I'm not really sure what this is doing on Hacker News, but the game (Shattered Pixel Dungeon) is fun.
One of the nicest features is that whenever you observe an effect that unambiguously tells you what a potion/scroll does - such as throwing a potion - that type of object is automatically identified for you. In more "traditional" hack games you'd have to write notes yourself even though obviously a thrown potion exploding into fire means it's a potion of liquid fire, right?
Shattered Pixel is a good way to kill some time on public transit or similar.
Only in the most obvious of cases. Your cat reluctantly steps on an item? Cursed. Grey stone moved less than X tiles when kicked? Loadstone. Hundreds of these.
Some, but not all. For example, "Call a white potion:" or "Call a scroll labeled VE FORBRYDERNE:" prompts. These often appear after observing an effect where an experienced player or one consulting spoilers knows what the potion or scroll must be, but the game didn't auto-ID it.
> I'm not really sure what this is doing on Hacker News
Incredibly fun game, open source, and in a genre that likely fits well into many HN users' interests. I rediscovered it recently and remembered it was open source, so why not submit it?
The title should include a [year], to save people like me from needing to check if anything significant changed in the game that made me miss half of a trip to Thailand in 2014.
I think the open source part is the main justification. Getting kids into tech and programming seems a HN sort of article, and an open source game is one way of doing it. Much more advanced than the entry level things like Scratch Jr. and not nearly as wide spread an audience, but a great step around the high school level for the few who wants to get deeper without committing to some formal education.
I saw this post and immediately thought “there’s probably a lot of potential trad roguelike fans on hacker news”, for one thing it’s probably the genre with highest percentage of fans are devs or have dabbled into game dev.
SPD is a good gateway to brogue, DCSS, cogmind, qud, etc
It's not a roguelike really, but Brogue was my gateway to CDDA (Catalysm: Dark Days Ahead). Not sure if I've lost more of my life to one of those or to Slay the Spire. I don't regret it one bit.
Been meaning to get into Cogmind (which seems even more aesthetically appealing than Brogue) and Caves of Qud, but I have children now, and must wait until they are of age before re-engaging with such things.
Brogue was my introduction to the genre. I also tried Golden Krone Hotel, a beginner-friendly title (and the first one I beat)! I played CoQ for a while, too, but there's something about Cogmind that clicked with me. I'm not very good at it, but it's a _total_ blast.
And I agree with you -- it is, imo, the most beautiful roguelike that I've seen or played. And it's got hundreds of unique sound effects, too, which makes a huge difference.
I've thought about CDDA, but honestly, the amount of material there is intimidating. But it looks very cool.
These games are indeed dangerous! I don't have kids, but I'm still in school, so I have to be careful. When you have some time, definitely give Cogmind a try. Hope you enjoy it!
Cogmind is a lot of really thought out small touches that sum up to an engaging experience despite at first glance looking like any other roguelike. It's got great animations/explosions and an intuitive UI.
The developer is the main mod of r/roguelikedev, has been running a great blog for years where he dives deep into aspects of roguelike dev (https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/), and is also just a wonderful human who genuinely loves supporting the community and playing roguelike games.
Sure, CDDA is a roguelike -- the word was supposed to mean primarily a specific way of controlling the character, introduced in Rogue. Everybody in the roguelike community calls it a roguelike.
The fun part is trying to identify certain items before actually using them. (The guesses won't always be perfect, but you can greatly improve your odds.)
Skyrim had that mechanic. You could eat ingredients for potions and if you had a duplicate it would tell you the effects, and the next time you found the ingredient again you would know what it was.
There is one raw ingredient in Skyrim which will kill the player. But it can't be found in the wild. It's given to you for a Dark Brotherhood quest. But you don't have to use it in the quest. Can keep it for later use.
DCSS does; NetHack sometimes does but there are very many cases in which you observe some effect and are then asked "Call a milky potion:" or "Call a scroll labeled ANDOVA BEGARIN:".
