Title Screen
NameMath: The Roguelike
AuthorKKairos
CategoryGame
Release Date2010-03-14
Rating
(3.33/5)
Tags
Game Version1.0
Min. MZX Ver.2.83
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Math: The Roguelike
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It's a roguelike, but not entirely conventional: MATH is your weapon just as much as swords and axes. Brave the numbercave in an effort to discover Fermat's Other Last Theorem! Be the best mathematician-rogue you can be! Enjoy! MZXGiant was nice enough to help me with updating this thing, which in its original upload couldn't save your game twice. Then Lancer found another bug and Giant helped me again. Everything SHOULD have been fine after that, but as of the date of this edit (actually, the date of a Let's Play by Uberhunter at my request several months ago) we now know (barring that both he and duvel reviewed from outdated versions to the current fix2) that this game can, unfortunately still generate unpassable floors. [release date surmised from end of 7drl competition, 2010]
Wervyn said:
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A fun diversion, if a little on the easy side and lacking in variety. But it's a 7drl entry, meaning I can't fault it too much for lacking scope. The math gimmick is clever, and tends to reward players who understand basic algebra over those who are swayed by weapon titles. For instance, the "unreliable sword" and "unreliable axe" are actually extremely probabilistically reliable; and the "Failure Function" is so powerful as to be almost broken when you first get it, immediately giving you access to a 1000x damage modifier as long as you understand how to use it. By the time that becomes 4000x at the end, you're one-hit killing stuff for hundreds of thousands of damage that even the cubic "Holy snap" function can't touch. Still, there's a satisfaction in figuring out how to use the tools, even when they're rather obviously laid out; and in knowing which functions are immediately inferior (such as the doubling and quadrupling functions) even though they're introduced much later than the quadratic function that renders them all but useless.

Anyway, it was fun, I didn't lose my time.
Ryan said:
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Amazing. I wasn't expecting anything nearly so awesome when I downloaded this, thinking 1) it was made in a week in 2) MZX, no less. Boy was I wrong...

I'd seen a random map generator in MZX before, but nothing like this. The UI is easy to use and nicely done. The maps are easily explorable and interesting. The various objects you can pick up have fun names. And as Wervyn said, figuring out how to use the tools given to do the max damage is its own reward.

If I had to pick one beef, it's extremely easy until you get sandwiched between two baddies on a lower level. I could've just sat a level higher and grinded my turns to 1800+ so I could double my health every turn, but I didn't just want to sit there and grind. So, I artificially added difficulty to the game and died for it. : P

If this turns into a longer project, more gameplay balance would be nice. However, for what it is, it's highly enjoyable, and I'll most likely play it again.
duvel said:
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It's an extremely easy game, but very fun for anyone with a passing knowledge of math. My biggest complaints are that most of the weapons are very linear in how much they are worth (if you go by the order on the equipment screen, they're ordered exactly by average output). Also, the game becomes very broken with the Critical Failure/the damage*-100 combo, but that wouldn't be available until much later on. The equipment is all standard with no variation, which is unfortunate because math based weaponry would provide countless opportunities for randomization; the same goes with the enemies, who are all the same but grow in difficulty as you go down the floors.

I would like to make special mention of the randomizer: it's good when it works, but I unfortunately became the unlucky winner of a randomized layout that had no access to a way down to the next floor on my first play-through. A serious bug, to be sure, but I don't think it would be a common one.

My suggestion is to play through once regularly then break the game with cheat mode; it's worth at least a try.