Depending on what kind of gamer you are, I suppose the words "forced-scrolling roguelike" would either fill you with revulsion and terror, or immediately give you a tingling in your funny bits. Well, that's what
One Way Heroics is. There is literally an Eversion-style wall of darkness devouring the land one row of tiles per turn, forcing you ever to the east in a quest to defeat the demon lord who summoned it before it engulfs the entire world.
The entire game takes place on a wide ribbon of randomly-generated biomes, peppered with small towns and dungeons, always on the same level without any screen transitions whatsoever. Gameplay is fairly basic, in the vein of Mystery Dungeon roguelikes, but what struck me the most is how well-designed and smooth the whole thing is. And not just by roguelike standards either. You've got a fairy companion you can talk with at anytime to get important information about your party members or current location ("this is a snow field, there aren't many villages or food so you probably don't want to stick around for long, but you can find valuable snow grass that will sell for good coin later!"), and when you lose you get personalized advice regarding things you could have done better or resources you might not have thought to use, and a custom ranking in several categories, each with specific advice for improving them. It's not in your way if you don't care, but it's so smartly done that personally after about ten hours I still pay attention to the stuff.
There are tons of features that I really didn't expect from a game made with a free RPG engine (though the developer, SmokingWOLF, actually made the engine himself so one would assume he knows what it can do). The worlds are generated through seeds, like Minecraft, and there are actually online features. The game offers a selection of new worlds with special conditions every day, and if you happen to be playing the same world as someone else, you can see how well they're doing, their class and perks, where they are, and if they die you can meet and get help from their ghosts. You can pick totally random seeds and hardly run into any people, but every day there's a specific seed for multiplayer and it's actually fairly populated.
There are several difficulty levels with interesting differences (easiest one has the demon lord show up at 400km, then summons party members to help you kill it; medium has the lord dropping by for a scrap every few days and you need to chip away at him Doomgaze-style over the course of the game, which gives the whole thing a pretty compelling rhythm), and a ton of unlockables and customization options from extra stats to better mountain climbing skill to pets, and every class plays fairly differently. Even the recruitable NPCs have a fair amount of character to them, and there's a surprisingly poignant atmosphere about the whole affair, be it when you manage to uncover bits of plot here and there, or even just when you leave a doomed village behind and it turns out one of the townsfolk hadn't exactly come to terms with his fate.
Honestly this is my favorite entry in the genre in a long time, I could just go on. But here's the thing: it's pay what you want, with a minimum of two dollars. I paid two bucks because I didn't know what I was getting into and now I feel pretty terrible about it. So! Special offer, I'mma buy a copy for more than that to give away to one of you guys. I basically just want to throw money at this dude. You'll probably need a playism account but apparently all I need from you is an e-mail address, so first one to PM me gets it. (Unless I don't know who the F you are but that probably isn't going to be a problem.)
Oh yeah and it's on
Greenlight too, and already in the top 100. Figured I should mention that. But the game's done basically. Localization is already good and they're still updating it; English version came out on the 3rd I think.
