Ascii Dreams

Competition 117

2012-01-25T12:41:00.000+11:00

The Angband competition is featuring an Unangband Dwarf Priest for its 117th iteration.

Diablo III pull quote

2012-01-21T20:46:00.002+11:00

We want to drop a ton of items, but to really pull off a sense of excitement when finding a great item, there needs to be non-optimal items, both for your class, and in general.

Another Angband variant

2012-01-04T12:42:00.002+11:00

Sil attempts to move the game closer to the source material.

Action roguelike watch 2012

2012-01-03T13:32:00.002+11:00

The latest developer to jump on the 'I want to be popular and make a lot of money developing a roguelike' bandwagon is one Notch.

Full Results for the Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2011

2011-12-27T14:20:00.001+11:00

I thought we'd reached a high point last year with the number of votes: this year had nearly three times as many. Thank you to all 2937 of you who came here to vote for your favourite roguelike. Remember, in many ways the point of this poll is not to see who is the winner, but to see what games might be worth playing. If you step outside the winners circle and those games which merited an honourable mention, there are still a huge number of roguelikes which warrant a play if you've not done so already.

transmission...	1 (0%)
100 Rogues	28 (0%)
3079	8 (0%)
3D/2D dungeon crawl	4 (0%)
7DRL PUZZLE CHALLENGE	1 (0%)
7DRLCC	1 (0%)
91	3 (0%)
A Little Anxious When It's Dark	1 (0%)
Adventurer	5 (0%)
Alamut	3 (0%)
AlfaRogue	1 (0%)
Allure of the Stars	4 (0%)
Anauroch	2 (0%)
Angband	68 (2%)
Anylo's Roguelike	1 (0%)
Ascii Sector	37 (1%)
Avendesora	1 (0%)
Bardess	2 (0%)
The Binding of Isaac	199 (6%)
Block Rogue	5 (0%)
BOSS	4 (0%)
Brogue	240 (8%)
Broken Bottle	35 (1%)
Bushudo	1 (0%)
ButtonHack	2 (0%)
Cardinal Quest	68 (2%)
Cataclysm	170 (5%)
Caves of Qud	87 (2%)
Chompy!	1 (0%)
Clarion	4 (0%)
Crawl Light	6 (0%)
Cypress Tree Manor	1 (0%)
DaJAngband	5 (0%)
Deep Realms Heroes	2 (0%)
Defender of the Deep	12 (0%)
Demonhunt	9 (0%)
Descension	2 (0%)
Desktop Dungeons	391 (13%)
Destiny of Heroes	3 (0%)
Detribus	2 (0%)
Devil MIGHT Laugh	2 (0%)
Diabololical Dungeons of Dr Devil	1 (0%)
Diggr	18 (0%)
DoomRL: Doom, the Roguelike	178 (6%)
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup	486 (16%)
Dungeon Maker	3 (0%)
DungeonRL	3 (0%)
Dungeons of Decay	1 (0%)
Dungeons of Dredmor	612 (20%)
Dwarf Fortress	373 (12%)
Dwarftown	4 (0%)
Dweller	17 (0%)
Elite International Detective	1 (0%)
EmoSquid	3 (0%)
Eracia	0 (0%)
Escape from the Master's Lair	1 (0%)
Expedition	17 (0%)
Exploring The Bleak	1 (0%)
FAangband	23 (0%)
Fall From Heaven	11 (0%)
Free-Like	0 (0%)
Gauntlet	0 (0%)
Geiger A.D. '42	0 (0%)
GhostbustersAscii	2 (0%)
GnomeSquad	2 (0%)
Goblin Camp	38 (1%)
Grand Rogue Auto	4 (0%)
Gridfolk	0 (0%)
Hack 'n Slash Online	0 (0%)
Happy Ever After	0 (0%)
Harrowed	0 (0%)
Hordes of Tarshish	0 (0%)
Hydra Slayer	11 (0%)
Hyperbolic Rogue	11 (0%)
Ignite	12 (0%)
Infra Arcana	62 (2%)
Into the Dungeon	12 (0%)
Inversion of Control	5 (0%)
JADE	431 (14%)
js-like	4 (0%)
JSRL	0 (0%)
Kepler	0 (0%)
