So, what's a roguelike? Roguelikes are super-stripped down RPGs. The GUIs are about as basic as you get, where your main character might be represented by a '@' and that 'O' running at you could be an Orc or Ogre depending on the colour. This means some (a lot) of imagination is required. There aren't going to be a lot of pretty (dirty) pictures, but it also means a small development team or even a single person can put a game together without bankrupting themselves on artist commissions, and they can also make the world huge and random. If you've ever played NetHack or Dwarf Fortress you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
The first game is Seduction Quest. The game's programmer, Codex, brought it to my attention a couple of days ago. They're only at the alpha stage at the moment. You can check out the demo at their site to get an idea of where they're going. It's a roguelike in a large procedurally generated world with wandering succubi and other monster girls out for the player's...juices. The demo is fairly rudimentary and the player can't die currently, but it gives a good impression of the game mechanics. Their plan is to boost the battle strategy and obviously make the various attacks more descriptive and naughty. They also have some interesting ideas to get around the 'Euww! What's that fetish doing there!?' problem by giving the player some choice in how the world is set up before starting a game (all female monsters, all male monsters, etc).
Seduction Quest - Yuki-Onna Alraune sandwich |
One of the links on their site pointed to another roguelike that's a little further along in development: Noxico. This one is a little more like Corruption of Champions with both sexes present, furries, and possibly a whole load of weird sexual shit going on.
Noxico - Starting Village. All those letters are people. |
Actually, reconciling the Bad Ends of MGQ with the permadeath ethos of roguelikes will be an interesting design challenge for the developers. The fun part of MGQ is deliberately making Luka lose to see what the monster girl does to him afterwards. In a roguelike the penalties for dying are often brutal as it means you lose everything and have to start again. Maybe a sexy Bad End scene is exactly what's needed to sweeten the pill.