It would be nice if you could manually identity items though; sometimes the context you get a potion from tells you what the potion is but you have to remember that until you use it. Using the stones of intuition for this kind of seems wasteful.
It's reminding me I need to rebuild my very-slightly-modified version to keep my Google Play developer account active!
Shattered Pixel encourages variants and branches, though sometimes Google tries to block the blatant clones that want to publish on Google Play, even though the license and developers want that outcome.
On the other thread of "brutally punishing", there is the "Too Cruel" variant of an earlier version of Shattered for those of us who need more difficulty. PD is more like a long game of chess than a dungeon crawler.
This is cool, I love a good roguelike especially on my phone for flights and other time sinks.
I am curious though, why is the iOS version €4.99 but the Android version is free ? I've seen this a lot actually and have always wondered, I figured it might just be Apple's annual developer license fee but not sure.
Yep that's exactly the reason, plus not wanting to compete with Pixel Dungeon. The developer talked about it when first announcing it was coming to iOS
> Shattered Pixel Dungeon will cost $5 US when it fully releases on the App Store. I’m charging because of a mix of Apple’s higher platform fees, not wanting to undercut Pixel Dungeon, and because Shattered is releasing in a much more finished state.
Can’t shake the thought that this is mostly caused by Apple not allowing easy side installs. Android making it easy to just install a custom app but not on iOS so basically the developer is (ab)using to let iOS users pony up install money.
Excellent game, I lost an embarrassing amount of time last year getting all of the badges.
The mobile versions are great because they’re ad-free, and work without internet access when on airplanes. And since it’s turn-based, it’s very interruption-friendly. The Reddit community is also a lot of fun: equal mix of strategy and memes.
All of them? I gave up on that goal partway through the pandemic; I spent about a year's worth of occasional games without seeing Tengu and eventually accepted that I wasn't interested enough to get that 6-challenge badge.
Strategy on Reddit, you say? Perhaps that could help. But, perhaps it's better if I don't spelunk that particular rabbithole.
For the last badge, it wasn't masterful strategy: I played until I got lucky with an overpowered Ring of Wealth run, and farmed the dwarven floors for like 3 days before breezing through the demon halls and ascending. That one and only six challenge run landed with 1,050,700 points, which was just enough to get the final "Over 1 million points" badge.
That was the last round I played, almost a year ago. I consider myself free from the game now, but look back on it fondly :)
I love roguelike games (still miss you 100 Rogues), and I played Shattered Pixel Dungeon 77 times before finally winning with a Rogue class. Once I'd done that, I never had the urge to play it again.
Well, there goes the rest of the week. I don't install games on my phone, but I always give SPD a pass because open source. The first time I installed it, I almost lost an internship because I was too focused on the game. The most recent time I installed it, my wife thought I was cheating on her because I was acting so shady and obsessive about my phone. Don't say I didn't warn y'all.
If you only play open source mobile games and are afraid of wasting your time, make sure you avoid the factory tower defense game Mindustry which presents itself at https://mindustrygame.github.io/
Honestly though, Mindustry is so much better with keyboard/mouse controls. It's a shockingly good mobile factory/automation type game, but I'd just rather play it on PC. (Or Mac, which runs it fine)
Sure, but it's much harder to hide your laptop screen under the covers at 2am, back to spouse, shielding the light, keeping your secret safe. Plus, a screen tap is much quieter than a laptop k/m.
The crazy imaginative class selection in ToME (special shoutout to the chronomancer) easily makes it my go-to roguelike, but I do find I have trouble really feeling what the impact of my build choices are, although this is a common feeling with roguelikes - I probably feel it more in ToME because it feels like every level-up has a much broader decision space than most other roguelikes. Also that most enemies (at least early game) aren't a major challenge until you hit one that wrecks you.
Most of the time I go with "rule of cool", blaze ahead, and die somewhere around the time I get to the sandworm tunnels.