Kharne	0 (0%)
kusemono	4 (0%)
Labyrinths & Legends	1 (0%)
The Lair of Xar	2 (0%)
LambdaHack	1 (0%)
LambdaRogue	23 (0%)
LarnHD	4 (0%)
Legacy	1 (0%)
Legacy of a Warlord	2 (0%)
Legends of Yore	94 (3%)
Legerdemain	24 (0%)
Liberal Crime Squad	25 (0%)
Light7DRL	0 (0%)
Lost Labyrinth	9 (0%)
LumberjackRL	3 (0%)
Mad Mage	2 (0%)
MageGuild	8 (0%)
MAGHD	1 (0%)
Magicko	4 (0%)
Magog	3 (0%)
The Man in the Mirror	6 (0%)
Microcosm	1 (0%)
Middlecrest	3 (0%)
The Moor	0 (0%)
Monster Slayer Show	5 (0%)
MonsterEnthrallerRL	0 (0%)
Mysterious Castle	3 (0%)
NarwhaRL	1 (0%)
Neon	2 (0%)
NetPack	8 (0%)
Netwhack	2 (0%)
NLarn	7 (0%)
NPPAngband	20 (0%)
PabloQuest	2 (0%)
Piraten	0 (0%)
Pitman Krumb	5 (0%)
PM:theRL	0 (0%)
Portralis - NewAngband	10 (0%)
POWDER	66 (2%)
PRIME	2 (0%)
Prospector RL	49 (1%)
PWMAngband	5 (0%)
pYendor	0 (0%)
Pyromancer	6 (0%)
Quest for the Unicorn	0 (0%)
Quickband	13 (0%)
Random Realms	1 (0%)
Rayel	9 (0%)
Regicide!	0 (0%)
RevivedHack	0 (0%)
Rings of Valor	6 (0%)
Rising Force	1 (0%)
Rogue - The Cardlike	1 (0%)
Rogue Assassin	6 (0%)
Rogue Project 2	0 (0%)
Rogue Survivor	49 (1%)
Rogue Zombies	3 (0%)
RogueDungeons	0 (0%)
Roguelike GCS	1 (0%)
Roguestar	0 (0%)
RogueUnlike	0 (0%)
roguezombies	2 (0%)
Rook	6 (0%)
Run from the Shadow	9 (0%)
S.C.O.U.R.G.E. 2	1 (0%)
Serial Killer	7 (0%)
Siegfried	7 (0%)
Silence	0 (0%)
SilverQuest	2 (0%)
Skills Angband - Sangband	12 (0%)
The Slimy Lichmummy	20 (0%)
SRL	0 (0%)
SRogue	0 (0%)
Stellar Edge	1 (0%)
Storming the Ship	0 (0%)
Stygia	2 (0%)
Temple of Vengeance	1 (0%)
Through	1 (0%)
ToME 4	702 (23%)
TomeNET	16 (0%)
Traction Edge	0 (0%)
Triangle Wizard	39 (1%)
Twelve Hours	2 (0%)
unnamed	0 (0%)
Unnamed Angband - UnAngband	31 (1%)
UnNetHack	32 (1%)
UnReal World	79 (2%)
Untitled	1 (0%)
Vapors of Insanity	6 (0%)
Vicious Orcs	20 (0%)
Voyage to Farland	4 (0%)
Warudo	1 (0%)
WebRaidMobile	0 (0%)
Wordrogue	1 (0%)
World of Tey	6 (0%)
X@COM	90 (3%)
XirrelaiRPG	1 (0%)

Honourable Mentions for Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2011

2011-12-27T14:19:00.003+11:00

Three games had more votes than were required to win last year's roguelike of the year: Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, JADE and Desktop Dungeons, with Dwarf Fortress needing only 12 votes to do the same.

Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup is a previous winner which has continued to improve year on year.

JADE should be seen as the newcomer this year, although Thomas Biskup's pedigree as the designer of ADOM ensures that his next game was always going to receive a lot of attention.

Desktop Dungeons is a challenging puzzle roguelike now in an extended beta, and looking forward to a commercial release next year.

Dwarf Fortress is a previous winner, with the next release looking to fulfil more of the potential of its roguelike adventure mode.

All up, an incredible 10 roguelikes got more than 150 votes, those I've already mentioned as well as The Binding of Isaac, Brogue, Cataclysm and DoomRL: Doom, the Roguelike. The fact that so many roguelikes got so many votes shows the strength of the genre.

