The Wizard's Lair

The Wizard's Lair
Developer	Devlin
Theme	Fantasy
Influences	NetHack, Sword of Fargoal
Status	Beta
Released	21 Oct 2012 (pre-release v196)
Updated	22 November 2013 (v207 (Legendary Edition))
Licensing	Commercial
P. Language	BlitzMax
Platforms	Windows, Linux, Mac OSX
Interface	Graphical
Game Length	2-4 hours
Official site of The Wizard's Lair

The Wizard's Lair

The Wizard's Lair is a Roguelike in the spirit of the Mystery Dungeon series, in which the hero(you) is tasked to descend the Dungeon and defeat the Wizard of Anarkhis, who has stolen a powerful Staff and threatens to destroy everything in his wake!

History

After the completion of Explore Quest, a short and simple RPG by Devlin for Ludum Dare 16, Development of The Wizard's Lair began in late 2010 under the name "Dungeons of Alysion". Since then it has evolved from being an Ultima-like RPG to a more classical-style Roguelike.

Gameplay

Gameplay is like most typical Roguelikes, you need to eat food to survive, manage a limited inventory space, kill monsters to gain exp, and descend the randomly-generated floors to the bottom of the dungeon and slay "The Wizard". There is an emphasis on difficulty, with every game being Permadeath, with a save system much like NetHack. The player can find and use scrolls to enhance weapons and armour, attack with combat spells, escape by teleporting and experience a "random" effect. In the v199 update, Traps were added to help balance the difficulty of the game, and add an extra element to gameplay. With the Legendary Edition update, elemental weapons, spells, traps and enemies(with resistances and weaknesses) were added alongside dungeon deformation in order to add to gameplay.

Graphics

The graphics are based on a retro-style look and feel, mimicking the Amiga era somewhat with a few modern touches, and animated elements such as flames, sword slashes and "puffs of smoke" as you reveal the dungeon floor.