The farthest I ever got was what felt like the first real boss who just teleports you to <FUN> which came out of left field and my character in that run was _not_ prepared to handle that.
I'm still trying to beat it on normal difficulty. The farthest I got was first floors of the necromancer's tower, which is about 1/4 of the game AFAIK. I resist the temptation to try any add-on, there's so much fun without them.
That is why I am a fan of games that buff your character over repeated runs.
If more games did this, the difficulty slider could go away. As an added bonus, there is a satisfaction of getting to the point where you are so overpowered the game essentially breaks (see: vampire survivors)
I had the same issue and my solution was: I modified the code of the game to add cheats (make my character super durable), compiled it myself and loaded the apk onto my phone. Then I finally finished the game and my addiction ended.
Usually I try to avoid cheats but I use them it in situations where I either get badly addicted or where I notice that I'm losing a lot of time with repetitive grinding
I just play as an archer/warden. It's a pretty easy class, I can beat the game maybe one in five times. Once you get the nature footwear artifact you've as good as won, and if you get a blooming weapon then it's a cakewalk.
Sniper is easier in my opinion. If you find a ring of marksmanship, it becomes pretty trivial with the sniper's armor bypassing and tier upgrades to the bow.
I think anyone hunting for a first win should play as a huntress or mage. Ranged attacks are pretty overpowered in comparison to melee and don't require as much position play. And since both classes begin with their final weapon, you don't need to rely too much on the RNG to survive.
I never tried World of Warcraft years ago until that South Park episode came out. Currently about the only games I still play on my phone are chess and Plants vs Zombies 2, which for some reason has had me hooked since the very first one came out. Luckily, my wife likes it too.
If you like these kinds of games but find SPD to be a little too mechanically simple and lacking in build diversity, you may also enjoy DCSS (dungeon crawl stone soup) and my personal favorite: Frogcomposband.
You can play the later at angband.live, and it's an exceptional game with incredible depth and variety.
And BTW, if I can figure out how to do Eclipse CDT and get the source code running in an IDE, so that I can do LOTS of fun things with class skills, you can to! Because the last time I did C/C++ was 1998.
Also, Remnants of the Precursors (java) you can do some fun things. I got "doomstars" half-implemented, a race skill that marks planets with resources or artifacts (archaeology bonus), and lots of other fun things.
I really like open source games, half the fun is hacking them.
I have yet to download nethack from the net and hack it though.
I agree about SPD. While it's great for a mobile game and looks gorgeous, I find the gameplay somewhat shallow for a roguelike.
If I have a monitor and keyboard at hand, I prefer to play the likes of ADOM (classic version, not Ultimate), Brogue, Legerdemain, Sil, DCSS, etc. which offer more depth, strategic complexity and meaningful choices, IMHO.
Haven't tried the frog one, will do at some point.
There was a Nintendo DS port of Stone Soup that I really loved. Had some great times provoking monsters into fighting each other while I hid in the shadows.
So after reading the positive comments here I went ahead and bought a copy for iPhone in the App Store.
I was hoping that it supports controllers, as i recently bought a pretty neat controller that you plug the phone into the middle of, and you get buttons and thumb sticks on each side of the screen. Kind of similar to the joycons you have with a Nintendo Switch. This controller is PlayStation branded, but produced by a different company that has licensed the right to brand the controller that way.
Anyway, I am happy to report that yes indeed this game works with my controller. Left thumb stick moves the character around, and right thumb sticks moves a sort of aiming square around!
Edit: the pointer sensitivity was a bit high for me, but it is adjustable in the game settings and after adjusting it it is comfortable
Backbone One? I recently got the non-PlayStation branded one for my iPhone and I love it. I had been wanting one for a while, and finally jumped when they released the Gen 2 version with swappable mounts to support cases.
It’s been fantastic for playing SNES games on mobile. I can’t recommend it enough. Only downside would be the included app is hot trash. Always tries to sell you some subscription. Luckily, I haven’t found the need to ever use the app.