Runner up for Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2011: Dungeons of Dredmor

2011-12-27T14:01:00.001+11:00

The eyebrows have it.

Dungeons of Dredmor has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that it is possible to release a commercially successful roguelike in 2011. At the time development on this game started it must have felt like a leap of faith, but the humour and character-filled visual design of the game have proven to be not just a successful gateway drug to other roguelikes, but hugely popular in its own right.

For many hardened roguelike players, Dredmor feels like a roguelike, simplified, and this has proven to be a divisive issue, but that view ignores the smart decisions behind the unique skill system, which encourages you to tweak your character build every time you see the 'Congratulations. You have died.' game over screen. It also ignores the fact that a simpler roguelike is exactly what is needed to bring the pleasures of the genre to a wider audience, and that Dredmor gets the user interface right in a way that many seemingly complicated roguelikes have been unable to do.

And then there is the continued post-release support, and the fact the game is priced so ridiculously low, that make it hard not to recommend you go out and buy it.

You can get Dungeons of Dredmor on Steam (PC + OSX) or Desura (PC + Linux), read the developers blog and visit the forums.

Winner of Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2011: T.o.M.E. 4

2011-12-27T13:39:00.003+11:00

Last year's winner has returned.

T.o.M.E. 4 has fended off commercial roguelikes (Dungeons of Dredmor), previous winners (Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup) and new entrants (JADE) to win roguelike of the year for the second consecutive year, becoming at the same time the first roguelike to win more than once. Congratulations to DarkGod and his team for making such a great game and the T.o.M.E. 4 community for rallying around it.

With an incredible number of releases this year, it now features a beautiful tile set designed by Shockbolt, one of the most advanced user interfaces of any roguelike and a friendly community welcoming to new players.

Roguelike Radio will be featuring T.o.M.E. 4 for the first episode in 2012.

You can download ToME here and visit the forums and read the wiki here.

A small example of why programmers can't do UI design

2011-12-27T07:18:00.001+11:00

The quiver is a user interface feature in later versions of Angband which allows you to carry multiple stacks of ammunition more easily, without having to dedicate one inventory slot to each different type of ammunition. As a part of this, it automatically assigns a number key to each stack, so you can select the first stack by pressing 0, the second stack by pressing 1 and so on...

Wait a sec.

The first stack by pressing 0?

Well, as it turns out, the quiver was designed by programmers, not UI designers. The problem here is that the character encoding used is ASCII, which assigns character codes for the numeric keys from 0 to 9, not from 1 to 0. So the elegant programming solution is to figure out the character code by subtracting the value for 0 from the actual number typed in to determine which number is used. This 'elegant' solution puts 0 first. Not only that, but for various reasons (e.g. array indexes) programmers are used to counting from 0.

This is despite the fact that every single person involved in the design of the quiver, the various reimplementations across multiple variants, and pretty much every single person who has played using the quiver has the number keys running across the top of their keyboard in the order 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0.

Holidays

2011-12-26T20:02:00.002+11:00

If you're going to release a new version of your game, don't do it just before you go on holiday.

I've seen at least 2 roguelikes fall into this trap this year...

(Oh, and Merry Xmas).

Fighting words

2011-12-24T21:01:00.001+11:00

I may have started something.

I've switched to moderated comments for the moment

2011-12-23T23:28:00.000+11:00

Due to incessant comments about how awesome Dungeon of Dredmor is.

Seriously, you should stop praising the game that much.

(Oh, and the Binding of Isaac fan boys. Just crazy.)

Because there are not enough lists of that sort of thing

2011-12-23T12:37:00.002+11:00

This stuff is gold for procedural generation.

Help wanted (svn2git)

2011-12-23T10:59:00.003+11:00

berlios.de is shutting down at the end of the year, which means I need to migrate to alternative hosting like github.

Unfortunately, I don't have a computer with an OS capable of running git* (I've got Vista, and OSX 10.4), which means I can't run svn2git to convert the repository across. So I was wondering if anyone wants to volunteer to do the conversion to save me having to spend a day or two downloading then building a virtual Linux box then going through the package shuffle. From my brief understanding of git, I believe I can then clone your git repository (put it on github) and make the clone the 'official' version.

Warning: Unangband's SVN repository is 'quite large'. The Github online SVN conversion tool notes that the conversion process may time out for large repositories. When I've attempted to use this tool, it appears to take too long (at least an hour) simply trying to get the list of subversion authors.

