GOL Cast: Saving Ancardia from Evil in Ancient Domains of Mystery

There are lots of so called roguelites on Steam but recently a real roguelike classic called ADOM, or Ancient Domains of Mystery, made its way to Steam. Let's go check it out!

ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery) is a roguelike in which you are sent into the land of Ancardia, where mysterious evil lurks. You must embark on a quest to save this land by delving deep into the many dungeons of Ancardia and defeating the evil within.

Disclosure: I received a key from the developer.


ADOM is a very familiar experience to those who have played roguelikes in the past. You have quite similar controls to things like Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup and Nethack and the gameplay is also familiar. You pick one of the fantasy races and a character class and descend into dungeons to find items and enemies and you must also be able to make your way back up to the more civilized overworld. Food, disease and nasty critters are naturally a constant threat. As per usual, death is quite final and keeping your characters alive is a difficult job.

However, there are some quite massive differences between games like Nethack and ADOM. In addition to randomized dungeons, ADOM has a permanent overworld with villages and dungeon entrances and villages contain NPCs with quests. Typically in a roguelike you are sent to reclaim an artifact of some sort, usually something a person called Rodney could misplace, and that's it. ADOM is quite a bit more than that since you have to explore multiple dungeons and you have more than a single quest for you to complete. ADOM's world seems richer and the story is something I haven't quite seen in a roguelike. The overworld also makes ADOM quite massive and in my travels I have seen maybe only a fifth of Ancardia.

It's also worth noting that ADOM is a true roguelike and it also shows in the difficulty. Especially the very beginning of the game can be absolutely brutal to your characters, so don't get too attached to your cool ratling necromancer. Exploring Ancardia and completing even the first quest can take multiple attempts and survival after the first quest is in no way guaranteed. Sometimes the game can also be completely unfair and you might get killed by a hidden trap or a group of bandits that ambushes you in the wilderness. You need to be really careful and conserve your resources if you are to even attempt survival in this land.

Another difficulty comes from the game's history. ADOM has for the longest time been an ASCII roguelike with purely keyboard controls. Even though the game might be all fancy and graphical now, it doesn't mean the user experience has drastically improved. You can technically play the game with just your mouse but the UI is clunky and all actions are basically hidden behind right-click menus which are just annoying to navigate. I think even the game itself knows that it doesn't really handle UI too well, as the in-game tutorial only teaches you the keyboard controls. If you have the time to memorize all the keyboard controls (which there are many) then you won't really have a problem. If you want to play with a mouse, well, you are going to have a bad time. This is nowhere near the level of Dungeons of Dredmor of Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup in terms of ease of use. If you want to play this game, I recommend you force yourself to learn the keyboard controls and/or have a cheat sheet handy.

There are two versions of ADOM out there at the moment. There's the free version which you can download directly from the ADOM website and then there's the Steam version. The Steam version is considered a “deluxe version” and comes with a couple of exclusive features. If the default settings are not treating you well, you can change the amount of loot and enemies you will encounter and even turn off permadeath if you want an RPG experience instead of a roguelike. You also gain access to the Challenge of the Week mode which is your regular weekly challenge where your game parameters are chosen for you and you compete against other ADOM players for the control of the highscore board. There's also a Crowd Mode which will make your ADOM experience easier if you have friends playing ADOM. I don't know exactly how that works because I'm forever alone but it sounds slightly interesting nonetheless. The Steam version does have a downside: it is essentially DRM'd. You will only be able to launch the Steam version if you are connected and logged into Steam, playing in offline mode or without Steam is entirely impossible.

ADOM is a pretty difficult game to recommend because you will either love it or the amount of keys and gameplay mechanics in combination with the brutal difficulty will simply overwhelm and frustrate you. If you already have some roguelike experience and are okay with keyboard controls, you should however be fine and the experience might actually be quite pleasant. I recommend that you take a look at the ADOM website and download the free version to see if it's something for you. If you end up enjoying it, you could purchase ADOM on Steam for the extra features or to support the development of ADOM. But I probably wouldn't buy it blindly and without at least some roguelike experience.

ADOM website: http://www.adom.de/home/index.html

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.