I was waiting a bit too, because it’s not exactly cheap.
Eventually I found one that was brand new that someone was selling second hand because they had bought the wrong version. They had the latest iPhone which has a USB-C port, but they had bought the Backbone One with lightning connector. I have a slightly older model. The iPhone 14 Pro. So mine has lightning connector. He got most of his money back that way, and I got a discount compared to buying one in the store. Everybody wins :)
Anyway yeah, I’ve been enjoying mine too. I’ve mostly been using it with Nvidia Now or what it’s called. Via the Backbone app. This way I can play some of the games I have in my Steam account on a computer in the cloud using my phone and my Backbone One. I only play at home on WiFi, and I’m on the free plan so I have to wait in a queue and each play session lasts 1 hour and then I have to start a new session. Been re-playing one of the modern Tomb Raider games this way and have been quite enjoying it so far.
Oh I know those! I had one for the iPhone 6s, but now my 12 Pro is obviously bigger, so it doesn't fit.
So, I 3D-printed one of those holders that holds an XBox controller and your phone above it. A bit heavy, but works perfectly for all controller-enabled games! And worthy of mention, Geforce Now also works! So I'm "PC-gaming" from my bed with this, and all for "free" (if you don't count the cost of the plastic, phone, or controller lol).
Got most of the way through act 3 and uninstalled bg3. I like that game, but just didn't feel compelled to complete it. At that point, it has been so long since the characters leveled up that gameplay was just sort of repetitive. There weren't really any new tactics to learn and employ.
The level cap killed that game for me, it turns out.
So I used to play Pixel Dungeon and then saw a bunch of clones that looked like it. Is Shattered Pixel Dungeon the original project or a clone of a closed source game? Or completely unrelated?
"It's based on the source code of Pixel Dungeon, by Watabou." I also played the original Pixel Dungeon, great game and bonus points for being free and open source!
I've played a fair number of PD spin-offs / remixes and Shattered stands out as the best. It get regular updates that sometimes add or substantially change large chunks of the game.
I don't necessarily think so. Evan puts a LOT of effort into balance. But even so, I've gotten to where I have 5 challenge modes turned on to make it a challenge, so maybe you're right.
The trick is knowing what you have to do, and focusing only on that. Backtracking is the enemy, and should be avoided aside from unlucky guesses as to how a map is laid out.
If you're the wizard, the horn of plenty is almost a cheat code, because one of your character upgrades gives you brief recharging when you eat, and the horn allows you to "nibble" constantly. Plus you can't starve.
Also, if you go warlock, you have a character upgrade that lets you get food and healing from bopping a marked enemy. That's super useful.
The monk has a class skill that lets you "meditate" to heal, and the fuel for that is defeating enemies. Right now my character is starving most of the time, but I meditate often enough to mitigate it.
Using the alchemy pot to mix 1 ration, 1 pie, and 1 piece of meat (any kind), gives you a super food that lasts longer than the combination of all plus additional healing over time. And feeding a super food to the horn of plenty is 4 upgrades at once.
But the biggest trick is just avoiding all possible damage as much as possible, so that you can keep a reserve of healing potions.
The original Pixel Dungeon was closed source IIRC, but then the developer stopped working on it and released the source code. Now there are many forks/mods of PD, all with different features (the Pixel Dungeon wiki has a great list). Shattered PD is the most popular and polished one, it adds a ton of stuff and is very actively developed.
Yeah, I was looking though the code wondering what java based rendering library this was using but all of these support classes come from "PD-classes" (which was sighted in the SPD readme... just never joined the dots) but also pointed me to the creators itch account and relevant "Generator" artworks which are all very impressive
Was absolutely obsessed with it couple of years ago. Hard, deep mechanics for its genre, super fun. First finish was quite the ride. What a win for FOSS.
