Thanks to RockPaperShotgun, as usual, for pointing me to something that just eats two hours and I'm left wondering what happened.
Teleglitch is a procedurally generated top-down action game in the vein of Doom, if Doom were also a roguelike but roguelikes weren't turn based. Here, why don't I just let them describe it.
The game takes place in procedurally generated military research & training complex that has a different map every time you play. Our mission is to give players like you a chance to walk in the dark corridors, gripping their gun and few last rounds of ammunition. To play with finger on the trigger, high on adrenaline. We want to give you the paranoid, sweaty, and bloody hard kind of fun.
It's admittedly similar to some other games I've played - it's unsurprisingly a little bit like the Doom Roguelike (which is excellent), if that were realtime. It's also a little bit like the R.I.P. series, if that were procedural and ammo was more sparse. It's a mashup of a lot of good stuff, basically, and I became immediately entranced with it. Here are a few things it does that I think are notable.
- The claustrophia is superb, using a lighting engine that reminds me of Nox, and that's high praise.
- There's no pausing for inventory management (or crafting), you have to do it all in realtime, but the interface for it is intuitive and fast.
- There's a surprising amount of lore to dig into, with a Mass Effect-style codex that fills up as you discover things. There's a lot to discover.
- The crafting is simple enough that it didn't deter me from using it on the fly - enter the crafting menu and it just shows you everything you can make with what you have. There's a lot to make.
- Combat is slightly random, but not to the point of feeling like you have no control. Sometimes a lucky shot will take down a monster in one hit. Sometimes it won't. Your guns don't aim as precisely as you'll want. You're almost always out of ammo. It's hard. Success feels good.
Here's how the game looks (if you're sick of pixel art, this may turn you off, but I'm loving it):
The free demo (Windows) contains more than enough gameplay to tell you whether you want to play more, so please, download it and give it a try. I was very pleasantly surprised.