Guild

Guild is a Roguelike game where the player is given control of a group of characters (as opposed to only one). It features an option-based town (e.g. "e: go to the tavern"), and two randomly-generated and non-persistant dungeons.

Guild
Developer	Antoine
Theme	{{{theme}}}
Influences	{{{influences}}}
Status	Beta
Released
Updated	4-Jul-2005
Licensing	closed source
P. Language
Platforms	Win 98/NT/2000/XP
Interface	ASCII, keyboard input.
Game Length	{{{length}}}
Official site of Guild

Features

Guild stands out among other roguelikes because it lets the player alternate control between one of several characters. Characters that are not under the player's control move using their own AI, and will obey the player's commands. The characters do not regenerate their health and mana in the dungeon, but heal fully when in town. This forces the player to save health, mana, and other resources for the return trip. When a character takes too much damage they fall unconscious or die, and control switches to another character. Another character can pick up and carry the body back to the surface, where after a day or so an unconscious character will be good as new. Characters gain experience upon leaving the dungeon.

Feedback

• [[User:M|–M^T]]:
  • Certain rooms were crafted to be the lair of a specific monster. When I first came upon a spellcaster like this, I was pleasantly surprised (it was as if I had stumbled upon a quest). Making their AI better so that they may employ their surroundings, and making their lair something more than just a rectangular room (maybe a section of the level where their influence can be noticed) would be good.
  • It'd be nice if there was a way to pin down and smack some sense into a party member that was charmed, instead of, well, trying to kill them.
  • Having characters fall unconscious was very unique and exciting. It's the only form of must-deal-with temporary loss that I've noticed in a roguelike, apart from those thieving Nymphs in NetHack. Carrying their body up to the top was always somewhat scary, especially since manpower was reduced. - Also, I would have used sneaking for this more if it didn't make me play around with my lightsources each time. Perhaps something like "you slip your glowing stone into your shirt, and are now sneaking" (after you stop sneaking, you'd have to re-light the lightsource in the usual way)
  • Give me the ability to detect traps, to automatically notify my teammates of something strange on the floor, and to have them walk in my footsteps instead of spreading out and triggering things randomly. To counter this, make traps have harmful (but not auto-death etc) effects, and put them under items and beside doors.
  • Equipping characters is a chore. If you have the characters automatically equip their favorite items, and drop junk, it would be easier to deal with. Letting them choose the best weapon for their class automatically won't ruin any fun - you can see the stats on a weapon by using the party screen, and having to choose the best one is something tedious and annoying. I liked the sensible number of weapons, armors, and classes. It kept me from having to worry about which was better.
  • I think this was mentioned in an rgrd thread, but let the characters each have roles (that don't change unless you change them). A light-load or whatever would avoid picking up items and wearing heavy armor, a carrier would pick up all books, potions, interesting items, etc, balancing out burdenedness with how interesting the items are.
  • Hurt characters should move away from combat. Rogues could automatically go over to pick up gold.
  • I found myself abusing the tavern. My priest had a high charisma and was level 3, and was too easily able to recruit a well-rolled replacement for my rogue.
  • I kept throwing items down on the house's lawn. If it had a bigger backyard (and therefore was closer), with an equipping-room nearer to the door, I'd like that. I had a good fight once with an apprentice. After I killed him, I was quite happy that I could pick up his armchair, and haul it back to the surface as a sort of trophy.

Bugs

• There seems to be a bug with unconscious player healing. If I recruit some more adventurers while a character is recovering, I'm not able to choose that character, though the message (repeatedly) tells me that they have recovered.

• Trying to use/drop/etc when no options are available for that action (e.g. no items in inventory) crashes the game.

• If I summon a wind spirit, I can't sneak, because my wind spirit notices me.

• If I [Y]ell and cancel, I wake teammates up without actually using up an action.

• Fire breath slows down the game drastically every turn that the damned fire lizards are alive.

• Guild - YABDR??

- thread with feedback and discussion on the subject of interfaces.