I hadn’t played games for a long time, mostly because of school, but recently I picked up Cogmind, a fantastic sci-fi roguelike. Basically, you’re a robot that can attach and replace different items, including utilities, propulsion systems, weapons, and power sources. It’s some of the most fun I’ve had playing a game in ages.
The developer, Josh Ge, is also very kind and deeply engaged with the community, which is great.
I (perhaps mistakenly?) started with YAPD but then got my friend hooked and he went for SPD. I love how active the SPD dev is, but the mechanics are juuust a tad too different for me to want to learn them all. Both are great games though!
I’ve played this for a while, and not to brag, but I’ve got to chapter two on a warrior AND mage.
I love the identification process and relatively quick, albeit very tactical if you want, gameplay. It’s my go to iPhone game when on short journeys, mostly because I can just save where I am and pick up whenever without having to remember dungeon layout or potions/food etc.
I downloaded (not Shattered) Pixel Dungeon and then Shattered, and nearly a decade later I'm still playing. In fact it's 70% of my non-work computing time.
Not only that Shattered's dev updates often with sometimes great changes.
I feel your pain. I've spent more time playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup than I care to admit. The fact that this can be played on Android makes it even more dangerous.
this is far and away the best roguelike i've played on mobile. indeed, it's pretty much the only roguelike i've ever seen that has a decent mobile user experience. you can tell that the dev team has put a tremendous amount of work into making it look and feel good.
i looked it up, and it looks like more of a metroidvania than a roguelike. also the play store reviews say the controls aren't great on mobile. might pick it up for steam deck though, it does look fun :)
Any reason this is not provided for download through F-Droid. I trust apps on F-Droid more than Google Play and helps with installing in degoogled phones.
Downloading the APK direct from GitHub is the official way to get it without the Play Store. App updates take a bit more work, but you can set up notifications through GitHub to be notified for new releases.
Just FYI, there's an Android app called Obtainium that lets you add Github (and a few other VCS) repos to it. Obtanium will then check those repos for updates and install the new APK for you. Its pretty slick for people that prefer to get their APKs direct from the dev.
I like Fdroid because it automatically compiles from source and does vulnerability scanner. Its not a safe practice to download random binary blobs from github. Its a shame it looks like a nice implementation but I will have to give it a pass.
It has been neat watching this game change over the years. Every year or so, enough new updates have been had that it feels like a new "season"; similar to online games. It keeps getting better.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 276 ms ] threadOne of the nicest features is that whenever you observe an effect that unambiguously tells you what a potion/scroll does - such as throwing a potion - that type of object is automatically identified for you. In more "traditional" hack games you'd have to write notes yourself even though obviously a thrown potion exploding into fire means it's a potion of liquid fire, right?
Shattered Pixel is a good way to kill some time on public transit or similar.
Incredibly fun game, open source, and in a genre that likely fits well into many HN users' interests. I rediscovered it recently and remembered it was open source, so why not submit it?
Do you know what game engine its based on? Or is it a custom thing?
SPD is a good gateway to brogue, DCSS, cogmind, qud, etc
Been meaning to get into Cogmind (which seems even more aesthetically appealing than Brogue) and Caves of Qud, but I have children now, and must wait until they are of age before re-engaging with such things.
And I agree with you -- it is, imo, the most beautiful roguelike that I've seen or played. And it's got hundreds of unique sound effects, too, which makes a huge difference.
I've thought about CDDA, but honestly, the amount of material there is intimidating. But it looks very cool.
These games are indeed dangerous! I don't have kids, but I'm still in school, so I have to be careful. When you have some time, definitely give Cogmind a try. Hope you enjoy it!
Cogmind is a lot of really thought out small touches that sum up to an engaging experience despite at first glance looking like any other roguelike. It's got great animations/explosions and an intuitive UI.
The developer is the main mod of r/roguelikedev, has been running a great blog for years where he dives deep into aspects of roguelike dev (https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/), and is also just a wonderful human who genuinely loves supporting the community and playing roguelike games.
