Xs of Y – roguelike that names itself every run. Written in 4kLoC
github.com162 points by andsoitis 4 days ago
162 points by andsoitis 4 days ago
I killed myself with a flaming spear and the game said this:
> FATAL ERROR: [program exited] "cannot subtract nil and let-go.lang.Int", :data {:trace ("game-loop (<unknown>)" "game-loop (<unknown>)" "update-world (<unknown>)" "run-until-player-turn (<unknown>)" "creature-turn (<unknown>)" "update-ai-state (<unknown>)" "distance (<unknown>)")}}
A fatal error indeed!
Author here! Thanks for posting! This game is written in a Clojure-like programming language I've made. So this is a (B)rogue-like in a Clojure-like :)
What I think is interesting is that this game computes the entire world state each tick and does so efficiently thanks to persistent data structures.
To anyone who dared to fire it up: thank you for playing, I'm curious what you think!
I did a quick run on the web version. I was able to sneak attack everything on the first two levels, which felt like a bug, but I'm honestly not sure.
When I found a spear, I kind of expected to be able to throw it, but I didn't find a throw option anywhere. I think that makes the short sword better in every case, but maybe I missed something.
Overall, I love the execution. Quality retro fun with a really nice interface.
This totally is a bug. Was this recently? I thought I fixed this in WASM version.
This is awesome!
I'm interested in building something similar, any tips besides looking at what you've done and Brogue?
I'd say don't immediately go into making an ECS and don't sweat about perf too much. You can totally do this in any programming language. This is a good talk about roguelike software design in general: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxI3Eu5DPwE
Tbh the whole channel is a gold mine of inspiration. Also check: https://discord.gg/bgd2GrhR
Little buggy (dying from things not on the screen), but I love the dwarf fortress esque vibes
My 15 year old's (who is a roguelike fanatic) first comment was: there's no diagonal movement?
"The visuals are interesting.... oh I died."
I don't have a numpad so it did not occur to me to add diagonals :D
Good feedback though, I'll add it. Thanks to your 15 year old!
most roguelikes also add (IIRC looking at my phone keyboard and reverse engineering muscle memory) yubn for diagonals.
"Applied theology with inadequate safety margins" might just be my favorite difficulty description ever.
let's not have q=quit. most rouge games have q=quaff. I mean if people want to quit, they can just refresh or close the tab. At the very least, ask.
Gets stuck in a redirect loop with the message:
> Interactive input unavailable (no cross-origin isolation).
> Deploy coi-serviceworker-js alongside this file.
in Safari on 26.4
Pretty fun! I keep getting instantly killed by things though and I'm not sure why, possibly a bug.
I see you haven't played Noita!
Noita was another inspiartion when making this - the inverted power curve is real! Start squishy, become a god, die anyway.
I feel this comment. Seriously though, damage reflection was one of the many insanely annoying things about that game.
No, I think I'm seeing the same bug. Time seems to sometimes subjectively freeze:
─── Messages ───
Old man shuts the gate behind you. You hear him mutter "every time, I swear..."
You must retrieve the Amulet of Lost Semicolons.
You kill the rat! (sneak attack!)
The rat squeals and dies!
You wait. (x10) ᛜ
ᚢ You kill the rat! (sneak attack!) ᛉ
The rat squeals and dies!
You hear muttering. ᛋ
You hear muttering.
You hear muttering.
You hear a distant creak. ᛖ ᛃ
The runestone crumbles as you touch it. You learn: ᛟ means "ice"! ᛚ
You hear a distant creak.
The goblin misses you. (x3)
The goblin hits you for 4.
The goblin hits you for 3. ᛏ
The goblin hits you for 4.
The goblin hits you for 3.
The goblin misses you. ᛚ
The goblin hits you for 4.
The goblin hits you for 2.
The goblin hits you for 4.
The goblin misses you.
The goblin hits you for 2.
The goblin misses you. (x2)
The goblin hits you for 2.
