Shattered Pixel Dungeon

I don’t really play games on my phone, guess not having Google Play limits those titles that are available. However earlier in the week I came across Shattered Pixel Dungeon on F-Droid

It’s described as: Traditional rogue like game with pixel-art graphics and simple interface.

Hard to believe that in all my years of gaming I’ve never played a ‘rogue like game’… but I’m very impressed with this perma-death Android title

The game begins by choosing an hero, from the traditional classes of Warrior, Mage, Rogue, and the unlocked bonus of Huntress… apparently awarded after defeating the third boss, I haven’t found the first one yet!

The dungeons are randomly generated on each load, each level containing monsters (rats and crabs early on), chests, and generic RPG goodies e.g. coins (can I use them?), a variety of potions, scrolls, seeds, weapons, and armour… and did I mention that the scrolls and potions are randomised, where blue once healed who knows now WTF it will do 😀

Your Hero takes damage from encounters, that can be healed in a variety of ways, gains experience points to level up, and becomes hungry over time; starving if not fed.

The source code is also published to GitHub. I’d be telling fibs if I said I wasn’t tempted to modify the difficulty a little, but I guess that it’s all part of the fun, and “one more try” compulsion.

I’ve found a the Pixel Dungeon wiki, this may help prolong my time exploring 🙂

Ah reading the wiki it seems like I’m playing the modded version of the game, the vanilla being simply Shattered Pixel

Description
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a game based upon Pixel Dungeon’s Open Source. it is posted with the permission of Watabou, the original dev of Pixel Dungeon. Its aim is to make Pixel Dungeon the best game it can be, with reworks to existing content and tonnes of new stuff as well!
Both Pixel Dungeon and Shattered Pixel Dungeon belong to the roguelike genre. The dungeon and items are randomly generated, so no two play sessions are the same. Roguelike games are difficult and feature permanent death (no loading a save to try again!). While you may try and fail many times, this makes winning all the more satisfying.
Here are the current differences from Pixel Dungeon:
– Texts and boss/quest encounters in the sewers completely reworked!
– Rings completely overhauled, 6 totally new rings!
– New item class: ARTIFACTS! unique utility items that do not need scrolls of upgrade!
– New food item/plant added, you’ll have to find it!
– Many potions/seeds/scrolls tweaked to be more useful, a few nerfed as well.
– Rogue starting ring has been replaced with an artifact.
– Dew vial no longer autorevives, but can now bless an ankh.
– Nerfed health potion farming from fly swarms.
– many balance tweaks and bugfixes
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is constantly being updated, so expect this list to grow!
It is of the utmost importance that Shattered Pixel Dungeon still feels and plays like Pixel Dungeon, if you encounter any bugs or issues please contact me and I will try to sort them out. If something seems out of place or overpowered/underpowered, let me know and I’ll look into it.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is open source under the GPLv3 Licence. It is currently using v1.7.1c of Pixel Dungeon’s source, and will be updated when new source is available. You can find the current Shattered Pixel Dungeon source here: https://github.com/00-Evan/shattered-pixel-dungeon
If you would like to do any work with this source code, please contact me first as a courtesy.

The wiki has some cool tables too, this takes me back to the old days; remember pencil and paper RPG’s 😉

Read that there’s also a ‘night mode’: that the difficulty is increased between the hours of 00:00 to 07:00… as it wasn’t enough of a challenge to stay alive already!

Saying that my biggest challenge seems to be hunger, off to read the wiki for survival clues.

I’m finding it a great way to pass a short game session, and you can quite out at any time and save your current game. I can see this been on my phone for a while.

Tips

– starting guide
– sleeping heals HP’s – great on early levels
– Strategies
– Little-Known Tactics and Tips
– 11 tips from a veteran
[Rating: 4]