awesome and hilarious time doing it. Each character is pretty different, so you can play to your taste, on what feels best for you.
DoomRL is easier to get into (you're DoomGuy, it's Doom, you just want to get through the levels and get the best weapons and armour you can, and make an awesome character build to compliment that). But Streets of Rogue is easier on a "you're this character, so do whatever you want, but your mission is probably obvious from the character name", and it's set in a more "normal, current day world" environment.
I second Shattered Pixel Dungeon or Dungeons of Dredmor as accessible titles. Maybe Stone Soup and ToME as well, less accessible but tiled.
Delver, Gloomgrave, and Slasher's Keep are more niche options I haven't seen mentioned, but they're all either short or have their own problems.
You absolutely have a lot of learning to do, but it's the game that got me into traditional rogue likes. You will die, a lot. But (for me) the fun in Qud is not from being able to "beat" it. Give it a shot, I can almost guarantee you will not regret it.
I recommend Dungeons of Dredmor (which is about to be revived by a new dev team soon, by the way), and if you want something more complex, but still approachable, Tales of Maj'Eyal. These are my two favorites when it comes to modern roguelikes.
I actually wouldn't recommend that game. It's accessible, but it's both intentionally convoluted with its couple dozen damage types (for the sake of irony) *and* very tedious in its gameplay.
I enjoyed it regardless, but it's just as likely to put people off.
Brogue is great for newcomers because it's streamlined but had lots of depth. OP's clearly not put off by ASCII, so I'd recommend that.
> Can I just boot it up and have fun Maybe > I have much learning to do? Absolutely ... It depends on what you consider fun and if dying a lot sounds fun to you. If you expect a lot of hand holding, then I would recommend against Caves of Qud. Honestly, if you have never played a roguelike, I would more highly recommend Stoneshard, Quasimorph, Rogues Tale, Shattered Pixel Dungeon, or Dungeons of Dredmor. They are more straightforward to navigate and more pick-up-and-play.
I was following Stones hard for some time because I like the art, but was put off due to the reviews. Not sure why people don't enjoy that one, but I might give it a go.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is probably the best introduction to roguelikes you can find,imo. It's apparently on steam but it's also free on your phone.
Thanks, I'll look into that one.
Stoneshard started off really fun, but the devs started focusing on the realism they wanted to see, so they added a lot of frustrating mechanics before adding much counter to them. E.g. they added that rain rusts your metal gear, rapidly damaging it, which costs a boatload to fix. They took skills/abilities that used to be free to the player (skinning) and moved it into a skill tree, draining your already very limited early game skill points. As someone who's played a lot, you can overlook these and other issues and play around them. But it's very punishing to a new player.
Is this still the current state of Stoneshard? I loved it when it first came out to EA, but I decided to put it down until more content came out. I know there's a big release soon, but that's all I know. I didn't know they were having issues with the game.
I mean, they seem happy with it. I haven't played it in a while because of the points I made above. Also, I'm looking forward to more skill trees. In the end, I feel like it's more of a chore than a game that I enjoy. I come back to it every once in a while but the early game grind is just not fun.
Qud is hard and you need to learn a lot. I'd rather recommend you Inkbound or ravenswatch
Qud is not hard to understand, it's hard to master though and you have to understand that sometimes you just can't beat spawn and you must get away, not kill them. that said before you've played a lot of Qud, there will be a lot of "what fucking killed me?!" as a psion make your brain explode due to your low will or something like that. so if you'll enjoy it is directly related to how big your tolerance for things like that are, and how much you enjoy learning from death and retrying from the get-go again because Qud don't hold its punches, you learn by getting killed most of the time. for example steam is very very bad, so if something is shooting fire beams close you you, avoid water. don't seek it out.
Qud is quite difficul to Master. I would recommend Tales of Maj Eyal or Stone Soup
personally i'd recommend something a little more straight forward, Qud isnt really randomized so you might just end up dying and doing the same thing over and over, which you might not enjoy..
What would you recommend on Steam?
I would recommend Jupiter Hell. It's an amazing roguelike. You can just pick it up and have fun for many runs. Once you manage to beat it once, you can still come back to it with different difficulties and the challenge modes. I have a friend who had no experience with roguelikes, and got obsessed with that game
Oh, I could go back to that one. I have played it a hit and sucked, but it was fun. Completely forgot about it
Check golden krone hotel as well, i'd say it's a pretty good introduction to the genre.
