Darren Grey and John Harris discuss the Japanese roguelike Omega Labyrinth Life.
You can download the mp3 of the podcast, play it in the embedded player below, or you can follow us on iTunes.
Synopsis & Useful Links
- How this is inspired mostly by the Shiren / Mystery Dungeon games, and the broad popularity of MD-like games in Japan
- Jon's upcoming book on the 31+ Mystery Dungeon games, 'We Love Mystery Dungeon'
- Item carry-over and upgrades between dungeon instances
- The set-up of the "last dungeon" in MD games (which is the main dungeon, for the serious players)
- "Monster houses" for difficulty spikes
- Gimmick bosses (and how annoying they are)
- John can't resist talking about the Shiren games a lot
- The side characters as companions, both as a tactical resource and a narrative piece
- The game narrative, and missed potential
- Many minigames, unlocks, cosmetics, and busiwork inbetween dungeons
- Customisation and town management that lasts across dungeon runs
- The high production quality of the game, with 3D & 2D art, extensive voice acting, many minigames, etc
Nothing weird about people in Japan knowing only Mystery Dungeon but not Rogue and Hack, I think Western roguelike players also are likely to (1) not have played Mystery Dungeon games, (2) not have played Rogue or Hack, (3) not have played any roguelikes designed before DCSS.
ReplyDeleteNo need to pull Stardew Valley for town management across runs, it appears to be quite common things in roguelikes (Omega, Sproggiwood, Elin, Cataclysm, Soulash II, and Dwarf Fortress seem to qualify, although I have not played most of them and it would be great to have RR episodes about them).
The Harvest Moon adjacent game with more significant combat is the Rune Factory series, still going strong. I quite like Rune Factory IV. The combat is real time action like Stardew Valley's combat, or rather more like Ys and that style of Japanese side-scrolling RPG action. In general the magic and combat elements in Stardew draws more from Rune Factory than Harvest Moon. Rune Factory has quite deep combat, for instance, you can tame monsters and have them fight with you, and make them stronger on your farm between dungeon runs. Like Harvest Moon the overall structure is based around creating a new life in a community over the period of years; for instance, you can marry and have children, and these children can help you during late dungeon runs!
ReplyDeleteLike the above indicates, there is romance in the Rune Factory babes, but if a much more wholesome character than what this show describes as occurring in Omega.
A very unfortunate typo due to autocorrect on my phone: I'm the last sentence "babes" was meant to be "games".
ReplyDeleteAlso, when it's not April 1st you should maybe do an episode on Shiren 6.