Games Thursday : Iter Vehems ad Necem - Bloodiest Roguelike Ever!

Thursday, August 7th, 2008, 12:00 amRoys

TIGDb seemed to be on a Roguelike spree several weeks ago seeing that a majority of the newly added games were roguelikes including classics like Nethack and Thomas Biskup’s Ancient Domains of Mystery (my first introduction to roguelikes. Yay!)

Iter Vehems ad Necem or IVaN in short, is a graphical roguelike which means glorious tile based graphics instead of the standard ASCII art common to most roguelikes. While both graphical styles have their charms, I’m pretty sure that any newcomer to the roguelike genre will pick a game with the flashier graphics anytime over a ASCII roguelike.

Nope, those aren’t green slimes. They’re something else.

Unlike most roguelikes which require you to deliberate on a choice of race and class, IVaN dumps you in the thick of things with absolutely nothing in hand (or in your inventory for that matter) as a simple banana-grower of New Attnam sent to dispatch a letter by taking the dangerous route through a monster-infested underwater tunnel. You have to utilize what you can find on hand and improve your skills and attributes by regular use e.g chopping your foes with a axe with your right hand improves your skills with your axe (and even your right hand).

As befits its name Iter Vehems ad Necem which roughlt translates to Violent Road to Death in Latin, there’s a lot more weapons available in this game waiting to be used on your unfortunate foes and vice versa. Futhermore, IVaN being a graphical roguelike, displays damage to individual parts of your persona with a paperdoll diagram akin to those used in RPGs to manage your inventory and equipment. White is healthy, red is bad and black is well, gone

There’s also a lot of ways to get yourself killed in this gory roguelike like smashing an potion against a wall in the dark and repeatedly stepping on the glass shards of its broken bottle until your persona bleeds to death. Or being killed by the spines of a hostile hedgehog while attempting to kill it with your bare hands. It’s really a violent road to death, isn’t it?

Anyone who has played other roguelikes before should find the keymapping very familiar A quick keyguide for newcomers to start playing. (Capital letters mean letters + Shift key)

C - Chat
> - Descend/Enter
< - Ascend/Exit
l - Look
k - Kick (useful for locked doors)
t - Throw
, - Pick up items from ground
E - Equip Inventory
i - View Inventory
r - Read (scrolls & books)
@ - View weapons skills

A word of advice for the newly-intiated, do grab a lantern when you first enter the underground tunnel with the , key since the tunnel is going to be dark and scary Besides, a lantern can serve as a club in desperate times.

Yes, indeed.

After battle (and looting, of course), you might want to head out of the dungeon back to the town of New Attnam to buy bananas to sustain a longer journey into the depths of the underground caverns or for healing any grievous injuries at the friendly village healer.