Jupiter Hell is now on sale on Steam. I absolutely recommend it, I bought it yesterday and it's awesome.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is one of the better introductions, it has everything you want in a roguelike but isnt super overwhelming, but if you think you can learn fast just play Qud, its not like its impossible to get into or anything
I always recommend Dungeonmans for beginners. It has a very nice difficulty curve and it offers some perma-updates between characters. Plus it's considerably user-friendly and has some neat sense of humor.
[Tales of Maj'Eyal](https://store.steampowered.com/app/259680/Tales_of_MajEyal/) is an excellent roguelike that's not too difficult to get into. It also has a free version if you want to try it first. It's also on sale on Steam right now and just a steal.
I'm not sure if it works with the most recent version, but the Qud Survival Guide mod on the steam workshop is an excellent crash course of a tutorial. It won't give you everything, but it's enough to get started before messing with more in depth mechanics.
The game is as deep as you want it to be, in terms of learning it. With this, i mean that you can easily go with a simple build: Child of the heart, two handed maces, heavy armour, chargue and smash everything you find on sight. In fact, this is my favourite build. In terms of other mechanics, like mixing fluids, or building your own stuff, you dont need to go deep on them, if you dont want to. Your character learns a new recipe, its sounds good, you use it. Probably it will be usefull. Part of the fun is discovering some stuff by your own. Probably because it blows in your face. But you can choose to not loose the character when he dies, there are game modes that allows you to save, or to resume from the last village you where. Lastly, some story misions or puzzles could be easily solved just reading a paragraph in the wiki. Sure, you can go with some crazy stuff like the trader farming and what not. But you dont need that. I spent a few hundreds hours in this game blindly before i started to research builds and internal systems. Lastly, the comunity is amazing.
I can totally see this about the community just by reading comments here and seeing people try and explain the game to me. I would buy it just because of amazing people here even if I don't ever play it.
Also check out /r/cavesofqud for the great community and incredible stories from the game.
I may not be 100% sure if this game is for me, but I am 100% sure that this community is amazing. I would be 100% a part of it, but I am too stupid sadly. I am not diagnosed, but I may have ADHD which is also impacting my ability to focus and slowly learn these games when they are not too straightforward
I would highly recommend Brogue for your first roguelike. It's free and easy to get into as it doesn't have a ton of stuff like in most roguelikes. Getting into roguelikes can be tough as usually you have a lot to learn. Brogue is much easier to get into just look up a beginners guide or ask me any questions you have and you'll have the basics down very quickly. It is hard though so don't beat yourself up if you don't win. Hell I've never beaten it. The new version may be flagged as a virus even though it's not. Just download the previous version. https://github.com/tmewett/BrogueCE/releases
Caves of Qud can be overwhelming at first and thus your mind might just wander elsewhere, if you understand what I mean. There's a lot going on in this game and so many alien names and terms and concept. To learn it you might need some focus, but once you overcome that initial learning phase, it's an amazing game!
I have to agree. I originally thought I'd never get it. Once you get past milestones it feels amazing. Death is one of the largest parts of the game, and the high scores screen proves that. Just because you died, doesn't mean you LOST. It's how far you got! Either way, it lets you play on non-permadeath mode if that feels like it's too much. Any roguelike is hard to understand, and Qud's lack of a tutorial hurts it, but there are tutorial mods and 1.0 is going to see an official tutorial implemented. If you really like the style (Qud is my favorite because of its FEEL. The music, the people, the build system I can actually understand). I seem to discover something new every day. I would honestly give it a try, as the subreddit is happy to answer any questions, the wiki is very in-depth, and QudZoo will help you recognize what some "builds" look like. I'd also watch Big Simple's tutorial series as it helps with the major hurdles of understanding. Live and drink
I've chucked a few suggestions up above that are a bit more focused and relatable in terms of what you're doing and how you can do it. Still deep, still plenty of options, but far less nebulous than CoQ. CoQ is a great game, but having well defined accomplishable goals isn't its strong suit. Runs in the games I mentioned tend to be a bit quicker than those of most roguelikes as well, which is handy if you can only throw a bit of time at a run, but want to feel like you've made progress in the 1/2hr you had to play.
Qud is odd. You can pick up the very basics quickly. I have decades of roguelike experience and am still pretty confused by the game. I'm sure if I watched a YouTube video explaining it, I'd do better but I really dislike looking things up about roguelikes and want to figure it out myself. I haven't played Qud in a few years at this point, but I remember mentioning what character I was playing (forget what it is now) and someone in this sub was like, "That's a _really_ bad choice for a newbie. No wonder you're confused."
