Allure of the Stars

Play it in the browser!

How it differs from classic roguelikes

• player manually controls each member of his squad, though often the best tactics is to scout with only one character (a classic roguelike feel) and let others guard important areas
• the game is turn-based, but with visibly high granularity --- projectiles fly gradually over time with varying speeds and can be sidestepped or shot down; less so explosions that are swarms of projectile particles (turn-based just the same)
• time passes and factions pursue their goals on a few levels simultaneously, while other floors are frozen (but all are persistent)
• the same laws of simulated world apply to all factions and all actors, whether player-controlled or AI-controlled; e.g., the same field of view calculation, skill checks, equipment limitations, rules for item and terrain use
• combat mechanics is deterministic; randomness comes only from AI decisions and procedurally generated world
• there's (almost) no HP regeneration; attrition ensures all past (silly) decisions matter; HP of every actor starts at around half max
• each character has 10 uniform equipment slots, which fill quickly given that most melee weapons have cooldowns
• each faction has a single shared inventory of unlimited size, which has a physical location on the map and so can be ransacked

What players say

The lofty grandiose vision

You need no more than an occasional nod, a cry of warning or a quick gesture to fully share situational awareness, elect a new pointman and cover his advance. You fight as one organism, attack, escape, guard each other's back, explore spaces no human ever saw before and experiment with and appraise your spoils, sharing and augmenting your scarce supplies in a dark nook of an abandoned store. This is an adventure and a world you creatively imagine, you master, you live through (or die in) and afterwards you tell stories about. And even if you don't tell, this doesn't make the stories any less true.

The gameplay manual (dev version) may help when initially developing the personal game-to-brain interface pathway that supplies game state information. The user interface tries to engage the brain visual and aural processing centers only marginally and instead let their full capacity be used by personal imagination for sensory world-building in a fully original, uncoerced, true-to-dreams way. Like when reading a book, but with less words and more action.

The game is written in Haskell using the LambdaHack roguelike game engine. See the changelog file for recent improvements and the issue tracker for short-term plans. Long-term goals are high replayability and auto-balancing through procedural content generation and persistent content modification based on player behaviour.

Also, developing brain implant game interfaces that bypass the visual cortex.

Also, making aliens bitterly regret the idea of plotting against Earth.

Binaries and resources

• Gameplay manual (development version)
• Official game binaries for Linux and Windows
• Channel in the Haskell GameDev Discord containing the dev log, brainstorming, role-playing stories, etc. (may contain spoilers!)
• Matrix room bridged to the Discord channel above, accessible without creating an account (may contain spoilers; the other room displayed near the bottom of this page is spoiler-free and focused on players, their life and their feedback)
• Homebrew formula with Mac OS X binaries
• Bug reports
• Source code
• Engine source code
• Engine development documentation
• New and old screenshots at RogueBasin
• Please spread the word and offer feedback on Discord, Twitter, Itch, your local subreddit or forum, the anonymous feedback form at the bottom or directly to the maintainer at mikolaj.konarski@funktory.com.

Please leave some anonymous feedback below or log in to the matrix game feedback chat room.