Pointless
A downloadable game for Windows and Linux
About
Pointless was written in seven days, as part of the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge. Its home on the web is http://www.zincland.com/7drl/pointless
Setting
You have spent thousands of lives repeating the same life. Dying isn't an end; nor is it the next step in the journey. It is just a restart to the beginning.
But you can't just memorize lottery numbers, however, as each world is unique and different. You instead learned the actual rules of the world. Hundreds of lives were spent struggling to invent novel uses of the materials scattered in this island.
For many turns you were driven by the desire to win. There must be a victory condition, some key, that would unlock you from the wheel and let you move on. Or just end.
You have long since given up on that belief. You have done all that can be done. And yet the prospect of another world still faces you.
Features
What is the point of game features if they do not provide a way to win more efficiently? Surely all things below peak-meta are useless baubles that should be shorn off and discarded as we seek the perfectly formed "gameplay loops" our dopamine receptors crave?
Pointless has no win condition. So, thus, there are no unnecessary features; as there are no necessary ones. Live a long time, or live a short one, you are dead at the end either way, and the world has been re-built afresh. Does the careful simulation of snow fall and drift during world generation contribute to any core gameplay? Irrelevant. There is no core gameplay.
Whether you seek to defeat monsters in the dungeon, farm mushrooms, build a boat to sail, or just see how many toes you can lose; the quest is up to you!
Pointless is at its core a very traditional roguelike. Players of Nethack will find themselves at home. But if the excess of keyboard commands is daunting, hit [Esc] and select Popup menus on the Options menu.
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Comments
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Despite my attempts at trying to play this, I don't think I have any interest at all in trying to figure it out anymore.
Of the 30 or so games I played, this one was the one I spent the most time on, and really enjoyed the experience. I appreciate the menu-based controls too, once you turn them on.
I feel confident I can usually survive the wilderness now and get to at least a few levels deep, and I know there is some secrets to the depths I haven't figured out. The deepest I got was level 8 or so, killed by a ghost because I ran out of mana.
Thank you! Glad to hear you enjoyed it, I guess it wasn't a pointless waste of your time after all then :>
I'm always torn with the menu based controls. I spent many roguelike iterations carefully improving the UX of the menus, so I'm pretty confident in them. But when I added keyboard controls in MAGE I realized the key controls are just so much better ergonomically, it is almost a crime to let people use menus :>
This is why I end up with the keyboard default, I figure if we start with menus no one will ever discover keyboard controls as the CrackUI will hook them; but at least this way people will know the other controls are there and may consider them at some point....
But it probably causes many people to bounce off the game right away :<
Good thing I write 7DRLs as a pointless waste of my time, and not to make money, so I can experiment as I wish with these :>
Man did I enjoy this game!
Ironically even though I did die many MANY times and was unable to complete the game, it felt anything but pointless 😅
I technically made it to dungeon level 3 in the mountains - not super impressive I’m sure, but I died about 20 times in the wilderness before I figured out how to make rocks (I would stand over a fire taking damage, drop my clay, and bake the rocks).
I never quite figured out how to use a kiln, but I made one! Which was very exciting 😁
Anyway, excellent work - I greatly enjoyed this game 🙇
Thank you for the nice words!
Kilns are mostly useful if you want to get into mushroom farming.
Since there is no win condition, no one can complete the game anyways. Or, alternatively, everyone has to choose for themselves what "completing" entails.
I tried to figure out what to use kilns for and couldn't figure it out... was I supposed to use mushrooms to make potions using the bottles somehow?
It is always hard to document a roguelike properly, as one of the fun things is discovering the interaction between objects. But while some, like kicking out fires, might be left to chance, others need some guidance... Here are the relevant info snippets I hoped to guide people ...
Bottles:
An empty clay bottle, awaiting filling by some liquid or another.
Mushrooms:
Growing from trees, these mushrooms come in as many varieties as there are trees. You can tincture a bottle of water with them to form various magical potions. Unfortunately, the effect of each potion is one of those things that varies every incarnation. So consume with caution until the poisonous varieties are determined.
With the correct substrate, these can be grown underground.
Logs
The remains of a cut tree. Useful for building where sticks do not suffice, or for fueling forges or kilns. Mycologists pay careful attention to the type for growing fungi.
...
The command you need is "Apply", 'a' on the keyboard should include bottles in the list, and you can point to a source of water to get a water bottle. The water bottle itself can be applied again to tincture it, and it should prompt for any mushrooms in your inventory.
Happy mushroom farming!