Tangaria – free open-source multiplayer roguelike game inspired by Tolkien’s lore and powered by PWMAngband; it combines the complexity and unpredictability of roguelike genre and social features of MMORPG: kill monsters together with your friends, chat, PvP (on demand), build a house, open a store to trade your goods with other players… with advanced real-time gameplay – game become semi turn-based when your character is injured.
Tangaria got two modes: graphical and ASCII (text):
(more screenshots in Gallery)
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Attention please: Tangaria is extremely complex game. To be able to get into it – please prepare to delegate a hour or two on learning basics. I got to mention it, as plenty of people trying to get into it at once, expecting to figure out how to play for 5 minutes – which lead to fail and frustration. Don’t even try to play unless you are ready to spend a hour or so to learn basic stuff. It’s good idea to start with the guide |
Roguelike features:
- permadeath. Every adventure – counts. Every new character is unique exploration experience and achievement;
- absolutely random level generation. You are constantly facing unimaginable gaming situations;
- high degree of character freedom (loads of ways to act: instead of drinking a potion – throw it to the enemy to inflict various effects.. dig, polymorph, steal, kick, etc);
- destructible dungeon environment – tunnel walls, chop trees, make an earthquake to blast everything around you!
- perfect Hack’n’Slash experience – all boring auto-attacks your character will make automatically while giving you time to control essential stuff – casting spells and using skills and items;
- freedom. Not linear walkthrough of the game, go wherever you want, every dive to the dungeon isn’t like previous one!
- anti-cheating roguelikish concept – it’s just you, your skill, your guts.. and your freedom. Grind won’t help you to survive;
- macro system which makes it’s perfectly alright to play roguelike game in ‘real-time’; any action (including targeting) could be put on a hotkey.
MMORPG features:
- real-time. But you could assign a certain HP threshold at which game will slow down and become semi turn-based;
- PvE in group. Game has great features for teamplay; the more – the merrier!
- PvP. You could duel with other characters if you will turn on PvP mode;
- Trade, barter, create your own shop. The economy is healthy because a lot of items and gold got washed out from market upon RIPs;
- Communication. Find friends, create a guild, build a house, welcome your neighbours..
- …and much more. Game has a lot of tiny beautiful features, for example, feature about artifacts – they are real artifacts. There couldn’t be two ‘Orcrist’ swords. After you found a true artifact, only you at the server have it (and there are mechanics which prevent players from hoarding artifacts without using them).
Extra features:
- graphical mode or pure ASCII – you could choose different display modes;
- one character per account. It’s forbidden to have more than one account per person to prevent cheating;
- disconnected stairs. Up/down staircases are ‘not connected’ between levels to prevent stair-scumming;
- food matters. Due world’s catastrophe bag of wheat cost more then two bags of gold. Most of the food could be found only in the dungeon;
- no-selling to NPC to boring grind; in return, you get extra gold drop and could trade with other players!
- brackets system – innovative roguelike anti-cheezing mechanics: you can enter certain dungeons only at certain level;
- rebalanced telepathy & detection: no boring mechanical actions; exploration matters!
- deep storyline based on the unique fantasy universe inspired by Tolkien’s lore;
- beautiful world with handmade locations with inhabitants who will tell you their story;
- sounds, day/night change, Windows/Linux clients;
- diversity: 57 races, 38 classes, 1185 monsters, 32 dungeons, 557 items (multiplied with 122 ego types), 236 unique artifacts, 156 activation properties, 96 item’s parameters… and endless amount hours which you could spend in-game to have a great time!
Screenshots (1st row – graphical mode; 2nd row – ASCII mode):
Also you could find out how the game looks like by watching videos
Beneath the simple graphics can lie worlds of complexity
seldom to be found in any other game.
Sidenotes:
This game has classic roguelike gamedesign, like in Angband or Nethack: all the time your have to make REAL decisions which either would save your life or will lead you to the death. You constantly should decide ‘how to solve’ every particular situation to survive; and this situations always will be not the same as before. Even after dozen years of playing, you will still learn new stuff every day. In addition, each class got own style; and to feel the bottom of this game you should play all classes as they all give different feeling of gameplay!
