FOSSPicks
Roguelike
Shattered Pixel Dungeon
This is a roguelike RPG with beautiful 8-bit style graphics, fabulous retro sound, and a brilliantly addictive explore-and-combat style gameplay. It's actually a fork of Pixel Dungeon, created initially to improve on the original game's "quirks," but it's blossomed into a fully fledged alternative title with the same style of play. And unlike many games that name-drop "Rogue," Shattered Pixel Dungeon actually plays like the original Rogue, complete with fog of war, dungeon levels, and items and magic. But the first thing you notice about it, at least on the Linux desktop, is the aspect ratio of the default main window as soon as the application is launched. It's best described as an elongated portrait, and there's a good reason for this. Shattered Pixel Dungeon is primarily a game to run on your phone.
But because Shattered Pixel Dungeon is open source, it's not just available on F-Droid for your phone. You can also install it on your Linux desktop. On the Linux desktop, the aspect ratio is only temporary. Just drag the corners of the window to change the play area to any aspect ratio or size. Equally modern is the internal scaling that sizes up or down those chunky pixels to best suit the density of your screen. This is a common theme in modern games that take their inspiration from the procedurally generated nature of Rogue games, and it also makes the game both difficult and addictive. This is what Shattered Pixel Dungeon does, because you will die. But you'll also want to play again. There are four different character classes, eight different subclasses, five different areas of each dungeon to explore, and over 150 items. The style of click-and-move, click-and-hit gameplay is addictive enough to pull you through the random design. And like the original Rogue, it's completely free.
Project Website
http://www.shatteredpixel.com/
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