Orthanc vs Gravehoard

This game is a faithful recreation of "Orthanc", one of the first graphic dungeon crawl role-playing games developed for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's PLATO computer in the 1970s. The original was played on a PLATO terminal with a keyboard. (The PLATO version of "Orthanc" was inspired by "pedit5", which you can learn more about in Wikipedia.) The original PLATO terminals used plasma panels only capable of displaying orange and black. There is no sound. This implementation uses the touchscreen for all gameplay. You are an adventurer gaining experience and treasure by defeating monsters. Orthanc is easy to start but hard to put down.

Everything buried wants to stay that way. Gravehoard is a turn-based fantasy roguelike built on the loot chase. It keeps everything the classic roguelikes had — the depth, the danger, a dungeon that's never the same twice — and drops the homework: nothing to memorize, controls made for one thumb, and a game that saves itself. Nothing moves until you do, so a fight waits while you think — or while you get off the bus. The upper barrow is free forever — ten of the twenty floors, four of the ten classes, and an ending of its own. One purchase opens the lower barrow, the other six classes, and the crown on every iPhone, iPad and Mac you own, Family Sharing included — and your run syncs between them automatically. No ads, no subscription, no energy timers, no currency. DESCEND Every run generates a fresh barrow — twenty floors of worked stone, natural caverns, great halls and looping tangles, with water to wade, secret doors to find, and rooms that were built for something. Floors stay as you left them, so you can always climb back. TAKE WHAT GLITTERS Gear is unidentified when you find it. A ring might be a fortune or a curse that welds itself to your finger, and the two look alike until you dare to put it on. Read a scroll, pay the Sage, or risk it. • 60 weapons, 50 pieces of armor across five slots, 81 rings and amulets • 93 modifiers — Flaming, of Warding, of the Ram — and any can land on anything you find • Five grades of craftsmanship: a crude blade can shatter mid-swing, a masterwork never will • 139 named legendaries, the best of them with a flaw to match • 9 matched sets that pay off when complete None of it is a flat stat bump: weapons drain and burn and bite, and armor throws the damage back. PICK A LIFE Ten classes that genuinely play differently — a rogue who stabs out of the dark, a wizard and a cleric drawing on separate schools of magic, a beastmaster who tames what they meet and takes it along, a grave robber who wears cursed gear and takes it off again. Four are free; the other six come with the full game. HUNT THINGS THAT HUNT BACK 67 kinds of monster escalating into 143 distinct foes, and they do more than walk at you. They sleep, wake, and notice you on their own terms, so slipping past is real. Fights are loud and carry through walls. Wounded things give ground. Some of them are people. Rival adventurers came in by the same door you did, a thief will rob you and run, and every Champion and Ancient carries a name, a face, and a place in your records afterward. CAST, SHOOT, THROW 21 spells across arcane and divine schools, found rather than granted. Nine kinds of wand anyone can zap. Bows and crossbows with real range. Flasks to hurl. Six kinds of trap to find, disarm or leave armed — and the monsters spring them too. COME BACK UP AND SPEND IT A town at the top: seven counters with rotating stock, and a tavern full of rumors about what's below. Dive, haul, sell, gear up, dive deeper. GET OUT ALIVE There is a bottom, and the Barrow-King's crown on it, and lifting it cuts your way home. Winning is the long climb back with the whole barrow between you and daylight. The upper barrow ends the same way: a golden chest in its deepest room, and the walk home. CHOOSE WHAT DEATH COSTS In Standard, dying costs the foray and not the character — you wake in town keeping your level and what you were wearing, and your pack waits on the floor you fell on. In Hardcore, death ends the run, the classic way. You pick the stakes at character creation, plus one of three difficulties. Curses are recoverable. No hunger clock, no torch timer. THREE DEVICES, NONE OF THEM SECOND-CLASS On a phone, hold your thumb anywhere on the screen and lean the way you want to walk — one hand, no on-screen pad crowding the map. On a Mac, arrows, numpad or hjkl with bare-key hotkeys and a mouse. On iPad, either. Pixel art, flickering torchlight, cast shadows, and a sound for every spell and every blow. It plays entirely offline.