But these days I don't really have the time to really get into games and after discovering only little of the lore I lost interest :-/
Shattered Pixel encourages variants and branches, though sometimes Google tries to block the blatant clones that want to publish on Google Play, even though the license and developers want that outcome.
On the other thread of "brutally punishing", there is the "Too Cruel" variant of an earlier version of Shattered for those of us who need more difficulty. PD is more like a long game of chess than a dungeon crawler.
Particularly impressed that it builds for iOS when written in Java - turns out the game is built on libgdx which builds for all these platforms.
Also, it's fun if you like roguelikes.
I am curious though, why is the iOS version €4.99 but the Android version is free ? I've seen this a lot actually and have always wondered, I figured it might just be Apple's annual developer license fee but not sure.
> Shattered Pixel Dungeon will cost $5 US when it fully releases on the App Store. I’m charging because of a mix of Apple’s higher platform fees, not wanting to undercut Pixel Dungeon, and because Shattered is releasing in a much more finished state.
https://shatteredpixel.com/blog/shattered-pixel-dungeon-is-c...
[1] https://shatteredpixel.com/blog/
The mobile versions are great because they’re ad-free, and work without internet access when on airplanes. And since it’s turn-based, it’s very interruption-friendly. The Reddit community is also a lot of fun: equal mix of strategy and memes.
Strategy on Reddit, you say? Perhaps that could help. But, perhaps it's better if I don't spelunk that particular rabbithole.
That was the last round I played, almost a year ago. I consider myself free from the game now, but look back on it fondly :)
...What? Nobody else is doing this?
On one of my phones it doesn't even render whole the items on the screen, making some actions unselectable.
Also, the small activation regions for some items/blocks/selections suggest it may be easier to play with one of those touch-active styluses.
Most of the time I go with "rule of cool", blaze ahead, and die somewhere around the time I get to the sandworm tunnels.
The farthest I ever got was what felt like the first real boss who just teleports you to <FUN> which came out of left field and my character in that run was _not_ prepared to handle that.
If more games did this, the difficulty slider could go away. As an added bonus, there is a satisfaction of getting to the point where you are so overpowered the game essentially breaks (see: vampire survivors)
It's like viewing a desktop version of a website on mobile. It's usable, but kinda sucks and made me not want to play
I ask because I played the game and found it very easy (though obviously not as fast as desktop, but since you can pause...)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Are_Billions
But I can confirm that pixel dungeon is an exception, I have lost many hours to it, but it has been years since I've played it.
IIRC shattered is a fork with slightly different game play.
I do love rogue like games.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=thirty.six.dev...
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.adaway/
I've never had much luck with system wide VPN-based ad blockers, and I don't have a rooted phone.
I think anyone hunting for a first win should play as a huntress or mage. Ranged attacks are pretty overpowered in comparison to melee and don't require as much position play. And since both classes begin with their final weapon, you don't need to rely too much on the RNG to survive.
I never tried World of Warcraft years ago until that South Park episode came out. Currently about the only games I still play on my phone are chess and Plants vs Zombies 2, which for some reason has had me hooked since the very first one came out. Luckily, my wife likes it too.
Unciv
https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv
You can play the later at angband.live, and it's an exceptional game with incredible depth and variety.
Also, Remnants of the Precursors (java) you can do some fun things. I got "doomstars" half-implemented, a race skill that marks planets with resources or artifacts (archaeology bonus), and lots of other fun things.
I really like open source games, half the fun is hacking them.
I have yet to download nethack from the net and hack it though.
If I have a monitor and keyboard at hand, I prefer to play the likes of ADOM (classic version, not Ultimate), Brogue, Legerdemain, Sil, DCSS, etc. which offer more depth, strategic complexity and meaningful choices, IMHO.
Haven't tried the frog one, will do at some point.
