The Unreal World

Most of my recent gaming time, as little of it as there is, has been spent messing around with a survival roguelike called The Unreal World.

One blog led to another, I stopped to dabble in a D&D based 'new'-ish roguelike called Incursion, found it way too tough for comfort, and started delving in others I hadn't tried. Enter this northern European entrant that seemed to be a weird cross between ATITD, a survival DS game known as Lost in Blue, and an ascii roguelike.

It doesn't sound like much when you summarize it. You get to play one of a dozen or so unpronounceable Finnish-like races that have different cultural starting locations and backgrounds - from village agriculturists, the comparatively more technologically enabled town traders, seal and reindeer followers, forest hunters, and so on.

There are a couple of starting scenarios from freeform, to friendly - start out at a random village that may provide resources, to lonesome cowboy survivalist (be a fisherman, be a trapper, etc.) to the seriously hardcore challenge (wounded, escaped slave running away from hostile raiders with only a knife and some rags to your name in the depths of the forest.)

Two tutorial-like structure overlays provide a set of goals to follow for those who can't make their own. One is a basic "here's how to find water, here's how to hunt, here's how to trap, here's how to make your shelter" commands sort of scenario. The other one is more advanced and elaborate.

It is strangely compelling.

Notice how I don't describe more about the advanced scenarios, because I'm happily failing the basic ones. In the manner of all roguelikes, once you die, that's it.

My first character fell afoul of raiders, having stumbled across a village-full of them somewhen in the middle of Day 3. Apparently, I didn't pay enough attention to my randomised starting location.

My next character survived till 9 days, at which point, the unregistered shareware version killed him off unexpectedly.

Slightly miffed, and yet captivated enough to consider pay-paling $3 for a fully functional version, I did so.

Third character died to too hasty clicking through of the character selection options. I picked stats I didn't like, decided oh fergedit, and picked the most hardcore slave runaway scenario to see if I could survive it. Ironically, I survived the fight with the captors chasing me... to die to a pack of wolves because I was desperately hungry, starving, and trying to find ANY meat. (My crappy stat selection made it quite useless to fish, and foraging was not good enough during the season I had st arted in.) Tried to hunt down one wolf, and omg, there are 7 of them...egads, they turned around and did me in. :)

Fourth character survived quite a ways... had started constructing his own house, got quite far into the goals, and died to greed. And sociopathy.

Well, y'see, it wasn't my fault that a foreign trader NPC had wandered their way into my territory where my house was. It wasn't my fault that he stopped several squares away and decided to blissfully go to sleep.

It WAS my fault that I decided this would be a good time to creep up and stab him in the head so that I could take his stuff.

It was also somewhat sociopathical of me that I saw a dead body lying there and decided, hey, can I use my skinning skill on him? (I couldn't.) But I COULD cut up the carcass for meat.

While that robbery was a success, and I was in the midst of a cannibalistic bonfire-building for roast meat, what I didn't realise was that these fellas traveled in caravans. Suddenly, there were 6+ foreign traders baying for my blood. I gamely fought 4 of them to death, surrounding myself with quite a pile of bodies and loot, and had two of them on the run. Unfortunately, those running tend to come back, and I had limited mobility due to my injuries.

Midway between trying to rip my clothes for bandages to treat my wounds, one of the lucky bastards threw some kind of rock that hit me in the eye. I blacked out... and never woke up again. Grrr.

Next character wandered around in an archipelago, had some really sophisticated villages around, didn't kill anything more nasty than a squirrel. Or three. Unfortunately, either the villagers took sudden exception to my face, or the javelin I threw at the squirrel which narrowly missed their kid that set them off, or it was the last squirrel I killed which may have been a pet or something...

An entire family of man, woman, kid and old man was suddenly charging me with bloodthirst. Still guilty from my ancestor's recent brush with cannibalism, I tried to run away instead. Was just as unsuccessful. Darn.

I don't know if I'm ever going to finish the basic goals tutorial at this rate. :)