* I'm using egit which is the Eclipse implementation running on top of jgit. If anyone has done a jgit based svn2git conversion, please let me know.

[Edit: Thanks for the quick responses. I've got someone running an svn2git conversion now...]

IndieGames.com top ten

2011-12-17T20:44:00.000+11:00

IndieGames.com has released their list of top ten independent games for the year. Dungeons of Dredmor is in 6th place. The Binding of Isaac is in 2nd place.

Congratulations to the developers of both roguelikes.

His year in roguelikes

2011-12-16T07:54:00.000+11:00

For those of you undecided about which roguelike to vote for, you may want to see Adam Smith's recommendations over at Rock Paper Shotgun.

Request for votes: Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2011

2011-12-13T13:11:00.004+11:00

185 roguelikes have qualified this year: that's a different roguelike being released less than every two days, and yet again, another record number (116 last year).

How did the roguelikes qualify?

The list was taken from the roguelike releases announced on the Rogue Basin news section between December 16th 2010 and December 12th 2011 and from the list of Actively Developing Roguelikes maintained by Michał Bieliński. From this year, I'll also be including any roguelike which has been discussed on Roguelike Radio and released this year, but otherwise wasn't included in the above list. I've done this to include two notable games (Dungeons of Dredmor and the Binding of Isaac), which would not otherwise have qualified.

What about 'x'?

Make sure you announced your roguelike on Rogue Basin for next year.

What about the 7 day roguelikes?

I decided to exclude any 7 day roguelikes that weren't announced separately. However, most of them were on Michał Bieliński's list.

What's the prize?

Pride. And a sexy logo - if you want one. You can see the winning 2007 logo on the Dwarf Fortress links page. Other winners are free to request them, but haven't done so. Logo designs for this year are welcome.

Having a competition is a dumb idea/offensive/stupid when you can't police the results.

Yep. Doesn't stop it being fun. You can vote for multiple different roguelikes. The idea here is that you will be encouraged to go out and download a roguelike that other people consider interesting, not that there is any kind of real competition element involved.

Occult Chronicles roguelike

2011-12-02T08:42:00.000+11:00

You may remember from a recent episode of Roguelike Radio that I speculated that Vic Davies of Forgotten Lore was working on a roguelike but his next game, Occult Chronicles, wasn't that game. It turns out I was wrong. It is.

Nice @

2011-11-27T18:49:00.001+11:00

Rumour has it Robin Walker has offered something similar for the Nethack dev team if they release a new version of NetHack.

Their response was 'You first.'

Video Game Awards

2011-11-17T18:09:00.000+11:00

The Binding of Isaac has been nominated for the VGA Independent Game for 2011. This isn't the first time a roguelike has picked up a major award, but you should totally go vote for it.

(And a big congratulations to Edmund).

Isaac Unbound

2011-11-08T00:05:00.000+11:00

The recent discussion of the Binding of Isaac at Rock, Paper, Shotgun features yet another thread discussing whether games which are like roguelikes should be called roguelike-likes - as I've suggested previously. The term 'roguelike-like' appears to be incredibly polarising, which is why I'm drawn to it, but calling the Binding of Isaac a roguelike-like does the game a disservice: it is a roguelike, just one which is real time and with graphics. There's the three key ingredients I look for in a roguelike: an inventory system with emergent interaction between items, monsters and terrain, procedural generation and permadeath; but Isaac has other roguelike elements missing from the likes of Spelunky or Desktop Dungeons, such as an identification system and positional combat (including the Angband staple: pillar dancing). Alec Meer in discusing the game suggests the term 'arcade roguelike' which I'm a lot more comfortable with in this instance.

The Binding of Isaac is also influenced by the Legend of Zelda, but when I've written about a procedural Zelda, I've always been referring to the puzzle dungeons which Brian Walker effectively recreates in Brogue, rather than the top down screen by screen rooms which Isaac features. Playing this game briefly draws me into an alternate dimension, where Shigeru Miyamoto was inspired as much by Rogue as the caves he explored as a boy, a universe filled with procedurally created stories instead of the linear narratives we favoured here (the only person to have crossed successfully in the other direction being one Tarn Adams). There is nothing here technically or game design wise which couldn't have been implemented in the original Zelda, and the Binding of Isaac is a superb example of how the ideas of Rogue can be extended and built on in another direction again. Discussing the game play is an exercise for another day, but I'll note here that Isaac has 131 item drops, plus 22 tarot cards of the Major Arcana and 17 pills, not to mention hearts, keys, soul hearts, coins, and bombs, and the game does not suffer from too much junk - a triumph of design.

