Dungeons of Dredmor Review, Interview, and Patch Update

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Written by BuckGB on July 28th, 2011

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The siren call of sparkling loot is a temptress that's tough to spurn. Indie studio Gaslamp Games knows this well. Dungeons of Dredmor's voluminous depths are littered with an abundance of wacky treasure to horde and enticing weaponry to cleaving all sorts of evil beasties in twain with. The fact you'll die incessantly in pursuit of such delights doesn't dull the fun, since a glut of intriguing character skills to tinker with makes re-tooling your hero over and over again a blast. Several options designed to lessen the brutal difficulty for casual players are welcome additions, but this indie roguelike is best enjoyed the way the dark gods intended: sadistic and old-school.

Where did the inspiration for Dungeons of Dredmor come from? Also, how the hell did your hero get such enormous eyebrows?

Inspiration comes from a lot of different places. Different roguelikes, different games, different ways of doing things, and let us not forget the influence of dark and blessed Nyarlathotep, long may he reign over the infinite cosmos beyond the stars.

A lot of the inspiration for Dredmor-as-a-roguelike can be traced to Linley's Dungeon Crawl, which I was playing when we started development. We also shamelessly lifted a few ideas from Dwarf Fortress. Our skill system was inspired by a lesser-known roguelike called Lost Labyrinth, although we ended up simplifying it and streamlining it by not letting you take negative picks. The Chunsoft roguelike oeuvre -- Torneko no Daibouken, in particular, was very influential when we tried to figure out how to build a simplified roguelike. They do a remarkably good job with stuff like Shiren the Wanderer and whatever that other game is that they make with Pokemon in it.

Dredmor's backstory... I don't know where it stems from. A certain amount of it stems from traditional comic fantasy; not just Terry Pratchett, but some of the folks who were writing before Pratchett made it big. Folks like C. Dale Brittain, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Esther M. Friesner...that kind of a thing. Dredmor also has roots in the cinematic tradition of really awful fantasy/sci-fi films. Stuff like Mad Max, Big Trouble in Little China, Conan the Barbarian, any of those films where you see something that is so bad that it becomes good. Mostly, it's just been us having fun. We feed off of each other; somebody will come up with a silly idea, and then somebody else will refine it.

Most of our UI is built and rebuilt by watching what happens when we expose users to it. We're big on playtesting, but I think I'm going to end up talking about this later, so let's not talk about that for now.

The eyebrows...honestly, I have no idea. I think this is David's fault. Yeah, I'm blaming David.

- FIXED: Game not correctly processing some right clicking mouse clicks.
- FIXED: Lag due to blood splatters.
- FIXED: Dual wielding was not working, in particular the last skill.
- FIXED: Shield bearer skills were not correctly granting passive attributes.
- FIXED: A number of screwed up achievements.
- FIXED: Warrior health (and other things) were not being calculated correctly.
- FIXED: Item duplication bug when hitting (0'³
- FIXED: incorrect item values for Cybertronic Amulet
- FIXED: incorrect item values for Dark Orb
- FIXED: being able to save and quit the game after your death
- FIXED: nightmare curse not actually putting monsters to sleep (or correctly triggering the DOT)
- FIXED: SHIFT-Click mode, when turned on, doesn't correctly handle SHIFT-Clicking as regular clicking.
- FIXED: unliving walls do not become permanent blockers after saving and re-loading the game
- FIXED: stacked necronomiconomics penalties prevent the player from disabling his other buffs
- FIXED: right-clicking, off turn, causes left-clicking behaviours.
- FIXED: infinitely long Diggle health bars
- FIXED: monsters not dying when affected by buffs that reduce their HP (acid burn, etc.)
- FIXED: the Jingly Jangly Staff of Crystals now requires alchemy instead of smithing.
- FIXED: monsters who are stunned or asleep can no longer dodge, block, or counter-attack.
- FIXED: blank pedestal spawning in the Tomb of the Unknown Hero
- FIXED: some items becoming stackable after you put them in crafting tools.
- FIXED: potion stacking stops working after you save, reload, and put it in a craft tool.
- FIXED: vampirism causing haywire (or crit buffs); normal spellcasting NOT haywiring
- FIXED: bad text in wand, potions tutorials
- FIXED: KRONG text no longer mentions crafting skill
- FIXED: starting part of Monster Zoo music wasn't playing
- FIXED: This Translation Is All Wrong! wasn't clearing damage effects on weapons, causing massive damage stacks
- FIXED: a number of spells were not correctly applying blasting damage (Thor's Fulminaric Bolt, for instance.)
- FIXED: lockpicks now auto-loot. (Always.)
- FIXED: Vampires are no longer told to (eat food to regain health.) (Now they must dreeenk blaht.)
- FIXED: double (bad weapon) penalties.
- FIXED: a bunch of monster inheritance issues.
- FIXED: crash on fullscreen with OS X 10.7
- NERF: Using a wand now disables invisibility effects.
- NERF: The Obvious Fireball has been Nerfed more obviously than the last un-obvious Nerf.
- NERF: This Translation Is All Wrong! now enacts a Terrible Price. Also, we got to make another Marcus Brody joke.
- Monsters have an expanded vocabulary.
- The Bony Wand is now not quite as awful.
- Lord Dredmor is now nastier.
- Added craftable thrown weapons.
- Added slightly more informative vending machine tooltips.
- Game renders all text using UTF-8 internally, for the Japanese Translation teams. (Ganbatte!)
- Upped Pyrokinesis damage.
- Made acid traps marginally less deadly.
- Added some magic resistance to a skill line. We don't remember which one, you'll have to figure it out.
- Fixed zorkmid scaling drop rate.
- Changed graveyard text so people no longer think their scores are negative.
- Weapon and armour stats have been given some more love.
- Elven Ingot Grinder is now affected by alchemy, not smithing or tinkering
- Alchemists now start with an Ingot Grinder, giving them more rubbish than any other class.
- Heavy armour now reduces piercing damage (and thus might actually be useful.)
- Heavy armour now also reduces your nimbleness.
- Added a new annoyance to Floor 10.

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