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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 levels 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 terrain

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

"So that was a lot of fun, but *I have no idea what's going on*."

"Entertainingly, a coworker looked at my screen (I'm migrating VMs between systems while I play, lots of waiting time) and asked what UNIX tool that was. :-)"

"LOL epic. [..] current flavour of gameplay: 'Excitingly chaotic' ? :-)"

"Do you think its above being a game? 'Cause its not. Its a fairly standard rogue like roguelike."

The lofty grandiose vision

===> http://allureofthestars.com/play This is not a "video game", because there is barely any "video" in it. Neither does it aspire to be an interactive movie nor even a novel --- you are not going to be following a script, but discovering and building a world, a story, a grand survival strategy, a tactical toolbox of your own. The goal is to engage you in non-verbal daydreaming about adventuring with a band of trusted friends: you know each other so well you can almost see through each other's eyes.

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

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