Oddball, creator of one of the two ubiquitous roguelike graphics sets from the TIGSource Assemblee competition, has finally come out with a roguelike of his very own by the name of Hack, Slash, Loot. He describes it thusly:

Hack, Slash, Loot(HSL) is a single-player turn-based dungeon crawler for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. Take control of a lone hero and explore sprawling dungeons, fight dangerous monsters, and most importantly, plunder valuable treasures.

It isn’t at all clear from that bare-bones description exactly what it is that sets HSL apart from the roughly gagillion-and-a-half other roguelikes coming out right now. Luckily, Adam Smith of Rock Paper Shotgun has taken care of that for us. According to him, the thing that makes HSL unique is the game’s simplicity:

It may well be the simplest roguelike I’ve ever played, with actual visual approximations of the things you’re looting, hacking and slashing, a point and click interface, and no inventory to manage. There’s equipment in abundance, but it’s a case of choosing what you want and leaving the rest on a dank floor somewhere.

Oh, and there’s no leveling up; you can only improve by getting better equipment. Which probably makes this not-an-RPG. But my guess is that most people will still think of it as a proper roguelike, so I’ll allow it.

Have a computer that runs Windows, MacOS or Linux? (I certainly hope so.) Have $10? (I hope that’s so, too.) Want to buy this game? (Oddball probably hopes so.) It can be yours for the price of $10. Buy it here, or grab the demo (W/M/L) for a substantially cheaper $0. Finally, as is our custom, we present you with a trailer so you can see what you’re getting yourself into:

Mysterious Castle is an isometric, graphical tactics roguelike by Jeremy Jurksztowicz. There has been a developer’s log for this game for months, but last I checked, the game was exclusive to iOS, and I lost track of it. Well, no more of that! The game is now available in the app store, as well as for Mac OS and Windows. Here’s the premise:

Peace, justice, honor. Society is at a pinnacle undreamt of by mankind of old. The king reigns over dozens of tribes peacefully, justly, honorably. Grievances are few, and dealt with swiftly and openly. Everyone is content, the people love their king, the nobles serve the people, and society advances…

Such is the tale told to naive children, the illusion that keeps the poor common folk from seeing the horrible reality. Their world is crumbling. A corrupt nobility props up a vain and cruel king, who in turn sends young soldiers to vicious pointless wars. Every corner of the kingdom is aflame, the great royal army streched thin, facing enemies that fight like ghosts. The tribes of the kobolds, elves and orcs see the kingdom tottering, failing under it’s own weight, and sieze their chance at vengeance.

Amidst the chaos, people whisper rumors. Rumors of conspiring cabals, of a great ‘plan’, of a foreign invasion. Some say that a war is coming, some say that a revolution is arising. But the wise know better. Sages and holy seers look at the wheeling stars in their slow precession and see that the great cosmic clock will soon strike midnight. The artifacts of the ancient ones hum and resonate in anticipation of… of something.

In this desperate landscape, there is a place, a forgotten forest with it’s forgotten people. From this lost corner of the world, strange broken rumors have drifted out, hardened scholars have returned changed into blathering prophets. They speak of ancient stones, magic beyond the comprehension of mortals, and of a mysterious castle.

Jeremy is currently developing the game for iOS, OSX, Windows and Linux, with an iPad port planned for the future. The game is $2.99 in the Apple App Store and free for other platforms. Jeremy has stated that he plans to move the free version to a pay-what-you-want model with a minimum payment of $0. Here’s a trailer showing off the game:

IndieRPGs.com recently sat down with Greg Lobanov (a.k.a. “Banov”), creator of the innovative pirate-themed jRPG Dubloon, for a chat about his latest project, Phantasmaburbia. We also talk about RPG pricing and his experience so far with transitioning from free games to commercial work.

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Developer Kot-in-Action Creative Artel has announced the development of Tomes of Mephistopheles, a first-person action RPG with randomly generated dungeons and a quest for a MacGuffin hidden therein. It’s first-person action roguelike, basically (insofar as the category “roguelike” can encompass something first-person, real-time, and not grid-based).

The developers give me this description of ToM:

Basically Tomes of Mephistopheles takes place in a fantasy world, where player is set to search for the ancient books written by the Devil himself. The Tomes grant enormous power to its beholder and have been searched for by various characters. Player has to find those Tomes and destroy them.

So, in short, it’s an adventure with a lot of magic, spell casting, cold steel combat, hordes of demons to fight against in virtually endless randomly generated multi-floor dungeons. We are still experimenting with outdoor areas, but most likely we will have virtually endless (but for practicality sake just vast) outdoor areas with towns and villages, where player can trade his(her) loot and gear.

Single-player / Co-op is what we are aiming for.

Well! That certainly sounds ambitious, doesn’t it? Below, you can check out an early teaser trailer, as well as a video showing off a neat bomb-based tunneling mechanic:

Wes Falls of Secret Arts Games writes in to announce the development of Valor Seed, a retro jRPG designed to mimic the sound and appearance of an NES game. Wes reports that he’s managed to get the likes of Alexander O. Smith and Sean Beeson working on the game with him, which is fairly impressive for an RPG Maker project like this. His summary of the game follows:

Valor Seed is an NES retro-clone made to feel, look, and sound like an RPG made for that system.  It uses the NES’s color palette for graphics, and sound chip for music and effects.  Unlike actual NES-era RPG’s, Valor Seed will sport modern game play elements such as dialog, item creation, multiple endings, and a very flexible battle system.

