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Scantanador, a roguelike

Click here to play Scantanador 0.5.3

Scantanador is the name of a roguelike in JavaScript, loosely modeled after ToME (up until the 2.3.5 version) and the Angband family in general: this is not because I think they are better than other roguelikes, but because I loved them when I was a student.

In its first versions, Scantanador made heavy use of the library ROT.JS, but now I’m trying to depend less and less from it. I still use it for dungeon generation, field of view and pathfinding, but sooner or later the game will become fully independent. I hope.

The graphic interface is Unicode based, which means letters and other characters. You are the @ in the middle of the screen and you can move around by using arrow keys, numpad, numbers and so on, but also by clicking/tapping the screen in the direction you want to go, more or less. Put another way, you can move with
7 8 9
4 5 6
1 2 3
, or
Home Up PgUp
Left . Right
End Down PgDwn

The [.] or [5] key will allow you to stand still and wait for the next round. There are many more keys and actions and you can see the whole list by pressing the [?] key, which will open the help screen. By clicking/tapping on your character (the @ in the middle of the screen) or by pressing the [Enter] key you can open the main menu, where you will find (and click) all the commands without having to remember the corresponding keys: they are the usual commands, which is to say eat, quaff, wear, wield, shoot, use magic and so on. Nothing new.

For now there are then dungeons to explore, scattered here and there through the wilderness. The easiest one is the dungeon Basica, where the game starts; the hardest is the dungeon Avernus, where the last boss waits for you. As always, the deepness indicates how difficult a dungeon is: of course, the deeper you dive in a dungeon, the harder it should become. You can read the name of the dungeon and its deepness at the bottom right of the screen.

You can exit from a dungeon by climbing up if you are at the first level of that dungeon, or by climbing down if you are at the bottom level (the one with the big baddie, which is a capital omega letter. Of course, you’ll use [>] to climb down and [<] to climb up when you stand on a tile with the same symbol. When you’re walking through the wilderness, the entrance to a dungeon is marked with a >.

As many other roguelike, Scantanador too uses the rule of hunger (but your HP won’t automatically regenerate, too bad for you): the more rounds pass, the hungrier you’ll become. For now, the only food you can find are rations scattered through some dungeons or carried by some monsters, but you can happily eat any corpse you stumble upon. If you decide to eat corpses, it’s better if you first butcher and cook them: this will make them more nourishing and take care of most problem you could have if you eat them raw. Food is very important when you travel through the wilderness: pack up whatever you can, because you won’t find anything to eat until you reach a new dungeon.

You can choose between 3 classes, at the moment: warrior, ranger and wizard. The warrior is big, strong, dumb and hits hard; the ranger is nimble, quick and can use ranged weapons; the wizard is slow, weak, but can cast devastating spells. Choose which one you like better. While exploring dungeons, then, you will find many different items, which you can use and which could change your abilities, making you resistant to certain attacks, boosting your speed and so on. If the Random Number God smiles upon you, you could even find items that will grant you some of the powers from another class, like casting spells or using ranged weapons. Or you could also kill yourself in a very creative way.

Killing monsters you will gain XP; gain enough Xp and you will fain a level; every time you gain a level, your HP will increase and, when the level is divisible by 3, you can also choose a new special ability, or increase by 1 one of your characteristics. A wizard can also learn a new spell every time the level is multiple of 3. The highest level you can reach is 50, but it will take a lot of time and you might not survive long enough (I am still working on balancing the game).

Scantanador is still a work-in-progress, but you can already play it and win it. At least theoretically. I plan to add (sooner or) later more classes, more abilities, more spells, new monsters, towns where you can trade items and buy equipment and so on: time will tell whether I shall succeed or not.

To-do list:

  • less stupid monsters;
  • adding more special powers for player and monsters;
  • towns where to trade and stock up;
  • traps (no, not THAT kind of traps);
  • unidentified items;
  • balancing the game;
  • NPC?
  • whatever.

Download Scantanador 0.5.3 as ZIP Folder