WebRaidMobile

Web Raid Mobile
Beta Project
Developer	Karlheinz Agsteiner
Theme	None particularly
Influences	Nethack, WebRaid
Released	Nov 2, 2011
Updated	{{{updated}}}
Licensing	GPL
P. Language	Java
Platforms	Android
Interface	Tiles
Game Length	1 minute to 30 minutes for a single game, months to achieve everything.
[[1] Official site of Web Raid Mobile]

Web Raid Mobile is the successor of Web Raid. It runs on Android devices (and will never run on non-Android devices). Currently it's in beta state - the game runs nicely, but I've only tested it on something like 10 web pages, all of them Wikipedia; also the start screen is more a test screen where you just enter a URL or a word to raid that page. The biggest open point is that you have to play the game in one go. If you pause and return later, and the device starts another app in-between you restart from level 1. Being an early beta, it's not available on the market but only from my Web Raid page.

In Web Raid Mobile you wander through dungeons made up from tiled graphics, meet and fight fierce creatures, pick up great weapons, armor and mystic amulets, and collect precious treasures. Web Raid's focus is on strategy - you get a full overview of a whole dungeon level, insight into the power and character of each of the creatures, and you'll need that to survive. Web Raid's goal is to survive long enough to pick up stuff and return it from the dungeon, and to also survive to tell about the creatures you've slain.

The big difference to other roguelike games is that, behind the scenes, everything that you encounter in Web Raid Mobile corresponds to bits and pieces of web pages. Behind the scenes, creature, armor, weapons, amulets and treasures are derived from words - the longer and more complicated a word, the more spectacular the creature or item. Behind the scenes, (nearly) all the dungeon levels are determined from the longest sentences of web pages; if a maze has a vertical wall with a hole near the top of the wall, then this hole is there because a letter at the beginning of the alphabet was next when building the maze. So actually you're wandering through web pages and hunt for the biggest and coolest words. The game just makes this look like dungeons and stuff in them. Each is mapped to a unique monster or item, waiting for you to be discovered.

Features

• A huge number of monsters and items - if there's a word for it, and that word is on a web page, then Web Raid can turn it into a monster or item, and depending on the vowels and consonants of the word, the monster / item will be very different.
• Everything except names is derived from the vowels and consonants of words on web pages: all monsters, weapons, armor, magical amulets, and treasures, dungeons.
• Everything is influenced by the five elements of chinese astrology: for example, some armor protects more from fire, other from earth or metal (derived from vowels)
• Web Raid Mobile features 9 different monster classes (e.g. Warriors, Peacekeepers, Cowards, Wild Beasts), each of which has different plans on what to do in a dungeon. Each of the classes has a couple of parameters, so there might be agressive or peaceful Wild Beasts, Warriors wearing armor or not wearing armor and so on.
• Monsters can pick up weaponry and armor and use it.
• Weapons and armor have a weight and a skillfulness that influence how good they are (derived from consonants)
• Amulets influence the weight of every monster (including you). Wear a powerful amulet to move much faster than the monsters.
• Mazes and caves generated from the sentences in a page. Web Raid Mobile knows the following kinds of dungeon level: mazes, mines, nethack-like rooms+paths, houses, ruins.
• tiled view; supports gestures: tap to move into a direction, long-tap for info on a square, tap-and-scroll to scroll, double-tap to fast-move to a certain square.
• Full information available on anything in a level. Right from the scratch you can see everything in a dungeon level (and they can see you as well), and you can get all information on them to decide how dangerous / precious something is, e.g. if a monster will just hang around or come after you.
• As everything is generated from web pages, difficulty is not balanced in any way. Other than "Web Raid", however, the whole dungeon is created from a single web page, and the easy stuff is placed on the top levels, and the deeper you get, the tougher the game is. The biggest beasts, the strongest stuff is on the lowest level(s).
• No ranged weapons, no magic; this is something for those who play barbarian or valkyrie in Nethack.
• No real RPG elements: you enter each dungeon naked and you are and stay at level 1. Armor, weaponry and magic amulets make the difference between fast death and success.

Compared to Web Raid

As the successor of Web Raid, much is similar in Web Raid Mobile. Here's the major differences.

• Dungeons are more structured - easy levels on top, difficult levels on the bottom.
• A level may have more than one or two stairs down to different sections of the dungeon.
• Smaller levels, more variety in randomly generated levels.
• Monsters and you have a speed that depends on your weight. If you weigh a lot, you're slow.
• Amulets are no longer armor, but they reduce your weight and increase monster's weight based on its level, power and elements.
• Monsters behave differently - there are 9 classes now, each with individual goals to achieve in the game (killing you being often an important one).
• You can move diagonally.
• No fixed word list anymore; the game just takes whatever it gets, sometimes leading to nonsense words for monsters.