Transcendence: funky free 2d space game action

Free arcade / RPG space game with roguelike tendencies

Following the discovery of Spelunky, I’ve found another fun, free game with a roguelike randomness to its design: Transcendence, by a guy called George Moromisato. This one’s been around for ages, it seems.  Set in space, it provides a unique game universe to explore every time you start a new game.

Still in Beta and still in development, Transcendence nonetheless manages to provide a pretty compelling experience. You start from humble beginnings with a simple spaceship, and then get involved in running and gunning, trading and upgrading and all the other stuff that made Elite great. Only in 2d, with nice rendered graphics and elements of an RPG, managing inventory and so on.

Some bits are still a bit rough around the edges, and the backstory is a bit vague, but there are some lovely touches. The combat isn’t bad either – a bit twitchy perhaps, but enough like Subspace  to keep me happy.

I’m still at the early stages with this one, so I won’t say anything more than it’s definitely worth ten minutes of your time (and then it’ll be four hours later).

Get Transcendence here: http://neurohack.com/transcendence/

Spelunky - free, fun, evil and insanely difficult

A free roguelike platform game with snakes, spikes, traps and other evil.

Spelunky is a game of cave exploration (the clue’s in the name). You play a familiar whip-wielding, hat-wearing explorer character who has to delve deeper and deeper into increasingly dangerous caves in search of loot and secrets.

It’s a lot like Dungeon Crawl (and/or Stone Soup) in that regard, and for one of the same reasons: the game map changes each time you play.

I could probably bang on about procedurally generated levels or something, but I won’t because I don’t understand the technology. All that matters is that levels are different every time you play (strictly speaking it’s like all Roguelikes in that regard, but Crawl in particular for me in terms of style and deadly humour).

However, while the level layout changes for every game, the aim of the game and the insane, old-school difficulty remain the same.  It looks a plays just like the platformers I dimly remember from my 8-bit days. It has simple, functional, retro graphics; even more retro sound, creating using the very funky sound generator, SFXR; and very retro gameplay. It was made using Game Maker from YoYo Games.

There are a few issues (it’s still in Beta) and the control scheme isn’t quite perfect, although to be fair neither is my joypad. Regardless, Spelunky is a cute, compelling, evil gaming experience that reminds me  just how fecking difficult games used to be. Best of all it’s free, so go play it and worship the author, one Derek Yu.

Get Spelunky here: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=4017.0