Tangaria is very complex as all roguelikes. And could be arguably considered as the hardest of them all because of zeitnot (semi)-turn-based gameplay. You will die hundreds times to get the grip on the game, but almost ALWAYS because of your mistakes, not because of internet connection issues as in another MMORPGs with permadeath (for example, in Diablo 2 in most cases I died because of disconnects). Every death will make you better player.
Yes, Tangaria is quite hardcore. You will need clench into a fist you steel nerves and learn to consider myriads of factors to survive. In comparison to some other multiplayer roguelikes, your ability to survive isn’t based at your reaction (5% of success), but at your gaming experience (95%). Tangaria become much less past-paced and action-orientated with introduction of MAngband slow-time mode. Now you always have time to make the right decision without haste: when your character injured – game become semi-turn-based.
Playing with another players in party great thing, but sometimes you could die because of your friend (carelessly opened door, triggered trap, awakened hoards of monsters..); so you might consider to play alone while learning basics and start playing with other players in party at mid-game (30’s). Also it’s important to note, that Tangaria is solo-friendly game and if you like to be a lone wolf – you will still have great time. Learning curve quite balanced and you wouldn’t get more pain there than in NetHack.
Choose from any one of numerous races and classes to begin your adventures in various unexplored dungeon passageways, gaining experience by killing fierce legendary creatures, finding lost artifacts and valuable treasures, and returning to town occasionally to buy supplies and to trade with other players. You work towards near-impossible goal – an attempt to save the world by defeating the Lord of Darkness, who resides far below the surface.. and if you will manage it – to negotiate with valars and maybe even meet Eru Iluvater afterwards… and of course throughout your journeys you will encounter many other adventurers — whether they be friend or foe is up to you to decide!
Development:
Tangaria based at powerful PWMAngband (2007) game engine which was derived from MAngband (1998) and also got some TomeNET (2001) features. All three games are in active development, got very special and unique gameplay, make sure to try them! PWMAngband got latest vanilla Angband core (tileset support, new ID/curses/traps systems, item management, etc), modern MAngband features (like a ‘time bubble’ which slow down a time when you are on low hp, making game almost turn-based while in danger), new gameplay mechanics like necromancy, summoning, etc.
What the difference between Tangaria and PWMAngband?
Tangaria based at PWMAngband, so it’s got all great PWMA features. Additionally, Tangaria got:
- unique carefully designed hand-made locations;
- the most advanced dungeon’s design (it’s not only rooms and corridors);
- advanced graphics with hundreds of new terrain features;
- 40+ new races and 20 new classes;
- new housing system: you can build anywhere; to build big houses you should complete quests; house foundation stones could be acquired by digging;
- player houses are now unique: they are randomly generated using hundreds of different walls and floors;
- new end-game charisma stat which influence a lot of game aspects;
- circumspection storyline which continuing Tolkien universe (rebellion against Valars and multi-dimensions!);
- new monsters types (angels, mutants, djinns, fey, unicorns, ents; each type includes several species) and new monsters (several dozens);
- all races rebalanced to remove experience penalty;
- NPC system (with a lot of dialogues);
- rebalanced detection and magic mapping magic;
- customized dungeons brackets system;
- rebalanced food system;
- reworked curse system;
- the change of day and night got additional influence on gameplay;
- new opportunities to pass through the elements of the landscape;
- pets for some races and classes;
- added swimming (and flying), interaction with water and aquatic life;
- amnesia revamp;
- added music packs and dozens of new sounds;
- more interactions with fountains, including dry ones;
- you could now chop down trees in daylight locations too; new random trees will grow in time to replace them;
- strict fair-play (anti-cheating gameplay);
- ladder which shows legit characters;
- plenty of new racial and class features;
- new dungeons, items, traps, stores etc.
Tangaria focused to take all the best features from it’s ancestors and also get inspiration from great singleplayer roguelikes like NetHack, DCSS, ToME & others, with the influence of sandbox MMORPGs and MUD’s (text MMORPGs).
Contacts:
igroglaz@⒢⒨⒜⒤⒧.⒞⒪⒨
Also, you are welcome to ask any questions @ our Discord