HyperRogue 6.0: five new lands!

HyperRogue has been updated, and five new lands are coming! The Vineyard is a land filled with a very dense and regular pattern of ultraparallel lines. Vine Beasts move normally, and Vine Spirits move in the vines.

The Dead Cave is a random maze level, Live Cave without a spark of life. There were maze levels previously (Dry Forest, Alchemist Lab), but it was easy to cut down trees, or to change the color of slime. Dead Cave is mostly static, though. There are Orbs of Earth and Earth Elementals, which can change the layout of walls, but they are comparatively rare.

Many people seem to be wondering how a war would look in the world of HyperRogue (see this thread on the Steam community discussion for example), and the Hive is an attempt to answer that. You will encounters huge armies of Hyperbugs there, luckily these armies will be more happy to fight each other than you.

I have been trying too hard to show many monsters on this screenshot;) The Emerald Mine is a living cave with a regular stable pattern, reminding of the art of Escher a bit. It contains Hedgehog Warriors from the Jungle, Miners who break down walls when they die, as well as new monsters which require non-standard methods of attacking.

The Land of Power is a land filled with orbs. Monsters are numerous and powerful -- Witches are using Flash, Speed, Winter, as well as the new Fire and Aether Orbs against you.

The regular patterns of the Vineyard, Emerald Mines, and Land of Power all come from the same underlying pattern, which has 40 tiles and fills the whole world of HyperRogue. You can have some fun with this pattern in the Periodic Editor.

HyperRogue is updated to 6.0 on Steam. HyperRogue Gold for Android should be updated soon, free versions will follow after some time (1-2 months?). Have fun!

Minor changes:

• One new achievement (not included ones related to the new lands).
• The Lightning spell now react a bit differently to some types of obstacles.
• Fixed anomalous Great Walls.
• Fixed slime spilling through monsters.
• Changed how Orb of Digging works, and renamed Orb of Earth.
• Worms explode on death, as they were supposed to.
• You no longer generate that much heat when entering a cold land.
• No more plus signs when slime spills into the Graveyard.
• The graphics editor supports 't', 'y' keys for moving and rotating shapes (not documented).
• Internal changes in the grammar/translation system.

HyperRogue updated for free and Android!

The Android version of HyperRogue, as well as the free version, have been updated (to version 5.5a)!

This brings translations, two new lands with new mechanics (Cocytus and Dry Forest), the Euclidean mode, and several other minor improvements to free and Android players. Additionally, HyperRogue Gold now has access to online achievements and leaderboards, via Google Games Services.

Have fun! And buy the Steam version too! You not only get access to Steam leaderboards and achievements, but also more interest on Steam generates faster development of new versions. Currently five new lands are planned, including: a land where you can witness battles between large armies, a land filled with a regular and dense pattern of ultraparallel lines, a hyperbolic fjord with a regular but complicated pattern and enemies which require different ways for defeating, a randomly generated cave (similar to the Lab and the Forest, but this one is mostly static), and a land where you can find lots of magical orbs, but guarded by very powerful enemies.

The full changelog from 4.4 to 5.5a below:

• The new land, the Dry Forest, has been added. This land includes Hedgehog Warriors who cannot be attacked directly and need to be 'stabbed' instead, and Fire Fairies who set the forest on fire.
• Cocytus was previously available only for cheaters (and extremely good players), now it has been improved and released officially. It includes floors which melt when you are around for too long, and monsters which manipulate heat.
• Euclidean mode. In this mode, the mechanics of HyperRogue are exactly the same, but the game is played on a usual hex board. This mode allows you to check why the hyperbolic geometry matters.
• Translation engine. HyperRogue currently has a Czech, Polish, and Turkish translation. It has a powerful translation engine, so grammar is used correctly (it even uses the female forms correctly when playing a female character). Also some typos have been fixed. Please contact me if you would like to provide an additional translation.
• AI improvement. Monsters will try not to block each other. This does not help them much in the hyperbolic world (but it does in the Euclidean mode).
• Gameboard mode. This can be used for designing your own hyperbolic games and art.
• The player character can be customized (colors, male or female).
• The game now tracks the realtime passed while playing the game.
• The configuration screen has been split into three pages. This allows it to include more options, like configuring the joystick not through editing the config files.
• If you don't press any keys, the last messages will stay on the screen. Also the time of message flashing is now configurable.
• Collecting Hyperstones was too easy, this has been rebalanced. If you have started collecting Hyperstones, enemies appear on the Crossroads.
• Slime can now be spilled into other lands, and it can even be used to build bridges.
• Dead trolls and bonfires no longer stabilize the Land of Eternal Motion.
• Blocked tentacles of Cthulhu no longer disappear immediately. Instead, they withdraw one cell at a time, until the whole tentacle is gone.
• If you are travelling through land A and see land B, and you have much more treasure in Land B than in Land A, you will find less treasures in B, or even you won't find any. This is done to prevent strategies where you get lots of treasures in some land by sticking to another, safe land.
• Wandering seeps and ghosts will come when you stay in one place for too long. When you get stuck in the Living Cave, just wait until they come and kill you.
• Orb of Winter now provides resistance to fire, which is useful in R'Lyeh and the Dry Forest.
• Some minor problems with mimics (mirror images and mirages) have been fixed.
• Golems are now saved by Orbs of Safety.
• The "X" now displays the remaining distance to the Key.
• Better info about the Hyperstone Quest in the quest screen.
• Fixed some bugs in the hyperbolic graphics editor, so it should be more usable now.

Euclidean Rogue

Is the hyperbolic geometry in HyperRogue just an irrelevant gimmick, or does it indeed affect the gameplay? Well, things like that should be checked experimentally! I have implemented the Euclidean mode in HyperRogue, where you play with (almost) exactly the same mechanics, but the grid is the usual, hexagonal one.

So, here are the most significant results:

Crossroads and Great Walls: Infinite straight lines which never cross... Well, this effect cannot be achieved in Euclidean geometry. Unless all great walls are parallel, but this is boring.

General Tactics: In most roguelikes, when two monsters are attacking you, a good strategy is to enter a corridor, so that they have to attack you in a queue. In HyperRogue, this can be done practically everywhere, by using the properties of the hyperbolic geometry. And this does not work on the Euclidean hex board, so if two monsters are attacking you at the same time, you have to run until you either find a third monster (which is usually game over), or you are saved by a terrain obstacle.

Land of Mirrors: Those annoying Mirages, who were never able to stay close to you in HyperRogue... As expected, Mirages work much better in the Euclidean world. You can easily amass a big army of them.

Alchemist's Lab: As anybody who knows the game Hex knows, there is either a blue path from north to south, or a red path from west to east. This means that the Alchemist's Lab is hard to explore, you will find yourself blocked by a path of the wrong color. Luckily, slime explosions will fix this for you. (The fact from Hex works in HyperRogue too, but, in some sense, there are many more directions.)

Living Caves:Land generation is slightly biased towards wall tiles here. In hyperbolic geometry, you could still go wherever you wanted, but in Euclidean, you will soon find out that walls are blocking all your paths.

Dry Forest: As above, walls block your movement more efficiently than on the hyperbolic plane, and thus, it seems harder to escape fires... (This is the new land in the Steam version.)

Land of Eternal Motion: On the hyperbolic plane, if you escaped by running on a straight line, Running Dogs would not catch you, because they would be forced to go on an equidistant curve, and these are longer than straight lines. On the hex board, it is impossible to escape even from a single Running Dog.

Orb of Yendor: The quest for Orb of Yendor is obviously much easier in the Euclidean world :)

The Euclidean mode is available in the Steam version of HyperRogue (5.3), on the third page of the config menu. It is not yet available in the free version, nor for other platforms, but it will be added later. Have fun!