LogFAQs > #932316529

I didn't get the idea to make a list of 100 games from transcience, but I did get the idea to use images from him. They're very eye-catching and nice. I reserve the right to immediately nuke this post if the images didn't format nicely.

#100




Years of release: 2015-present (PC)
Beaten?: Hell no

Hey, do you wanna REALLY confused? Like, have all your ability to comprehend things fucked up beyond comprehension? Caves of Qud is probably the single most confusing, bizarre, and thoroughly impenetrable game I've ever played. The worldbuilding is completely insane, the visuals are old school as heck, and the game mechanics feels like it requires a college course just to begin to understand properly. I am completely fascinated by this game. It is confounding, and it is beautiful.

This one's a roguelike, and it's as roguelikey as it gets - you get dumped into this world of ASCII-like graphics with basically no idea what to do and you go wherever you like, killing stuff and picking stuff up, having no idea what's going on until eventually something kills you. It's weirder than usual though - there's a lot of bizarre shit in the game that doesn't make sense, and isn't really intended to make sense until you just go along with it and understand how the world works, like some kind of weird foreign language. I couldn't even really begin to explain it to you. I still don't really get what doing the water ritual at the beginning does or why it's good to increase my reputation with any one group.

I haven't gotten very far in this, but I'd really, really like to come back to this one and figure it out someday. The world is incredibly engrossing - even with these lo-fi graphics, the presentation here somehow gets across a bizarre, alien sort of beauty, and the music in this game is great - it's all weird, surreal soundscapes that completely envelop you and pull you into the world. I've listened to the music more than I've played the game at this point, it's really well done. That alone is a selling point enough for me, but I also get the sense that there is a lot of content and a lot of challenge to be had here, if I just take the time to really sit down and learn this shit. I'm not kidding when I say this game is hard to understand - if you want to be more confused than you've ever been in your life give this one a shot. It's still in early access, but it's been around for a while and I'm not carrying it over to the 20's.