Roguelike and indie gaming. Are there any more relevant gaming buzzwords at the moment?
Teleglitch is a top down roguelike made by indie studio Paradox Interactive. It’s a pixel graphics rendered game and has an unusually appealing look and feel to it, with field of vision revealing your surroundings in such a way you get a fake rendered impression in 3D of your environment.
You are essentially a man sent into a research laboratory to battle some experiment gone wrong where we have an invasion of zombies and the like. It is literally what Doom would be like if it were top down. With a wide variety of weapons and random objects that can all be combined to make better weapons and ammo, there’s a very clever dynamic to utilising all your items to ensure you maintain a balance of hardcore weaponry versus the longevity of ammo.
It’s hard, in the same way a decent Rogue-like should be. Die at level 4 (it will take an hour to get there) and you start from the beginning.
With exploration and observation rewarded, there’s great motivation to search around with a hugely satisfying sensation after having found a little hidden crack in a wall, revealed hidden items after a wonderful explosion effect showering the area with tiny little pixels.
Overall I can’t get how original and endearing the graphics are. It’s an effective 90’s throwback but with sufficient modernisation to warrant the excellent sense godlike control gives you from managing miniature characters.
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