The setting of Valor Seed places Pharamonde in a Dark Age following its repulsion of a foreign Crusade. The Crusade ended with the deaths of all of its heroic personalities. There was no victory for anyone involved, there was simply a return to the state of being before it all began with one significant difference: there was nobody to believe in, anymore. No King, no Roland the Hero. This is how The Calm snuck in. The Crusade was the product of men reaching too far for what they did not need. Therefore, if no men reach, no more Crusades will come. Blacksmiths quenched their forges, coopers left their barrels half-assembled, and everywhere the people cast away their gold and silver coins for their then pointlessness. Each town became an island in the wilderness, surviving all on their own. In the capital, the Heart of Pharamonde, the addle-minded Prince ignored the duties of the Royal Throne, Siege Pharamonde. With no strong Will guiding the Heart of Pharamonde, the land and its people stagnated.

Wes reports that they’ve just jumped the last hurdle in creating the battle system, and are now focused on designing windows (of the GUI variety, I gather) and the item crafting system. A free version of the game, made in RPG Maker XP, is due for release sometime late this year; a commercial version created with XNA is planned for the future release this fall.

There is no official trailer for Valor Seed yet, but you can have a look at some in-progress screenshots of the game below:

Another year, another Independent Games Festival; another Independent Games Festival, another group of finalists; another group of finalists, another army of aggrieved developers who didn’t make the cut. There has arisen something of a tradition among indie developers of complaining about the Independent Games Festival. There are reasons for that. For one thing, the stakes are high. With thousands of dollars and widespread publicity on the line, a strong showing in the IGF can make all the difference for an indie developer. More than that, it’s very expensive to enter, so people want to feel like their entries have been given a fair shake. Oftentimes they don’t feel that way, which leads to grousing and drama.

I have never felt the urge to submit anything to the IGF myself, and as such, I’ve ever had any personal stake in the fairness of IGF proceedings. However, it certainly hasn’t escaped my notice that, year after year, the IGF conspicuously passes over RPG entrants–and now that I run this site, I feel that my role as an advocate for indie RPGs requires me to explore the issue.

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I found out about Tales of Maj’Eyal by virtue of DIY Gamer featuring it as roguelike of the year, eking out a win over the much better-known Dungeons of Dredmor. Tales of Maj’Eyal is a bit like Dredmor in that it eschews ASCII graphics in favor of representational ones, and it tacks on a nice, mouse-driven interface and a really splendid soundtrack. DIY Gamer seems to think that ToME is even more accessible than Dredmor, however; and what’s more, the game evidently features a legit story with multiple dungeons and an overworld to boot.

The devs describe it as “an open-source, single-player, tactical role-playing roguelike and action game set in the world of Eyal.” Check out this gameplay video to get a taste for how it works:

Here’s the best part: the game is free, and in the best traditions of the roguelike genre, its development is open source. Which means that it technically isn’t “done,” and never will be, so long as people want to go in and add more stuff. But it’s currently at version 1.00 Beta 37, which I gather means you can play through the game and have a very complete experience doing so. Nab the game here.

Sensou writes in to inform me that he has created an homage to the original Septerra Core in RPG Maker. It’s a free fan game, essentially, which you can nab here. There is a video showing some gameplay footage, which should probably give you some idea if you’ll be interested or not.

Carpe Fulgur, localizers of the delightful Recettear, have announced the release of a demo for Fortune Summoners. Fortune Summoners is reputed to be a side-scrolling RPG in the vein of Zelda 2 or Wanderers from Ys, but with multiple playable characters. You can read more about the gameplay here.

Fortune Summoners is due for release on Steam and GamersGate on January 17, 2012 at a price point of $25.00. Until then, get the demo and see how you like it.

Now this is interesting: Pete King of Third Impression writes in to announce the development of Blood Rune, a game intentionally modeled on the old SSI Gold Box series. Blood Rune seems to be fairly early in development, but it’s hard not to get a little excited reading what Mr. King has planned for it:

Blood Rune is a new roleplaying game. It uses a first person style of gaming unlike most computer roleplaying games of the day, harking back to older classics such as the SSI Gold Box series. Just like those, the game switches out to an isometric battle engine to resolve fights, but unlike them, this battle engine is much more fully resolved as a tactical simulation. There are movement points to worry about; you can be attacked back if an opponent has movement points remaining, your units can tire

In Blood Rune, you play a single character in a realistic fantasy setting who is soon joined by additional companions to form a party. There are many character classes to choose from including five different types of magic users. There are over 400 items in the game so far. The game begins just before the land of Dragonia is about to be plunged into war… what will your role in the unfolding story be?

Okay, so the not-particularly-creative name “Dragonia” suggests that maybe this game isn’t going to have the world’s greatest writing. However, if it plays like Pool of Radiance, I suspect I may be able to overcome my feelings about that. I’ll be watching this one.