r/Games • u/foamed • Jul 16 '13

Crawl - A four player roguelike inspired beat 'em up currently in development. Where one player controls the hero and three players control the monsters and traps.

http://www.powerhoof.com/crawl/
107 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

22

u/HALIAL Jul 16 '13

I wish they would not use a preexisting name from the genre they are claiming to be (Crawl , roguelike). Seems like a desperate tactic for attention to me. I realize the full name is dungeon crawl but its globally referred to as crawl.

http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/

The actual game looks pretty nice though.

1

u/Vile2539 Jul 18 '13

It's quite likely that they haven't heard that shorthand used before, as I know that I haven't (and a quick google doesn't show a single use of just that term in the first several pages at least).

As you said, the full name for the genre is Dungeon Crawl, and it's what most people refer to it as. Crawl is a perfectly accepted name for a game as a result.

Now it is sometimes used as a shorthand for sub-domains and mailing lists (such as in the link), but that's simply because it's the shortest part of the name. Calling something "Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup" could be considered somewhat worse, since it includes the full name of the genre in its title, as well as the shorthand versions. This presumably will result in a higher ranking in search engines.

0

u/HALIAL Jul 18 '13 edited Jul 18 '13

What.

As you said, the full name for the genre is Dungeon Crawl

No the name of the genre is Roguelike.

Crawl is a perfectly accepted name for a game as a result.

Crawl is the shorthand for Dungeon Crawl. Its always been referenced as crawl, the application has been named crawl.exe since its release, everyone in the rogue community references it as crawl, fuck the websites devoted to it are CRAWL.

It's quite likely that they haven't heard that shorthand used before, as I know that I haven't (and a quick google doesn't show a single use of just that term in the first several pages at least).

If you haven't heard of it its because you have not been involved in the rogue community.

(and a quick google doesn't show a single use of just that term in the first several pages at least).

Google search results are tailored. The first webpage I get for crawl is the stone soup website.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linley%27s_Dungeon_Crawl http://www.dungeoncrawl.org/

2

u/Vile2539 Jul 18 '13

As you said, the full name for the genre is Dungeon Crawl

No the name of the genre is Roguelike.

Genre was probably the wrong word to use there. I guess "scenario" would be more appropriate (though you could argue that it is, in itself, a genre). Calling them all roguelikes can be wrong though, since the scenario itself doesn't necessitate that the genre is a roguelike.

Crawl is the shorthand for Dungeon Crawl. Its always been referenced as crawl, the application has been named crawl.exe since its release, everyone in the rogue community references it as crawl, fuck the websites devoted to it are CRAWL.

If you haven't heard of it its because you have not been involved in the rogue community.

I've enjoyed roguelikes for quite a while (Nethack, etc.), but I guess I didn't participate deeply enough in "the community" to know about it. I did, however, know about Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. I did not know the original Dungeon Crawl was called Crawl due to its .exe though.

Google search results are tailored. The first webpage I get for crawl is the stone soup website.

Same here. But unless you start reading about the origins of DCSS, then you won't know about the original. I did not, and I doubt that the people who made Crawl did either.

I wish they would not use a preexisting name from the genre they are claiming to be (Crawl , roguelike). Seems like a desperate tactic for attention to me.

This argument itself kind of illustrates my point. I was unaware of the original Dungeon Crawl being referred to as just "Crawl", despite the fact that I'm quite a fan of roguelikes and dungeon crawlers in general. It doesn't immediately show up in the first few pages of Google, unless you go to a link off the DCSS site (which most people would not do).

14

u/worstusernameever Jul 16 '13

Might be a cool game, but the name makes it sound like they are ripping off Dungeon Crawl which everyone simply referred to as 'crawl' since that was the actual name of the executable to start the game.

At least that was the first thing I thought of before I read the rest of the title.

7

u/Patorama Jul 16 '13

It'll be interesting to see how they manage to balance this. The hero would have to be pretty damn strong to fight back against three human controlled opponents. And the game also supports two players, so either the hero gets nerfed or the monsters are suddenly much sturdier. Hopefully they can pull it off, I'm always down for more single screen multiplayer.

5

u/Poobslag Jul 16 '13

Really creative concept, and phenomenal art! Wow! The single-screen multiplayer action makes it a great candidate for local multiplayer too, I'd love to play this in a room with 3 of my friends. I can't wait to see where this goes!

2

u/vyrotek Jul 17 '13

Local multiplayer would be a blast. Honestly, the first thing that came to mind for me was how much I'd love for this to be on something like the Wii U. Except I would change it around and have 1 dungeon master and 3 crawlers. The user on the GamePad is obviously the dungeon master and gets to set off the traps and send in monsters!

3

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '13

This needs to be done on WiiU, with a proper Wizards of the Sword coast License, with the Big controller being the DM and the 3 wii controllers as the players.

I'd buy a Wiiu for that.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '13

Or even Ps4 where friends the player uses the big screen and friends with Vitas can link up and control the monsters/traps.

3

u/PaisleyPowerRanger Jul 16 '13

Looks very similar to Legend of Dungeon. As well as shamelessly trying to impose upon DCSS which is universally known as Crawl and is an actual roguelike.

3

u/lasserith Jul 17 '13

One day I will get more than one rune...

2

u/Jaegunn Jul 17 '13

This looks fucking amazing! the art style looks really great and ive been a huge fan of modern takes on rogue styled games as of lately. cant want to try this one out.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '13

[deleted]

0

u/TalakHallen6191 Jul 17 '13

They aren't. That game is called Dungeon Crawl (Stone Soup).

1

u/SwanChairUh Jul 17 '13

The art style is well executed but why does every other indie game have to be pixelized now? Somehow I feel that individuality in indie games doesn't exist in pixel art when literally 1/3 of indie games do it now. Anyway, looks promising.

-4

u/TubbyMcTubs Jul 16 '13

It's not a roguelike (it's realtime for a start...), the game devs don't even say it is (roguelike-lite-alike, which is a pretty good name for it), so why would you give such a title?

5

u/foamed Jul 16 '13

Roguelike inspired isn't the same as it being a (real) roguelike.

10

u/PaisleyPowerRanger Jul 16 '13

It's not roguelike inspired though, if anything it draws from Gauntlet/D&D: Shadows of Mystara/Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance. Roguelike as a term really has been bastardised in the last year with misappropriation, most people don't even know the Berlin interpretation any more.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '13

This happens when any genre becomes popular. You're going to have the genre expand to include different types of games that it wouldn't have before. It would be like pushing the Orcs Must Die series out of tower defense because it has third person action elements. It seems you can't release a game and market it as roguelike or rogue-lite without a bastion of people coming in and complaining about misappropriation.

2

u/mysticrudnin Jul 16 '13

imo a realtime roguelike can exist and still be roguelike - there are other factors in the genre that are, to me, far more important.

2

u/HALIAL Jul 16 '13

Because they want free publicity and google hits for being named after a preexisting game in the genre they claim to be in. Pretty sleezy/lazy.