Outlast

Outlast is an open world sandbox roguelike made in seven days for the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge 2024. Press Shift+W on the main menu screen to enable wizard mode.

It features a procedurally generated world, turn-based and grid-based gameplay, and a progression system based on finding new and better materials to craft better tools to help you reach your final goal of killing the Air Wizard.

The game is open source: https://github.com/Binary-Ninja/7drl_2024

Controls

Arrow Keys - Turn and move the player and navigate the inventory and crafting screens.

C Key - Use the current item on the tile or mob under the flashing cursor.

X Key - Opens or closes the inventory or crafting screen. Press X when the cursor is over a crafting station to craft with it.

Z Key - Wait or use staircases. Useful for getting enemies into a better position or watching your crops grow.

N and M Keys - Toggle sounds and music, respectively.

H Key - Show controls in the message log.

F Key (Wizard Mode) - Toggle the Field of View.

Spacebar (Wizard Mode) - Toggle level brightness. You can control the day/night cycle or light up caves with this.

Tips and Tricks

When you start out, you have a workbench and your bare fists. Your fists can punch down trees, hurt enemies, and pick up any crafting station you have put down. You can place the workbench down in the world by selecting it as your current item and pressing C to use it. Press X to access your inventory or, if you are looking at a crafting station like the workbench, to craft with it. Don't lose your workbench, because you have no way to craft without it.

You will have to use your bare fists to punch down some trees to get wood. You have limited stamina, and basic tools (like your fists) will drain it quickly. Use Z (or move around) to regenerate stamina. Try to get basic wood tools and a shelter before night falls. Just dig a little cave into the rock for now, you can build a fancy house later once you have better tools.

The various food items heal your health and stamina. You can cook better food items with the oven. Keep yourself supplied with nourishing foods! They just might help you out of a tough situation.

You'll want to bring plenty of torches and lanterns into the caves. It is dark down there and any tile you can't see is a tile that might hold a monster. Combat is positional and strategy heavy, so don't rush things or you'll get killed. Most enemies are slower than you (and none are faster) so try to stay one step ahead of them and attack when they've just exhausted their movement.

Skeletons are the only enemy that can deal ranged attacks, but they can only fire from exactly five tiles away in a cardinal direction, so there are only four possible spots a skeleton can shoot you from. If you wander around in darkness, you'll get no warning before taking damage. Make sure to bring a light source with a high radius if you don't want to get sniped! Skeletons cannot shoot you through walls. They can shoot you through transparent tiles that block movement, like windows. This is considered a bug.

Slime enemies can move diagonally, so don't cut corners on your builds if you don't want unexpected visitors.

Spiders are only hostile to you if you are stepping on a web. You can remove webs without angering the spiders by slashing them with swords.

There are more enemies and secrets to discover in the game!

The goal of the game is to beat the Air Wizard in the sky, but you can keep playing after that. There is unfortunately no save/load system so you'll need to beat the game in one shot. You should be able to just minimize the display and take a break if you need to, though.

Known Issues

The music and sounds may not be functional on certain versions of MacOS.

There is a bug that will set the day cycle length to 500 instead of the default 1500 if the day cycle option on the main menu is not touched before the world generates. If you want a day cycle of 1500, change it to something else and then back to 1500, and it should work fine.

The giant glowing underground mushrooms are indestructible to axe items and must be punched down with your bare fists. This is not intended. Explosives will still destroy the fungi, but they will drop no loot.

Skeletons can and will shoot you through transparent tiles, so think about that before you build windows on your houses.