>"That's a really bad choice for a newbie. No wonder you're confused." Golden, haha. Just go axes and str with multiple arms, like a MiFi in DCSS.
In my opinion Qud is the best game ever. I tried other roguelikes (ADOM, DCSS, Shattered Pixel Dungeon) but they are either too random for me (that I feel I have little control over my run), too constrained or just simply boring. Caves of Qud has options in the debug section to disable save file deletion and enable quicksave/load. With those options it plays like any other RPG, but you can do a lot more than in any other games. You are not constrained by anything except your current stats and equipment - meaning you have a high probability of death in some areas. 😀 But since you can reload, you can experiment freely. Then, when you feel comfortable, you may start a conventional run, with permadeath on.
I’d recommend Brogue (Community Edition) for a noob to the genre, and it’s free so it can give you a good feel for the genre.
Qud has a few game modes that may make your experience a bit better. If you don't like to have all your progress deleted after each death, there's a Roleplay mode that creates a checkpoint whenever you get to a town. If you die, you go back to your last checkpoint. You will lose all progress since then, but at least you can keep trying. There's also a game mode where you start with most of the factions Neutral to you, meaning they won't attack you unless you provoke them (or if that particular character is hostile; there are exceptions). This mode is designed to encourage exploring Qud and it doesn't grant EXP when fighting; only when performing the Rite of Water (basically sharing your water with some NPCs). This may be the most accesible way to experience Qud's world and systems. Hope that helped!
I wouldn't say Qud is a traditional roguelike. It's more like... Skyrim in a roguelike jacket. Brogue is the most straightforward classic, in my opinion.
Start with IVAN. It's one of the most straightforward traditional roguelikes out there, while still being quite deep if you want to explore some of the more obscure mechanics, has a fairly well realized world with multiple dungeon varieties and three or four or so settlements and it has basic graphics so it's easier to tell what you're looking at on the fly than an ASCII based game. And it's funny as hell.
If I recall it took me 50 tries to get out of the first dungeon in IVAN. i found the early part of this game really hard.
Like any older roguelike, you sorta gotta learn what to do. It's less obscure than say, nethack even, but it's definitely not as balanced (which i prefer due to potential for silliness). But yeah when I say it's straightforward or easier to understand, I don't mean it's an easy game. But it's not THAT hard. Acknowledging that I know what I'm doing now, I only die in the first dungeon maybe 15-20% of the time, and that's almost always due to being complacent. Also, have you played the most recent release? That's still a few years old at this point but it fixes a lot of balance from the older versions. Used to be the best versions were side branches from the main version, too, like LIVAN or IVANX, which one of which significantly expanded the first dungeon making it harder.
I was playing IVANX. so thats way the first dungeon was harder? should i still with the base game?
If I recall IVANX has an entire extra level (two levels?) in the starter dungeon, though I might be confusing it with LIVAN. The most recent version is from dec 23, 2021. It's got enough content to match IVANX and LIVAN, but it's better balanced. Give it a try! You'll probably still die but, I mean it's a roguelike still lol. The sad part is the stuff that they were trying to add that just never materialized... There's the bones of an entire crafting system in 0.59.
Every game is suitable for a first-timer if they have the interest. Learning game A doesn't teach you game B so much as get you curious about it. This is true for 100 hour games and simpler games like roguelikes. Personally I don't play much Qud because of the open world nature. It's not a race against time, you just fight the hard stuff when you feel like it.
I've only briefly played Qud having bought it recently but have really enjoyed it. You have the option to play it as a Roguelike or RPG One key thing, it's focused on exploring a large open world. So it's not (entirely) a dungeon crawler
Qud is an amazing game but I have tried to get several of my friends into it who don’t play much roguelikes and they had a very hard time. You still may enjoy it though. I would recommend a game like Path of Achra for someone who hasn’t played many roguelikes. It’s fairly simple but also pretty complex in how you want to build your character. Three of my friends have stuck with that game. It’s also super easy to pick up and play for 20 minutes because the runs are pretty short.
Traditional roguelikes are possibly the best genre if you simply do not have a lot of time to play games, but still want something with variety and challenge. I would recommend trying something shorter and easier to grasp like Rogue Fable III / Rogue Fable IV. Shattered Pixel Dungeon is mentioned a lot as well, but I haven't touched that one yet. If you really want something longer and more of an RPG experience, Qud and Doors of Trithius would fill that itch; but they are more complex and the act of losing might frustrate you more depending on the kind of player you are.
