“Doom but as a Roguelike” might sound like just a joke but DoomRL is a cracking game.  It’s top-down, turn-based, grid-based, and… still surprisingly Doom-feely.  Good stuff.  Creator Kornel Kisielewicz and his ChaosForge team have been working on follow-up Jupiter Hell [official site], which boasts such fancy features as 3D graphics if you want ’em (or good ‘ol ASCII if you don’t), for a few years and now they’ve turned to Kickstarter to help finish development.  So it’s… a Doom Roguelike clone Roguelike – a Doomlikedoomroguelikelikeroguelike?  This terminology gets so complicated. 

Like DoomRL, Jupiter Hell is a top-down, turn-based, grid-based roguelike with procedurally-generated levels permadeath and all that.  Roguelike in the sense of ‘like Rogue’, yeah?  ChaosForge are hopeful that a shiny look will help people get over that first hurdle and into roguelikes.  They say:

“We think there are a class of gamers out there who have never tried a traditional roguelike, potentially being turned off by basic graphics or intimidating interfaces.  The likes of the new X-COM games have shown that with more modern looks you can pull in bigger audiences and get them hooked on more engaging mechanics than most popular games offer.  Jupiter Hell could be the game to get a new generation hooked into this awesome and underappreciated genre.” 

Though it will have an ACII mode too.  Anywho, here’s the pitch trailer:



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ChaosForge are looking for £60,000 on Kickstarter to finish up Jupiter Hell.  They’re planning to release it towards the end of 2017 on Windows, Mac, and Linux.  Pledging at least £16 would get you a Steam key or DRM-free version. 

If you want to check out its origins first, DoomRL is still free.  As of 2012, it does come with a less-intimidating graphical mode with snazzy sprites by Spelunky lord Derek Yu.