Because they have nine lives.
My favorite game is a roguelike game. So, you know, a game where when you die once, your game progress is erased.
And one of the playable races is a cat. They’re quite shit. They can cast spells, but can’t wield weapons and can’t wear armor, except for a hat.
But, well, you already guessed it, they possess the superpower of respawning after a death, for a limited number of times.
And so, because most deaths in that game happen due to a blunder, that actually makes them kind of a viable race, even though they feel like hard mode in a game that’s brutally difficult to begin with.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It’s a non-commercial title, so it doesn’t care to do the best job selling itself, and even then it’s quite niche, but well, here’s the webpage: https://crawl.develz.org/
We’ve also got two communities here on Lemmy: !dcss@lemmy.ml !dcss@lemmy.world
DCSS is a great game. I haven’t played in in some time, but I love that it’s still actively updated and played!
Thanks for linking those communities, I hadn’t found any yet, so that’s really cool.
For newbies, I’d recommend choosing the tiles version. It’s the pretty looking one with graphics. There’s also the ASCII version that is what most veterans grew up playing before tiles were a thing. There’s also a way to play online, and if i recall correctly, compete for high scores on a leader board. When playing online other players can tune in and watch you play your run. I believe they hold competitions once in a while too.
There’s a nice tutorial to help break into the basics of the game also, I’d recommend checking that out as well, if you are just starting out.
Of all places to see a DCSS comment in the wild… a dad joke community comment section on Lemmy, lol. Maybe me stumbling across it is a devine sign to get back into the game. I have downloaded a few versions over the last several months, but have felt kind of in a funk about actually diving in and playing. Once it sinks it’s teeth in to you though, it’s pretty addictive. I remember not playing much else one summer. So much variety in that game. So many strategies to try. So many races, classes, gods, etc…