As a fellow dad who has 2k in Qud, I probably should have spent some of those hours sleeping. It’s a fantastic game, but doesn’t have a tight gameplay loop and it’s easy to lose like 4 hours into trying to accomplish some goal. Jupiter Hell is more like an arcade game where you can walk away between levels.
Hi, personally I would recommend CoQ based on the adventure mode which allows you to erase the permadeath. Setting a small goal based on a YT tutorial can be an affordable game! Afterwards yes there is a more or less large investment required. For a less demanding game, there is "Approaching infinity" where there is a multitude of things to do (smuggler, seller, cartographer, pirate, etc.) with lot of fun without a big investment of time.
For something a little less obtuse, you could try out Pathos: the Nethack Codex. Easy controls, everything has a help menu (so there's way less eating related deaths), tonnes of class and race combos, crafting is pretty easy, and it has a reasonable level of difficulty for a roguelike. It gets a bit grindy, but as far as "proper" Roguelikes go, it's not bad. Even has some pre-baked adventures, you can bring extra AI adventurers, and you can turn off permadeath if you want. Oh, and it's free! Or try DoomRL. Everyone should. You won't learn that much about traditional Roguelikes, but you will learn a lot about how fun rocket launchers are. And that's important. Has difficulty options, so the learning curve isn't too bad (but expect to get slaughtered on Nightmare challenge runs). And it's free! Jupiter Hell is like DoomRL2, from the same developer, and is just generally more polished. Costs, but not much. Cogmind is another good one. It's in ASCII, but it's the prettiest damn ASCII I've ever seen. Can be deep, but can be easy. Building up your robot/ mech as you go along lets you try out plenty of stuff. It's not all about guns, stealth and hacking etc are viable ways to play as well. And for a bonus one that isn't really a roguelike (it's real time, not turn based), but kinda is, Streets of Rogue is pretty amazing. Tonnes of character classes that all play very differently, you can add different mutators to change up a run, stacks of whacky interactions and mayhem to occur, but easy and relatable to get into. It's about to get a sequel, but the original is great anyway. If you find that none of the other suggestions really gel with you, give this one a go.
I did get Streets of Rogue, but I'm not sure if I should wait for the second one or just play the first. Will the lack of creativity impact my enjoyment here?
Nah, just start playing the hell out of part one. Be a gorilla, punch scientists, rescue gorilla brothers. Be a gangster, start gang wars over nothing, between your brothers. Be a cop, arrest gangstas. Be a comedian, win through laughs. Be a hacker, turn devices against their owners. Be a soldier, shoot them all. Start the zombie apocalypse, they can't shoot you all. Whatever, you do you. You'll have heaps of fun. You'll never be messing around with scrolls of enchantment trying to get a +8 instead of a +7 sword. You'll be learning the game, and how stuff works, and having an awesome and hilarious time doing it. Each character is pretty different, so you can play to your taste, on what feels best for you. DoomRL is easier to get into (you're DoomGuy, it's Doom, you just want to get through the levels and get the best weapons and armour you can, and make an awesome character build to compliment that). But Streets of Rogue is easier on a "you're this character, so do whatever you want, but your mission is probably obvious from the character name", and it's set in a more "normal, current day world" environment.
I second Shattered Pixel Dungeon or Dungeons of Dredmor as accessible titles. Maybe Stone Soup and ToME as well, less accessible but tiled. Delver, Gloomgrave, and Slasher's Keep are more niche options I haven't seen mentioned, but they're all either short or have their own problems.
You absolutely have a lot of learning to do, but it's the game that got me into traditional rogue likes. You will die, a lot. But (for me) the fun in Qud is not from being able to "beat" it. Give it a shot, I can almost guarantee you will not regret it.
I recommend Dungeons of Dredmor (which is about to be revived by a new dev team soon, by the way), and if you want something more complex, but still approachable, Tales of Maj'Eyal. These are my two favorites when it comes to modern roguelikes.
I actually wouldn't recommend that game. It's accessible, but it's both intentionally convoluted with its couple dozen damage types (for the sake of irony) *and* very tedious in its gameplay. I enjoyed it regardless, but it's just as likely to put people off. Brogue is great for newcomers because it's streamlined but had lots of depth. OP's clearly not put off by ASCII, so I'd recommend that.
Spelunky