The Roguelikes, Part Three

Brian (Skavenhorde) Critser continues his series inspecting the roguelike games of the world in part 3, which shall not be the last part, and which highlights Linley’s Dungeon Crawl, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and Legerdemain.

Legerdemain was made by Nathan Jerpe. He coined the phrase roguelike fiction to set his game apart from the other RLs out there. Some RL fans will be disappointed due to the static nature of the game, but I believe it enhances the games flavor and offers something unique among the roguelikes. Specifically it has an actual story. There had to be some concessions made when writing such a game and the randomness of the world was one of them. The other is permanent death. Due to how large this game (not to mention how difficult the beginning is) a permanent death system in this game would have been detrimental to your enjoyment. The heart to Legerdemain is its story and by forcing the player to restart every time he/she dies (you will die a lot) would have made this game unbearable. It’s not like a real roguelike where you can switch characters and try something new with new dungeon levels. The dungeon maps remain the same no matter how many times you restart. However, certain monsters and items do not remain the same. There are static items and monsters as well as random ones.

There is a free ASCII version of the game available on his webpage or you can buy the hintbook and tilesets. The (hintbook) (more a novel than a hintbook) is over 300 pages long and the tilesets offered are well made. Take my opinion with a grain of salt when it comes to graphics. I also think that Ultima 5 graphics are well done. This is due to the fact that I remember CGA graphics and anything better than that is ok, IMO.