But to enjoy the game, you have to overcome its greatest obstacle: Isaac's theme, which appears at first to be an off-putting combination of religion, child abuse and toilet humour. I was prepared completely to dismiss this game with some snide remarks ('so have you read the book it's based on?') and a few choice observations about misogyny and instead find myself contemplating the Binding of Isaac as my possible game of the year, and wondering why no one on the Internet has thought to write critically about the themes it uses.

I should point out in the interests of full disclosure that this game may speak to me more strongly than most because of the position I'm in, and not just from the roguelike perspective. I'm the full time stay at home father of 9 month old twins; so the idea of crying away piles of poo is closer to my everyday experience than the typical gamer. I'm also a huge horror fan, a result of working in a video store in the 90s, so moaning, empty eye socketed meat puppets are quite low on my disturbance scale. Having said that, this blog is called Ascii Dreams because of the phenomenon resulting from playing too much roguelikes invading your sleep, and the dreams that occur after even the short amount of time spent playing the Binding of Isaac are vivid to say the least.

I strongly believe if you put off playing this game because you are worried about the thematic content, you are making an understandable but unfortunate mistake. The Binding of Isaac is not about religion, child abuse or poop, as much as it is about the hysteria of satanic ritual abuse, the mythology of modern childhood and the totemic power of game play. And even if it isn't ultimately my game of the year (in a year which has featured Terraria, Brogue and Spacechem, and Crysis even), it is so far my most important.

Satanic ritual abuse was the widespread moral panic that there was systemic Satanic and occult physical and sexual abuse of children in the late 80s and early 90s - as a result of now discredited therapeutic and interrogation techniques particularly of children. While it should not be confused with actual child abuse, which is prevalent but not systemic, or instances of actual systemic and institutionalised neglect and abuse, the Binding of Isaac deliberately conflates the two, so that the abused and neglected Isaac gains access to diabolic upgrades and deals with the devil, by building on the same conflation and moral panic that conventional media presented stories of satanic ritual abuse, and the extremely rare, but incredibly widely reported instances of child kidnapping, imprisonment and torture in bespoke basements similar to the dungeon presented in the game. In fact, the Binding of Isaac is more truthful than the mainstream media, in that almost all instances of child abuse are intra-familial, in this case, a consequence of untreated mental illness (schizophrenia) in the family.

In a society where we're prepared to let more than 95% of rapists walk free without being successfully prosecuted, we have a bizarre fascination with the incredibly unlikely event of stranger initiated abduction of children. Child abduction is primarily an issue of contested child custody, and child abuse is most frequent from someone known to the child, but we do not choose to warn our children that we are the most danger to them rather than a (non-)relative stranger. The Binding of Isaac here serves as a cautionary story in the tradition of Grimm's fairy tales, as a counter balance to the myth of abductor-captor as other. Isaac serves as a macabre narrator, documenting his deaths, in childlike writing and pictures, and feigning that he will die if the player leaves the game (in reality, a sop to avoiding having to save the in game state), but his voice frames the whole game and not ironically undercut in any way.

A childhood fascination with death and mortality is as conventional as Stand by Me. And notably, as the Brothers Grimm made their collection of stories increasingly child friendly, they did so by removing sexual references and increasing the level of violence. The virtual Isaac is in no more real danger when we play the game, than any child play acting out cowboys and Indians, for how can a picture of a child be in any kind of danger at all. Of course, we have criminalized some pictures of children, and Isaac is noticeably, but abstractly naked.

I've seen Edmund McMillen accused of misogyny - an easy target for a developer who has released a game called Cunt - but the Binding of Isaac doesn't feel misogynistic. Instead, the choice of Isaac's mother as the atagonist feels simply lazy, a conventional and boring genre decision. Which is a shame, because the Biblical story offers a chance to explore the complex relationship between fathers and sons, rather than the horror movie cliche of mad, estranged mothers. The movie Frailty, starring Bill Paxton, is an exploration of schizophrenia, the Bible and fathers and sons, that could have been one source of inspiration here. If the Binding of Isaac is misogynistic, it is merely because the source material it draws from, religion and horror movies are - in a simple reading - although the reality is more complex (Horror has a tradition of heroines which few other genres match). Change Mom to Dad and the Womb levels to Prost(r)ate levels would have little impact on the overall game - except some item drops would leave Isaac's father a cross-dresser or require some manly alternatives.

