Xs of Y – roguelike that names itself every run. Written in 4kLoC (github.com)
184 points by andsoitis 4 days ago
seabass-labrax 13 hours ago
I killed myself with a flaming spear and the game said this:
> FATAL ERROR: [program exited] "cannot subtract nil and let-go.lang.Int", :data {:trace ("game-loop (<unknown>)" "game-loop (<unknown>)" "update-world (<unknown>)" "run-until-player-turn (<unknown>)" "creature-turn (<unknown>)" "update-ai-state (<unknown>)" "distance (<unknown>)")}}
A fatal error indeed!
jdiff 10 hours ago
I got killed by a fire imp and crashed the same way.
marcingas 13 hours ago
Love it :D
hales 4 hours ago
Been having fun today trying to work this game out.
Questions:
1. How do I learn the magic/rune system? I can inscribe them on weapons & armour. Some are verbs and some are adjectives. I am yet to see obvious effects (edit: except for 'arc'), so I wonder if they always do things or often do nothing unless specific combinations are used (like subject-verb-object requirements of a sentence or certain weapon/armour+spell combo validity)?
2. What does "magic" mean when I try to inscribe more than one rune on a thing? Does this mean one rune is free but multiple require magic and are detrimental if you have none?
3. How do I interpret the weapon stats? Eg "Current: 3-5 -> 2-4"
Notes:
1. The game is much easier if I set my gamma up (xgamma -gamma 1.5). Most of the levels are very dark (10% of RGB values dark) so I easily miss items and routes to check otherwise.
2. There are a lot more keybinds than shown onscreen. 'x' to autoexplore, 'r' for a runes page I'm trying to work out. Shift+Z to autorest/heal. '>' will fasttravel you to the stairs down if you have already found them. Shift+direction will autowalk.
3. Don't press 'q'. There is no confirmatin prompt. There are no saves. Aieee :D
marcingas 16 hours ago
Author here! Thanks for posting! This game is written in a Clojure-like programming language I've made. So this is a (B)rogue-like in a Clojure-like :)
What I think is interesting is that this game computes the entire world state each tick and does so efficiently thanks to persistent data structures.
To anyone who dared to fire it up: thank you for playing, I'm curious what you think!
allknowingfrog 11 hours ago
I did a quick run on the web version. I was able to sneak attack everything on the first two levels, which felt like a bug, but I'm honestly not sure.
When I found a spear, I kind of expected to be able to throw it, but I didn't find a throw option anywhere. I think that makes the short sword better in every case, but maybe I missed something.
Overall, I love the execution. Quality retro fun with a really nice interface.
marcingas 11 hours ago
This totally is a bug. Was this recently? I thought I fixed this in WASM version.
jackpirate 15 hours ago
The name let-go of your programming language is awesome!
marcingas 15 hours ago
Thanks! Please check it out and leave me a star if you like it :)
onlyrealcuzzo 12 hours ago
This is awesome!
I'm interested in building something similar, any tips besides looking at what you've done and Brogue?
marcingas 11 hours ago
I'd say don't immediately go into making an ECS and don't sweat about perf too much. You can totally do this in any programming language. This is a good talk about roguelike software design in general: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxI3Eu5DPwE
Tbh the whole channel is a gold mine of inspiration. Also check: https://discord.gg/bgd2GrhR
biosubterranean 14 hours ago
Little buggy (dying from things not on the screen), but I love the dwarf fortress esque vibes
Oakwhisper 14 hours ago
There was a commit a few minutes ago that fixed the instakills for me
marcingas 14 hours ago
cmrdporcupine 10 hours ago
My 15 year old's (who is a roguelike fanatic) first comment was: there's no diagonal movement?
"The visuals are interesting.... oh I died."
marcingas 9 hours ago
I don't have a numpad so it did not occur to me to add diagonals :D
Good feedback though, I'll add it. Thanks to your 15 year old!
jdiff 8 hours ago
cheald 11 hours ago
"Applied theology with inadequate safety margins" might just be my favorite difficulty description ever.
Jeremy1026 16 hours ago
Gets stuck in a redirect loop with the message:
> Interactive input unavailable (no cross-origin isolation).
> Deploy coi-serviceworker-js alongside this file.
in Safari on 26.4
ssalka 6 hours ago
Not sure how you feel about including sound, but I feel like there needs to be a warning sound that plays when you're low HP, like in Pokemon. I keep dying because I don't realize I'm at low health
marcingas an hour ago
Interesting idea... maybe it could send terminal bell or tint the screen red at low health?
fhn 8 hours ago
let's not have q=quit. most rouge games have q=quaff. I mean if people want to quit, they can just refresh or close the tab. At the very least, ask.
Parcival 16 hours ago
Pretty fun! I keep getting instantly killed by things though and I'm not sure why, possibly a bug.
andai 16 hours ago
I see you haven't played Noita!
marcingas 15 hours ago
Noita was another inspiartion when making this - the inverted power curve is real! Start squishy, become a god, die anyway.
zardo 14 hours ago
ticulatedspline 13 hours ago
I feel this comment. Seriously though, damage reflection was one of the many insanely annoying things about that game.
CyberShadow 15 hours ago
No, I think I'm seeing the same bug. Time seems to sometimes subjectively freeze:
─── Messages ───
Old man shuts the gate behind you. You hear him mutter "every time, I swear..."
