Lately I've been enjoying a roguelike called GearHead. If you've never heard of it, GearHead is a mecha-themed roguelike inspired by such things as Macross, Robotech, Gundam Wing, and whatever else features giant robots shooting at one another and beating the snot out of each other. It's got curb appeal from fans of the genre, but is surprisingly deep and imaginative; I hate anime in general, but was surprised at how enjoyable the game is. Plus, everything is named in English or named randomly instead of given names in broken Japanese, which is a huge bonus. =)

I played GearHead about six months ago and set it aside from a good while, but recently picked it up again more seriously and found it very rewarding.

GearHead 1 is the original. It is no longer under active development, but is very stable and feature-complete at version 1.100. It includes a traditional DOS/ASCII-based interface for those people who enjoy the classic feel, and also includes a sprite-based SDL version for people interested in a flashier, more-modern interface (but beware of eye strain on newer monitors, as they rarely support 16-bit colour mode at higher refresh rates). It is the most complete version of the game, with plenty of gameplay to enjoy.

GearHead 2 is a sequel of sorts by the same author as GearHead 1. It could be construed as a "reimagining" of the game; even though the game is set in the same timeline and universe, there isn't really any perceptible continuity between the two games and GH2 is what I would simply call a newer, spankier version of the original. It is under active development, though the author's wife did recently give birth so development is slower than usual. The DOS/ASCII interface seems to be a step back from GH1, sadly, but to its credit the 3D SDL interface is much, much spiffier and -- after the initial period of acclimation -- is quite entertaining to play.

Both games feature two main scales of gameplay. The personal scale, featured prominently in GearHead 1 but downplayed somewhat in GearHead 2, is a standard roguelike scale where you walk around bashing on things, except instead of bashing things, you wind up shooting at things instead. The mecha scale is a far sight larger, with you piloting a ginormous metal behemoth and blowing up enemy mechas instead.

You'll have plenty of opportunity to rack up a large body count in either game. The game like many other roguelikes can be unforgiving at times, but what is very impressive about the games -- particularly GearHead 2 -- is their random mission and random plot generators. Various "plots" are generated every five game minutes and an astute player can pick up on these by hearing the latest rumours and tracking down fixers.

A mad-lib generator produces random conversation tidbits from NPCs while you try to work on improving their relationship with you. I find the mad libs to be irritating and sometimes even painful to look at, but they are occasionally amusing -- particularly because some are taken from anime pop culture with nouns and adjectives mad-libbed -- and are a subset of a feature that is very useful. Improving your relationship means better deals from shopkeepers, a higher likelihood of being accepted for a mission, and a good reputation.

A great feature is the way that all objects are built out of components, and yes, you can usually customise them. Want to strip the leg off of one mecha and graft it onto another to make a three-legged monstrosity (dirty joke not intended)? No problem! Even personal scale equipment, though limited in tweaking, can be upgraded with store-bought add-ons.

The component system is fundamentally built on top of the "Point Value" system, which prices all commodities based on their perceived value to a player. The basis of economy in the game is thus how powerful something is, meaning that high-grade equipment is naturally more expensive than low-grade equipment and everything balances out rather nicely. I was pleasantly surprised that someone else had developed a system like this, since I was planning one for my own games!

The reason the PV system is particularly wicked is because of the game's plug-and-play modding. All mods for the game are written in plain text and can easily be tweaked to your heart's content. New mechas can easily be added to the game using stock parts by dropping a new .txt file into the Design folder, and NPCs and shops alike will start stocking those mechas -- with an automatically calculated price. Personal equipment can also be dropped into any PC_*.txt file or simply appended onto the end of PC_Equipment.txt for more fun.

Plots are fully moddable too, with a little scripting language built-in, but that's not for novices; the plot scripts are rather complex walls of text that are easy to understand only once you've gotten the hang of writing them. I'm not there yet. ;-)

Guns and gadgets can have splenderiffic special effects. A plasma cannon ignores armour and can turn most bad guys into quivering masses of goo, thanks to its tag system describing it as ARMORIGNORE. A rocket launcher can blow holes in people (sadly, terrain is immutable) and produces an area-effect explosion thanks to being BLAST 3 BRUTAL. Attaching an Aux Grenade Launcher add-on to any rifle gives you battlefield capability like any modern soldier.

The more I play GearHead and sequel, the more I think of it as a shining example of emergent gameplay. With just a few goodies defined in raw object data files, the play experience can be entertaining and surprising each and every time.

* The GearHead RPG Homepage
* GHWiki


It's also open-source, but don't get your hopes up -- it's written in Pascal. =)