![]() ![]() The interesting part is that you can see all these statues on the way in, foreshadowing potentially difficult bottlenecks on the way out (assuming you can’t directly confront and outright destroy all the living statues, a decent assumption for many builds). ![]() The Ground Gives Way has an especially interesting approach, having the dungeon’s statues come to life after you acquire the trombone relic (yes, trombone) at the bottom, and you have to escape without being killed by the animated statues or whatever other creatures might still be in the way because they weren’t dealt with before. One traditional reason it might make sense for roguelikes to allow backtracking is because the goal is often to reach a destination then escape back out, not unlike your typical RPG dungeon adventure.ĭifferent games handle the escape in a variety of ways, perhaps throwing some kind of new challenges at the player along the way, for example being intercepted by powerful monsters the entire way in DCSS, or being harassed on the way out of Angband by an angry Morgoth after stealing one of the Silmarils from his crown in Sil (or the newer Sil-Q). Rogue: Interestingly, in the original Rogue backtracking as a part of the ongoing diving process was not a thing! You can only proceed down stairs until you acquire the amulet, then you can finally go up stairs, but each floor in the return direction is generated anew, essentially requiring playing through 51 floors to beat the game!.Heading back up some stairs (‘<‘) in Moria for your very own “I have no memory of this place” moment. The approach is quite thematic, in any case, getting lost exploring the Mines of Moria, or maze-like fortress Angband :) Moria/ Angband: These are unique in that backtracking is allowed, but by default it generates a new floor each time! Although not true backtracking in every sense, it will naturally count in some ways.(DCSS variant “ Hellcrawl” removes the up stairs from that game, notably increasing the difficulty.) This group also includes DRL/ Jupiter Hell and Infra Arcana, but it’s a pretty small group overall. Cogmind: At the other end of the spectrum, some roguelikes don’t allow backtracking to earlier floors at all.The majority of roguelikes fall into this category, although not necessarily the multiple stairs part. DCSS: Floors generally contain multiple stairs which lead to either the next floor or back to the previous one. ![]() Let’s open with a sample cross section of the types of map transitions available in the roguelike space: Here we’re primarily talking about the player revisiting earlier floors on their journey, rather than backtracking within a single map (though I’ll cover that topic a bit separately at the end), and our discussion focuses on roguelikes of the dungeon delving variety, since open world games generally allow backtracking by default. More than once over the years we’ve had discussions in the roguelike development community regarding the idea of “backtracking,” and with good reason: whether or not to allow it has quite a lot of implications! ![]()
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