7DRL 2023 Reviews (Patreon)

As mentioned when I started a few weeks back, again this year I've been streaming new 7DRLs, both to check out and share interesting entries while also providing feedback for other developers on their projects. I will be skipping this week's stream because doing that has been really hard the past couple times after having yet more issues with my easily-triggered post-concussion syndrome, but the whole process is about wrapped up at this point anyway, with probably just a few stragglers left on my list that I want to try, so I thought I'd share a quick summary for you.

Also just this past week the organizers published the official reviewing results, which I didn't participate in but covered a bit at the beginning of the last stream. You can check the full results for more information about different entries in each category--it turns out most of the games topping the list I'd picked and shared before as well.

Of the several dozen 7DRLs I'd picked to play, most were done on stream, sometimes with the devs around. The first video is here, with subsequent videos linked through their descriptions, and all video descriptions also include a link to each game, short description, text mini-review, and timestamp to find it. The same info can also be found in the lengthy Mastodon thread I put together throughout the process.

Here I'll share a tentative Top 3 I recommend you try out...

Fire-Fighting Wizard Pet Rescue Roguelike 

This one's heavily inspired by Rift Wizard (another favorite commercial RL I've streamed before), a fun non-violent theme that has you rescuing pets from procedurally generated houses that are gradually burning to the ground.

Decker 

This one is a 7DRL developed by a Cogmind player, and it shows ;)

There are heavy Cogmind inspirations throughout, and if you like Cogmind, you will probably find this one interesting. It is also relatively complex, reminiscent of Cogmind's 7DRL days (and reception xD), so you'll need to do a fair bit of reading and exploration of the mechanics to start figuring out how to play well, but it's a cool concept, basically turning Cogmind into an actual cyberpunk hacking experience complete with breaking into systems, defeating other programs/ICE, and earning credits to buy more software and upgrades. Highly recommended if you don't mind a slower start.

Loose Spirits 

Another deep 7DRL that will require you to spend a bit of time reading to learn how to play (lots of information on the itch.io page--definitely read at least the main parts). A pretty cool game overall with neat systems. It doesn't have a lot of longevity once you finally figure it all out, mainly because you're not discovering new content as you go but instead seeing most of it in the first couple floors, but definitely worth the time to see what they've done with the mechanics. There will likely be more in the future, but this is already a pretty solid concept to start out with, and quite unique.

Others

I also recommend Boat Journey, Cravespace, and Wizard-Thief-Fighter if you like interesting mechanical experiments, and Magpie if you enjoy puzzle games (specifically "Broughlikes"). And there are definitely some other ones in there really worth playing if you have more time after these as well :)

Cogmind

As for my own 7DRL-project-turned-lifes-work, after going through some annoying back-and-forth over how to deal with the complexity that is Cogmind's combat mechanics, and how to best represent that for those who need/want it (not to mention the huge amount of testing required to make sure it all works as expected!), I'm getting closer to the tail end of the expanded combat log.

I did receive some mockups via Discord, and have used those as a reference point to make sure I'm addressing at least some main issues as far as "what the people want" beyond my own list which was compiled over a longer period, as shared before.

Personally it's a bit hard to work on because I've always found the combat log mostly irrelevant to the experience I want to create, plus would much rather be using this time to build real new content, but hopefully the new features will mostly satisfy those who do care about it, so I can finally move on to destroying more Cogminds without all that background noise :P

On the positive side, I do think it's at least nice to see all the combat-related info merged into a single separate log, even if I bet no matter how much time is invested there it will no doubt still have some deficiencies given how complex situations can get. I'm eager to see the final results in actual use, since playing with it in real runs and testing all the individual scenarios is two very different things! It's the kind of thing I'd like to do a separate release for, at least for wider testing purposes, but we'll see (if only because I'd be worried that releasing it earlier would also cause the responses to suck even more time away from actual new content xD).