17 comments

  • hales38 minutes ago
    Been having fun today trying to work this game out.<p>Questions:<p>1. How do I learn the magic&#x2F;rune system? I can inscribe them on weapons &amp; armour. Some are verbs and some are adjectives. I am yet to see obvious effects (edit: except for &#x27;arc&#x27;), so I wonder if they always do things or often do nothing unless specific combinations are used (like subject-verb-object requirements of a sentence or certain weapon&#x2F;armour+spell combo validity)?<p>2. What does &quot;magic&quot; mean when I try to inscribe more than one rune on a thing? Does this mean one rune is free but multiple require magic and are detrimental if you have none?<p>3. How do I interpret the weapon stats? Eg &quot;Current: 3-5 -&gt; 2-4&quot;<p>Notes:<p>1. The game is much easier if I set my gamma up (xgamma -gamma 1.5). Most of the levels are very dark (10% of RGB values dark) so I easily miss items and routes to check otherwise.<p>2. There are a lot more keybinds than shown onscreen. &#x27;x&#x27; to autoexplore, &#x27;r&#x27; for a runes page I&#x27;m trying to work out. Shift+Z to autorest&#x2F;heal. &#x27;&gt;&#x27; will fasttravel you to the stairs down if you have already found them. Shift+direction will autowalk.<p>3. Don&#x27;t press &#x27;q&#x27;. There is no confirmatin prompt. There are no saves. Aieee :D
  • seabass-labrax9 hours ago
    I killed myself with a flaming spear and the game said this:<p>&gt; FATAL ERROR: [program exited] &quot;cannot subtract nil and let-go.lang.Int&quot;, :data {:trace (&quot;game-loop (&lt;unknown&gt;)&quot; &quot;game-loop (&lt;unknown&gt;)&quot; &quot;update-world (&lt;unknown&gt;)&quot; &quot;run-until-player-turn (&lt;unknown&gt;)&quot; &quot;creature-turn (&lt;unknown&gt;)&quot; &quot;update-ai-state (&lt;unknown&gt;)&quot; &quot;distance (&lt;unknown&gt;)&quot;)}}<p>A fatal error indeed!
    • jdiff6 hours ago
      I got killed by a fire imp and crashed the same way.
    • marcingas9 hours ago
      Love it :D
  • marcingas11 hours ago
    Author here! Thanks for posting! This game is written in a Clojure-like programming language I&#x27;ve made. So this is a (B)rogue-like in a Clojure-like :)<p>What I think is interesting is that this game computes the entire world state each tick and does so efficiently thanks to persistent data structures.<p>To anyone who dared to fire it up: thank you for playing, I&#x27;m curious what you think!
    • allknowingfrog7 hours ago
      I did a quick run on the web version. I was able to sneak attack everything on the first two levels, which felt like a bug, but I&#x27;m honestly not sure.<p>When I found a spear, I kind of expected to be able to throw it, but I didn&#x27;t find a throw option anywhere. I think that makes the short sword better in every case, but maybe I missed something.<p>Overall, I love the execution. Quality retro fun with a really nice interface.
      • marcingas7 hours ago
        This totally is a bug. Was this recently? I thought I fixed this in WASM version.
    • jackpirate11 hours ago
      The name let-go of your programming language is awesome!
      • marcingas11 hours ago
        Thanks! Please check it out and leave me a star if you like it :)
    • onlyrealcuzzo8 hours ago
      This is awesome!<p>I&#x27;m interested in building something similar, any tips besides looking at what you&#x27;ve done and Brogue?
      • marcingas7 hours ago
        I&#x27;d say don&#x27;t immediately go into making an ECS and don&#x27;t sweat about perf too much. You can totally do this in any programming language. This is a good talk about roguelike software design in general: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=JxI3Eu5DPwE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=JxI3Eu5DPwE</a><p>Tbh the whole channel is a gold mine of inspiration. Also check: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discord.gg&#x2F;bgd2GrhR" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discord.gg&#x2F;bgd2GrhR</a>
    • biosubterranean10 hours ago
      Little buggy (dying from things not on the screen), but I love the dwarf fortress esque vibes
      • Oakwhisper9 hours ago
        There was a commit a few minutes ago that fixed the instakills for me
        • marcingas9 hours ago
          This was caused by a stdlib bug in the language, I bypassed it :D
    • cmrdporcupine6 hours ago
      My 15 year old&#x27;s (who is a roguelike fanatic) first comment was: there&#x27;s no diagonal movement?<p>&quot;The visuals are interesting.... oh I died.&quot;
      • marcingas5 hours ago
        I don&#x27;t have a numpad so it did not occur to me to add diagonals :D<p>Good feedback though, I&#x27;ll add it. Thanks to your 15 year old!
        • jdiff4 hours ago
          most roguelikes also add (IIRC looking at my phone keyboard and reverse engineering muscle memory) yubn for diagonals.
  • cheald7 hours ago
    &quot;Applied theology with inadequate safety margins&quot; might just be my favorite difficulty description ever.