The Binding of Isaac does highlight how poor Hollywood is at representing childhood. One of the first things that struck me when looking after my own children was how little media I could draw on to understand their needs - in fact, the closest analogy to a real living helpless child I could think of was the zombie baby in Braindead (another movie with mother as monster), as a way of thinking about their restless, helpless energy. The absurd intra-level vignettes are contrasted with the touching, piteous, huddled Isaac crying as he is thrust into a new level to be explored - much as a real child can be overwhelmed by the new and unusual.

What lifts the Binding of Isaac above horror movie cliche and 'significant' themes, is the thematic interaction between the protagonist and the items he finds in the game. Pickups are expressed in either terms of their relationship to Isaac (Sister Maggy, distant admiration) or as a singular object that Isaac must have encountered (the Bible, not a Bible), or both (Dead Cat (Guppy)). More importantly, in the context of playing as a child in a world defined by childish wants and fears, the relationship between an item and its game mechanic is exposed for what it is, an arbitrary rule defined by one child (the game designer) in relationship to another (the player), much as two children playing together negotiate the rules of a game. The random drops from game to game are the toys that happen to be the closest to the playing area, each map the way they are strewn about, procedural generation as a virtual sandbox. Playing the Binding of Isaac exposes the elemental nature of game play as a child's endeavour, Isaac is as much a childlike game as it is a roguelike one.

It is the context of poo, and tears, and toilet humour, that forced me to think like a child and broke down my relationship between the game and myself so that I could see all game mechanics for what they are. A +1 sword is only significant in a certain way because of the years of accreted adult 'wisdom'. Whereas Max's Head is what Edmund McMillen decides it is, and I can either agree it is useful in this playground or ignore it; but nothing in the presentation of the game forces me to take this item seriously. It brings to mind the titular Wasp Factory, a death trap maze for de-winged insects which a similarly disconnected child uses for prognostication. The rules of this death trap maze are random and capricious in a way that only a child playing can be.

Roguelike Radio - Episode update

2011-11-02T17:09:00.000+11:00

We're doing so many episodes and interviews for Roguelike Radio, I'm not going to bother post updates to the blog any more - it's getting too hard to keep up. I'm just going to repeat a comment I made on that site:

I think it is worth pointing out in the last 2 months we have recorded and released 12 separate podcasts (9 episodes and 3 interviews, not counting the spoilers bonus content for 100 Rogues). That's an absolutely incredible amount of output. We need to pat ourselves on the back.

Of course, we've released another episode since then, and are in the process of lining up at least one more interview... and it's been my week off.

Off to the Fortress

2011-10-30T13:43:00.000+11:00

For some light reading, you may want to refer to the recent controversy of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup removing mountain dwarves from the game.

Man up

2011-10-27T09:53:00.001+11:00

Critics who deserve respect:

Critics who do not deserve respect:

The first rule of Band club

2011-10-25T10:04:00.001+11:00

[9:37:22 AM] Andrew Doull: its probably a good thing i had babies screaming at the time that jeff was talking about his ultimate roguelike

[9:37:53 AM] Andrew Doull: because i didn't want to point out that'd explain the fermi paradox

[9:38:24 AM] darrenjohngrey: Uh... it would?

[9:39:08 AM] Andrew Doull: millions of civilisations not travelling into space because someone writes a game too good to not spend every second playing it :)

[9:39:26 AM] darrenjohngrey: (New RL idea - FermiRogue, where you fight an evil Fermi and his various subatomic particles)

[9:39:59 AM] darrenjohngrey: I don't think RLs will ever achieve that :P

[9:40:09 AM] Andrew Doull: don't be so sure

[9:40:51 AM] Andrew Doull: now would be about the time to explain i belong to a secret centuries old organisation dedicated to preventing such a thing from happening

[9:40:59 AM] Andrew Doull: but of course, no such organisation exists

[9:41:06 AM] darrenjohngrey: Ah, hence your support for band mechanics!

[9:41:12 AM] Andrew Doull: :)

[9:41:14 AM] darrenjohngrey: Trying to make the whole genre unpopular ;P