I was hoping that it supports controllers, as i recently bought a pretty neat controller that you plug the phone into the middle of, and you get buttons and thumb sticks on each side of the screen. Kind of similar to the joycons you have with a Nintendo Switch. This controller is PlayStation branded, but produced by a different company that has licensed the right to brand the controller that way.
Anyway, I am happy to report that yes indeed this game works with my controller. Left thumb stick moves the character around, and right thumb sticks moves a sort of aiming square around!
Edit: the pointer sensitivity was a bit high for me, but it is adjustable in the game settings and after adjusting it it is comfortable
It’s been fantastic for playing SNES games on mobile. I can’t recommend it enough. Only downside would be the included app is hot trash. Always tries to sell you some subscription. Luckily, I haven’t found the need to ever use the app.
I was waiting a bit too, because it’s not exactly cheap.
Eventually I found one that was brand new that someone was selling second hand because they had bought the wrong version. They had the latest iPhone which has a USB-C port, but they had bought the Backbone One with lightning connector. I have a slightly older model. The iPhone 14 Pro. So mine has lightning connector. He got most of his money back that way, and I got a discount compared to buying one in the store. Everybody wins :)
Anyway yeah, I’ve been enjoying mine too. I’ve mostly been using it with Nvidia Now or what it’s called. Via the Backbone app. This way I can play some of the games I have in my Steam account on a computer in the cloud using my phone and my Backbone One. I only play at home on WiFi, and I’m on the free plan so I have to wait in a queue and each play session lasts 1 hour and then I have to start a new session. Been re-playing one of the modern Tomb Raider games this way and have been quite enjoying it so far.
So, I 3D-printed one of those holders that holds an XBox controller and your phone above it. A bit heavy, but works perfectly for all controller-enabled games! And worthy of mention, Geforce Now also works! So I'm "PC-gaming" from my bed with this, and all for "free" (if you don't count the cost of the plastic, phone, or controller lol).
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2553522
NICE.
(Desktop)
The level cap killed that game for me, it turns out.
Was always free... now people have gone to town with the source code.
If you're the wizard, the horn of plenty is almost a cheat code, because one of your character upgrades gives you brief recharging when you eat, and the horn allows you to "nibble" constantly. Plus you can't starve.
Also, if you go warlock, you have a character upgrade that lets you get food and healing from bopping a marked enemy. That's super useful.
The monk has a class skill that lets you "meditate" to heal, and the fuel for that is defeating enemies. Right now my character is starving most of the time, but I meditate often enough to mitigate it.
Using the alchemy pot to mix 1 ration, 1 pie, and 1 piece of meat (any kind), gives you a super food that lasts longer than the combination of all plus additional healing over time. And feeding a super food to the horn of plenty is 4 upgrades at once.
But the biggest trick is just avoiding all possible damage as much as possible, so that you can keep a reserve of healing potions.
https://watabou.github.io/ https://watabou.itch.io/
Some really great work here
The developer, Josh Ge, is also very kind and deeply engaged with the community, which is great.
Highly recommended!
Nothing at all against Shattered Pixel Dungeon, just that a quick look through the site didn’t reveal a terminal version.
I love the identification process and relatively quick, albeit very tactical if you want, gameplay. It’s my go to iPhone game when on short journeys, mostly because I can just save where I am and pick up whenever without having to remember dungeon layout or potions/food etc.
I downloaded (not Shattered) Pixel Dungeon and then Shattered, and nearly a decade later I'm still playing. In fact it's 70% of my non-work computing time.
Not only that Shattered's dev updates often with sometimes great changes.
You've been warned.
I am going to download it. But I'm not going to touch it until I'm on vacation next month. :) I've got a lot of work between now and then.
Now I know why ! The game was Open Source !
Downloading the APK direct from GitHub is the official way to get it without the Play Store. App updates take a bit more work, but you can set up notifications through GitHub to be notified for new releases.
https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium
`brew install shattered-pixel-dungeon`