  • fhn4 hours ago
    let&#x27;s not have q=quit. most rouge games have q=quaff. I mean if people want to quit, they can just refresh or close the tab. At the very least, ask.
  • Jeremy102611 hours ago
    Gets stuck in a redirect loop with the message:<p>&gt; Interactive input unavailable (no cross-origin isolation).<p>&gt; Deploy coi-serviceworker-js alongside this file.<p>in Safari on 26.4
  • ssalka2 hours ago
    Not sure how you feel about including sound, but I feel like there needs to be a warning sound that plays when you&#x27;re low HP, like in Pokemon. I keep dying because I don&#x27;t realize I&#x27;m at low health
  • Parcival12 hours ago
    Pretty fun! I keep getting instantly killed by things though and I&#x27;m not sure why, possibly a bug.
    • andai12 hours ago
      I see you haven&#x27;t played Noita!
      • marcingas11 hours ago
        Noita was another inspiartion when making this - the inverted power curve is real! Start squishy, become a god, die anyway.
        • zardo10 hours ago
          A wand related accident has to be the number one cause of a Noita run ending.
      • ticulatedspline9 hours ago
        I feel this comment. Seriously though, damage reflection was one of the many insanely annoying things about that game.
      • CyberShadow11 hours ago
        No, I think I&#x27;m seeing the same bug. Time seems to sometimes subjectively freeze:<p><pre><code> ─── Messages ─── Old man shuts the gate behind you. You hear him mutter &quot;every time, I swear...&quot; You must retrieve the Amulet of Lost Semicolons. You kill the rat! (sneak attack!) The rat squeals and dies! You wait. (x10) ᛜ ᚢ You kill the rat! (sneak attack!) ᛉ The rat squeals and dies! You hear muttering. ᛋ You hear muttering. You hear muttering. You hear a distant creak. ᛖ ᛃ The runestone crumbles as you touch it. You learn: ᛟ means &quot;ice&quot;! ᛚ You hear a distant creak. The goblin misses you. (x3) The goblin hits you for 4. The goblin hits you for 3. ᛏ The goblin hits you for 4. The goblin hits you for 3. The goblin misses you. ᛚ The goblin hits you for 4. The goblin hits you for 2. The goblin hits you for 4. The goblin misses you. The goblin hits you for 2. The goblin misses you. (x2) The goblin hits you for 2. The goblin kills you! You die... </code></pre> Note how there were no user action messages during the time the goblin was attacking.
        • marcingas11 hours ago
          Definitely a bug. I&#x27;ll look into this at some point. Please note that this is not a finished game by any means. If anyone asked I&#x27;d call it a tech demo at this point :)
          • CyberShadow10 hours ago
            Seems to be that the sort function accepts a ternary predicate but then passes it to an implementation accepting a boolean one?
            • marcingas9 hours ago
              Yeah that was it, the let-go stdlib changed.
        • dpkp10 hours ago
          I see the same but only in browser &#x2F; wasm. Also notice that the mobs dont move in browser mode. Local via lg in console works great though.
        • fhn11 hours ago
          yeah. something is wrong. You don&#x27;t even get to fight back.
        • marcingas10 hours ago
          I think I fixed it!
    • devindotcom12 hours ago
      that&#x27;s actually a beloved feature of &quot;true&quot; roguelikes
  • gchamonlive12 hours ago
    Reminds me a lot of NetHack, good times
  • pgt11 hours ago
    Not a Rogue-like specialist, it&#x27;s hard – I haven&#x27;t made it out of level 1 yet.
    • fhn4 hours ago
      I just got to lvl2 only because goblins aren&#x27;t insta-killing me
  • sandoze13 hours ago
    No credit for the art direction and inspiration? Brogue?<p>Or did I miss the attribution?<p>* Edit: I’m not looking for the downvotes or to stir things up. I’m simply calling out that this is a small niche community we notice these things, we’re very free with our code, and copy is a compliment, but so is attribution.<p>The author wasn’t so much inspired the by Brogue style, but copied it directly down to the animations and ASCII.
    • bayarearefugee13 hours ago
      &gt; No credit for the art direction and inspiration? Brogue?<p>In the age of LLMs the &quot;author&quot; might not even know where the art direction and inspiration came from!
      • marcingas11 hours ago
        I know, this is intentional :)<p>I took things I like from Brogue and added my own spin on it.
    • marcingas11 hours ago
      yeah, this is a Brogue-like. I love Brogue and have been inspired by it. XsofY is not an exact clone but I&#x27;ve studied Brogue C source heavily when making this.<p>I&#x27;ll link to Brogue in the README :)
      • sandoze11 hours ago
        Amazing and great work!
    • somewhatgoated13 hours ago
      Calling it rogue-like is basically attribution since Brogue is just the follow-up to Rogue which invented the genre
      • fsckboy1 hour ago
        most people would name hack (1984) or the fork nethack (1987) as the successor to rogue (1980). brogue (2018) i never heard of till now but probably i aged out by then (aged out of spending many mindless i.e. repetitive hours of fun)
        • Widdershin50 minutes ago
          Brogue was released in 2009 for what it’s worth.