You must retrieve the Amulet of Lost Semicolons.
You kill the rat! (sneak attack!)
The rat squeals and dies!
You wait. (x10) ᛜ
ᚢ You kill the rat! (sneak attack!) ᛉ
The rat squeals and dies!
You hear muttering. ᛋ
You hear muttering.
You hear muttering.
You hear a distant creak. ᛖ ᛃ
The runestone crumbles as you touch it. You learn: ᛟ means "ice"! ᛚ
You hear a distant creak.
The goblin misses you. (x3)
The goblin hits you for 4.
The goblin hits you for 3. ᛏ
The goblin hits you for 4.
The goblin hits you for 3.
The goblin misses you. ᛚ
The goblin hits you for 4.
The goblin hits you for 2.
The goblin hits you for 4.
The goblin misses you.
The goblin hits you for 2.
The goblin misses you. (x2)
The goblin hits you for 2.
The goblin kills you!
You die...
marcingas 15 hours ago
dpkp 14 hours ago
fhn 15 hours ago
marcingas 14 hours ago
devindotcom 16 hours ago
that's actually a beloved feature of "true" roguelikes
gchamonlive 17 hours ago
Reminds me a lot of NetHack, good times
pgt 15 hours ago
Not a Rogue-like specialist, it's hard – I haven't made it out of level 1 yet.
fhn 8 hours ago
I just got to lvl2 only because goblins aren't insta-killing me
sandoze 17 hours ago
No credit for the art direction and inspiration? Brogue?
Or did I miss the attribution?
* Edit: I’m not looking for the downvotes or to stir things up. I’m simply calling out that this is a small niche community we notice these things, we’re very free with our code, and copy is a compliment, but so is attribution.
The author wasn’t so much inspired the by Brogue style, but copied it directly down to the animations and ASCII.
bayarearefugee 17 hours ago
> No credit for the art direction and inspiration? Brogue?
In the age of LLMs the "author" might not even know where the art direction and inspiration came from!
marcingas 15 hours ago
I know, this is intentional :)
I took things I like from Brogue and added my own spin on it.
marcingas 15 hours ago
yeah, this is a Brogue-like. I love Brogue and have been inspired by it. XsofY is not an exact clone but I've studied Brogue C source heavily when making this.
I'll link to Brogue in the README :)
sandoze 15 hours ago
Amazing and great work!
somewhatgoated 17 hours ago
Calling it rogue-like is basically attribution since Brogue is just the follow-up to Rogue which invented the genre
sandoze 17 hours ago
I’ll be sure to keep that in mind with my next plumber platformer
somewhatgoated 15 hours ago
fsckboy 6 hours ago
most people would name hack (1984) or the fork nethack (1987) as the successor to rogue (1980). brogue (2018) i never heard of till now but probably i aged out by then (aged out of spending many mindless i.e. repetitive hours of fun)
Widdershin 5 hours ago
SubiculumCode 9 hours ago
I'm a little confused. There were some differences, but this stuff is straight out angband/moria lineage stuff. https://angband.readthedocs.io/en/latest/version.html#previo...
jdiff 8 hours ago
the lighting effects are very brogue and like nothing I've seen in angband, which is very very barebones ASCII by comparison. brogue-likes push into ANSI art territory with their abuse of terminal formatting.
SubiculumCode 8 hours ago
deathanatos 15 hours ago
While I can see perhaps a claim of "inspiration", when I put Brogue & this side-by-side, while artistically there is similarity, I wouldn't say "copied".
Brouge isn't the only rouge-like with LoS mechanics.
marcingas 15 hours ago
Brogue is insanely well balanced and ingeniously designed. XsofY is a mere tribute ;)
protocolture 7 hours ago
Sounds like its close to red.
BeetleB 17 hours ago
Wouldn't the credit go to ... rogue?
sandoze 17 hours ago
The genre of course. But this is almost a 1-1 copy of the Brogue style. Right down to the colors, animation, and ASCII
devindotcom 16 hours ago
Razengan 17 hours ago
Noun of Noun
bennettpompi1 17 hours ago
fun project!
otikik 16 hours ago
Found it a bit annoying having to press 'i' at the start in order to equip the dagger and armor that were on my backpack, but well done.
fhn 15 hours ago
yep. should be equipped from the start.
marcingas 15 hours ago
Agree, will patch this.
marcingas 14 hours ago
fixed
binary0010 14 hours ago
Isn't this the kind of thing you can essentially fully offload to Claude code these days? Don't really get the point of these tiny primarily llm generated game clones tbh.
marcingas 14 hours ago
I see your point but I like to think it's not as sloppy as you'd expect. This one is written in a programming language I've been making since 2021 and it's not a direct Brogue clone despite its looks.
frakt0x90 14 hours ago
Is this a troll comment? I don't see where the author used AI to generate the code and if you don't see the point of experimenting with technology, you're on the wrong website.
binary0010 14 hours ago
You really don't see where the author uses ai? Pretty much everywhere, all the docs, the overview of the project, a LOT of the code is obviously primarily ai written, etc.
sandoze 13 hours ago
marcingas 13 hours ago
postalrat 12 hours ago
Consider them prototypes. Like the games submitted to game jams.
marcingas 12 hours ago
I wouldn't even dare posting this to a game jam... or HN at this point but someone posted it for me, welp.