Freeware Game Pick: Loot (Casey Sillito)
Loot is a casual card game set in a dungeon, in which players are to equip themselves with a deck consisting of potions or spells procured from the rooms they've explored.
You may only move into an adjacent room one at a time, with each new location yielding either a trap, loot or ladder. You lose one of your health points when encountering traps, and can carry a maximum of six cards at most. Players will be forced to discard or use a card immediately if the deck limit is reached.
There are an infinite number of levels to explore, but players must still make their way back to the entrance of the dungeon to win the game and have their points haul recorded on the high score table. Brilliantly executed, but unfortunately the game also relies heavily on the use of a pen and paper for noting down locations of traps.
Name: Loot
Developer: Casey Sillito
Category: Puzzle
Type: Freeware
Size: 5MB
Comments
"but unfortunately the game also relies heavily on the use of a pen and paper for noting down locations of traps."
What about your good 'ol brain? There is 15-20 cards on the table, and 5 or 6 are traps. It's not hard to remember...
This game is not bad as far as casual dungeon crawling goes. I wish it had some (basic) weapons and monsters. Nothing complicated, something like "attack vs defense", any remaining defense count as hits.
Posted by: Jean-Sebastien | July 15, 2008 2:47 PM
"There is, theoretically, an infinite number of levels, but each lower level has an increased percentage of traps, but no increase in helpful items, so you're prolly not going to get much deeper than level 6. After level 6, no new cards are added and the levels don't get bigger."
35 (7x5) tiles at the lower levels, with the percentage of traps increasing? Seems a little harder to remember than you put it.
Though pen and paper does seem to take away quite a bit from the gameplay. The author got 24k in one of his plays, and that's what he calls an "exceptional game". With a sheet of graph paper, I easily got 180k. What to do...
Posted by: Anonymous | July 15, 2008 9:00 PM
Seems his highest score on the latest build is 84k (on easy). Dunno if he marked traps or what.
Posted by: Anonymous | July 15, 2008 9:03 PM
Yeah it's harder to remember, but it's more fun than marking the tiles. I mean, it would take all of 4 seconds for the author to add an icon on trapped spaces, and he didn't. I don't think that he intended the game to be played with a pen and paper on the side.
Posted by: Jean-Sebastien | July 15, 2008 10:22 PM
Hi! This is the game creator here. Sorry I took so long to notice this. I had no idea Loot was getting so much attention already. I just wanted to mention a couple of things:
First of all, the game is finished and it can be played on YoYo games:
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/50544
It looks nicer and has a lot of bug fixes and maybe a couple of new cards since this was written.
Also, Jean is right, the game is absolutely meant to be played without mapping. I never use mapping and I think doing so would take a lot of fun out of the game. Of course, you're free to play however you like, but if you map out the levels, I would say your score doesn't "count" :)
Posted by: Casey Sillito | August 31, 2008 8:08 AM