      • sandoze12 hours ago
        I’ll be sure to keep that in mind with my next plumber platformer
        • somewhatgoated11 hours ago
          No one calls them plumber platformer though…<p>If you call it “Mario-like” then I would say most people would understand where the inspiration comes from.
    • SubiculumCode5 hours ago
      I&#x27;m a little confused. There were some differences, but this stuff is straight out angband&#x2F;moria lineage stuff. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;angband.readthedocs.io&#x2F;en&#x2F;latest&#x2F;version.html#previous-versions-outdated" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;angband.readthedocs.io&#x2F;en&#x2F;latest&#x2F;version.html#previo...</a>
      • jdiff4 hours ago
        the lighting effects are very brogue and like nothing I&#x27;ve seen in angband, which is very very barebones ASCII by comparison. brogue-likes push into ANSI art territory with their abuse of terminal formatting.
        • SubiculumCode3 hours ago
          Some of the many variants did expand on the ASCII graphics a bit, but yeah, I see what you mean.
    • deathanatos11 hours ago
      While I can see perhaps a claim of &quot;inspiration&quot;, when I put Brogue &amp; this side-by-side, while artistically there is similarity, I wouldn&#x27;t say &quot;copied&quot;.<p>Brouge isn&#x27;t the only rouge-like with LoS mechanics.
      • protocolture3 hours ago
        Sounds like its close to red.
      • marcingas11 hours ago
        Brogue is insanely well balanced and ingeniously designed. XsofY is a mere tribute ;)
    • BeetleB13 hours ago
      Wouldn&#x27;t the credit go to ... rogue?
      • sandoze12 hours ago
        The genre of course. But this is almost a 1-1 copy of the Brogue style. Right down to the colors, animation, and ASCII
        • devindotcom12 hours ago
          are you not familiar with the actual game rogue, or nethack?
          • abathologist11 hours ago
            Rogue looks like this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;0&#x2F;0c&#x2F;Rogue_Screenshot.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&amp;utm_campaign=index&amp;utm_content=original" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;0&#x2F;0c&#x2F;Rogue_Sc...</a><p>Brogue looks like this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;syltefar.com&#x2F;screenshot&#x2F;?id=624" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;syltefar.com&#x2F;screenshot&#x2F;?id=624</a>
          • coldcity_again11 hours ago
            are you familiar with the actual game Brogue[1]?<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sites.google.com&#x2F;site&#x2F;broguegame&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sites.google.com&#x2F;site&#x2F;broguegame&#x2F;</a>
          • sandoze11 hours ago
            Yes. I don’t think we’re having the same argument though.
  • Razengan13 hours ago
    Noun of Noun
  • bennettpompi113 hours ago
    fun project!
  • otikik12 hours ago
    Found it a bit annoying having to press &#x27;i&#x27; at the start in order to equip the dagger and armor that were on my backpack, but well done.
    • fhn11 hours ago
      yep. should be equipped from the start.
    • marcingas11 hours ago
      Agree, will patch this.
    • marcingas9 hours ago
      fixed
  • butz10 hours ago
    [dead]
  • hope28 hours ago
    [dead]
  • binary001010 hours ago
    Isn&#x27;t this the kind of thing you can essentially fully offload to Claude code these days? Don&#x27;t really get the point of these tiny primarily llm generated game clones tbh.
    • marcingas10 hours ago
      I see your point but I like to think it&#x27;s not as sloppy as you&#x27;d expect. This one is written in a programming language I&#x27;ve been making since 2021 and it&#x27;s not a direct Brogue clone despite its looks.
    • frakt0x9010 hours ago
      Is this a troll comment? I don&#x27;t see where the author used AI to generate the code and if you don&#x27;t see the point of experimenting with technology, you&#x27;re on the wrong website.
      • binary00109 hours ago
        You really don&#x27;t see where the author uses ai? Pretty much everywhere, all the docs, the overview of the project, a LOT of the code is obviously primarily ai written, etc.
        • sandoze9 hours ago
          So the author used the latest and greatest development tech to create a unique little demo in their custom language. I&#x27;m unsure your point. You know what I don&#x27;t use to program with anymore? Punch cards and Borland C++. The industry has evolved for better or worse.
          • binary00108 hours ago
            What are you going on about?<p>No idea what you think you are arguing. Are you in the wrong thread?<p>I said I don&#x27;t get why people keep posting essentially vibe coded game clones... I get bored checking out GitHub projects on HN that are doing absolutely nothing new and are essentially baby projects made by Claude on a weekend, and terribly architected to boot. Cluttering the feed.
        • marcingas9 hours ago
          FWIW it&#x27;s a good fuzz test for the interpreter ;)
    • postalrat8 hours ago
      Consider them prototypes. Like the games submitted to game jams.
      • marcingas8 hours ago
        I wouldn&#x27;t even dare posting this to a game jam... or HN at this point but someone posted it for me, welp.
        • postalrat1 hour ago
          I guess it depends whats more important, getting the game in your head out where others can try it, or the process of building the game itself.