The Roguelikes, Part Three and a Half

Brian Critser continues his series of editorials on Roguelikes over at the Rampant Games blog with a smaller half-update, discussing Rogue Survivor and Unreal World.

URW UnRealWorld URW is a graphical roguelike-ish RPG which takes place in the far north during the Iron Age.

The game is styled after Finland, but not exactly. The developer didn’t want to make an imperfect copy of historical Finland so they have altered the map and the cultures. You’ll need to spend some time getting familiar with the different cultures in their help files if you want to customize your character or just jump right into the game and let the computer choose for you.

They used real-world historical facts and mythology to make this game. There are no knights or dragons in this. Instead you have peasants, rune-singers and sages. There are also some low-fantasy elements taken directly from Finnish folklore.

In this game you can build your own shelter, hunt, skin and cook your own food, get eaten by wild animals while you sleep and just about anything you can imagine you would have to do back in the Iron Age to survive.

You have nine different cultures to choose from, different rituals you can learn, many different skills including lore/craft skills which are essential if you want to survive in the wild, different tasks to accomplish (optional) and many many more features.

The game is brutal on beginners, but it comes with an extensive Info Browser that will how the game works and how to survive.