Friday 24 March 2017

HyperRogue 9.4 is now available freely!

HyperRogue version 9.4c is released freely! You can download the Windows executable with source that compiles on Linux, the OSX package, the source, the Android version, or play the online version.

Compared to the previous free release of HyperRogue (8.3j) it includes the following new features:
  • Adaptative animations, 3D display, sound effects, and other user interface improvements.
  • Ten new lands, including Reptiles where the floor is made of reptiles, Burial Grounds where you have to use the curvature to gather treasures, and the Halloween mini-game where you have to use the limited resources in spherical geometry! See all lands in the HyperRogue gallery.
  • Geometry nerds can now experiment with spherical, elliptic, or quotient hyperbolic geometry, access new 3D models of the hyperbolic world, try cellular automata, or use HyperRogue as a visualization engine.
  • And tons of other minor improvements, such as turn-based multiplayer or changes to Orb frequency -- see the full changelog here.


As you can see, this is the latest version available at the moment; thus, the paid extras are only the social features (achievements, leaderboards) and automatic updates. We are tending towards changing the "previous major version is available for free" system a bit, as it has some disadvantages.
  • Bugfixes and interface improvements should be immediately available in the free version, as bugs or bad interface could drive the players away.
  • Having up-to-date source in the public repo would make it much more convenient to fork HyperRogue, as the improvements could be easily incorporated into the offical version. This would increase the probability of people contributing (so far there were only technical contributions, or ideas without code).
  • HyperRogue is a fun and challenging game, but it is also more than that. We believe it is one of the best ways to learn about hyperbolic geometry, and as possibly the richest hyperbolic geometry system currently in existence, it has other applications (such as data visualization). For such applications, it is beneficial if the free version is up-to-date.
Possibly the free version will be updated more frequently, possibly some more features will be added as paid extras. Please comment if you have any thoughts about this!

We would also like to note that although HyperRogue is currently one of the highest rated turn-based tactics games on Steam, it has almost no reviews on sites such as Metacritic. Please add reviews there!

Most importantly, have fun!

3 comments:

  1. I've had the paid version since 8.0, but thanks for doing this. It should make contributions easier, and bug testing too.

    I'm not on Metacritic, but do reviews on personal websites help?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sure! Every review helps. Although I feel that Metacritic is quite important, and it is one of the places where people looking for reviews go.

      Delete
  2. Hey guys, I’m the owner of freegamesutopia.com, a one-man run site dedicated to free-to-play video games.
    I played your game and thought that HyperRogue is deserving to be into the Free Games Utopia database!
    So, here it is: http://www.freegamesutopia.com/game/hyperrogue/588/

    ReplyDelete