The goblin kills you!
You die...
Definitely a bug. I'll look into this at some point. Please note that this is not a finished game by any means. If anyone asked I'd call it a tech demo at this point :)
Seems to be that the sort function accepts a ternary predicate but then passes it to an implementation accepting a boolean one?
I see the same but only in browser / wasm. Also notice that the mobs dont move in browser mode. Local via lg in console works great though.
Reminds me a lot of NetHack, good times
Not a Rogue-like specialist, it's hard – I haven't made it out of level 1 yet.
No credit for the art direction and inspiration? Brogue?
Or did I miss the attribution?
* Edit: I’m not looking for the downvotes or to stir things up. I’m simply calling out that this is a small niche community we notice these things, we’re very free with our code, and copy is a compliment, but so is attribution.
The author wasn’t so much inspired the by Brogue style, but copied it directly down to the animations and ASCII.
> No credit for the art direction and inspiration? Brogue?
In the age of LLMs the "author" might not even know where the art direction and inspiration came from!
I know, this is intentional :)
I took things I like from Brogue and added my own spin on it.
yeah, this is a Brogue-like. I love Brogue and have been inspired by it. XsofY is not an exact clone but I've studied Brogue C source heavily when making this.
I'll link to Brogue in the README :)
Calling it rogue-like is basically attribution since Brogue is just the follow-up to Rogue which invented the genre
I’ll be sure to keep that in mind with my next plumber platformer
No one calls them plumber platformer though…
If you call it “Mario-like” then I would say most people would understand where the inspiration comes from.
I'm a little confused. There were some differences, but this stuff is straight out angband/moria lineage stuff. https://angband.readthedocs.io/en/latest/version.html#previo...
the lighting effects are very brogue and like nothing I've seen in angband, which is very very barebones ASCII by comparison. brogue-likes push into ANSI art territory with their abuse of terminal formatting.
Some of the many variants did expand on the ASCII graphics a bit, but yeah, I see what you mean.
While I can see perhaps a claim of "inspiration", when I put Brogue & this side-by-side, while artistically there is similarity, I wouldn't say "copied".
Brouge isn't the only rouge-like with LoS mechanics.
Brogue is insanely well balanced and ingeniously designed. XsofY is a mere tribute ;)
Wouldn't the credit go to ... rogue?
The genre of course. But this is almost a 1-1 copy of the Brogue style. Right down to the colors, animation, and ASCII
are you not familiar with the actual game rogue, or nethack?
Rogue looks like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Rogue_Sc...
Brogue looks like this: https://syltefar.com/screenshot/?id=624
Noun of Noun
fun project!
Found it a bit annoying having to press 'i' at the start in order to equip the dagger and armor that were on my backpack, but well done.
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Isn't this the kind of thing you can essentially fully offload to Claude code these days? Don't really get the point of these tiny primarily llm generated game clones tbh.
I see your point but I like to think it's not as sloppy as you'd expect. This one is written in a programming language I've been making since 2021 and it's not a direct Brogue clone despite its looks.
Is this a troll comment? I don't see where the author used AI to generate the code and if you don't see the point of experimenting with technology, you're on the wrong website.
You really don't see where the author uses ai? Pretty much everywhere, all the docs, the overview of the project, a LOT of the code is obviously primarily ai written, etc.
So the author used the latest and greatest development tech to create a unique little demo in their custom language. I'm unsure your point. You know what I don't use to program with anymore? Punch cards and Borland C++. The industry has evolved for better or worse.
What are you going on about?
No idea what you think you are arguing. Are you in the wrong thread?
I said I don't get why people keep posting essentially vibe coded game clones... I get bored checking out GitHub projects on HN that are doing absolutely nothing new and are essentially baby projects made by Claude on a weekend, and terribly architected to boot. Cluttering the feed.
Consider them prototypes. Like the games submitted to game jams.
I wouldn't even dare posting this to a game jam... or HN at this point but someone posted it for me, welp.
