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What the hell is this?
If Rogue is based on D&D, then AlphaMan is based on Gamma World. It's one of the earliest examples of a roguelike game that aimed to simplify things, instead of heaping on complexity. It's also goofy as fuck, which has kept the game stuck in my head for 20 years even though I've never really gotten that far in it. Let's see if I can do better now!
These are the only decisions you make during character creation. Name, and difficulty. Despite being shit at this game, I always play on normal. My dumb nerd pride demands it.
The very first time you play, (or the first time after you delete the settings file so you can show this screen off in an LP) you get to slightly customize your game by naming the shittiest, weakest monster.
Cutting edge forums humor.
Here's our exposition/elevator pitch.
And the help screen is automatically displayed before the game starts. That's the complete list of commands there. Like I said, much more streamlined than, say, Nethack.
The last two items are particularly important. In AlphaMan, you start with two random mutations; one mental and one physical. In this case, my mental mutation is Military Genius, which is a passive bonus, and my physical mutation is Foul Musk, which I have to actively use.
We've almost started the game proper now! This is actually the world map; as soon as we attempt to take an action...
We jump to the local map. This is where we actually play the game. I know a lot of players have an ASCII allergy, but there's no tilemap available for this game. Sorry. Let me try to help out, though.
Shitty overlay text to the rescue! Anyway, pretty basic stuff. I'm the happy face in the middle, any alphabetical characters are monsters, and extended ASCII characters are pickups of various types. In this case, I can see some berries, some armor, and some kind of tech device. All the rest of that junk, the dots and starts and splodges, are just dirt or bushes or trees and I might never mention them again.
Anyway, there's some kind of monster all up in my grill already, so let's give it the traditional roguelike greeting; walk into it.
Thanks, AlphaMan! Anyway, Tree Frogs aren't the weakest enemy in the game, but they might as well be. They're no threat to anyone. I go ahead and kill the other two just to get them out of the way. Like most roguelikes, this game is full of "popcorn" enemies, weak enough to be mowed down without thought most of the time.
Berries are the potions/scrolls of AlphaMan. They are (mostly) randomized each game, so I have no idea what this particular berry does yet. Berries also come in varying ripeness, with red being the least ripe, through orange -> yellow -> green -> blue -> and violet being the most ripe. The more ripe the berry, the more powerful the effect it will have, for good or ill.
The shittiest of all possible armors. Like Nethack, armor is vaguely based on the old AD&D system; you start at 10 armor class, and better armor makes that number go down.
Tech items come in large and small varieties, and they can be just about anything. They could be single use items, chargeable items, permanent upgrades, or literal garbage. To know what you've got, you have to spend some time <f>iguring them out.
Like so! There's always a Tape Recorder in the first screen of the game. When you use it...
We finally learn our mission!
...
I did mention this is a Super Serious game, right?
Anyway, let's check out those berries.
Yeah, I have no idea what either of those do. At the start of the game, you get a few random identifications for free.
That doesn't help right now, though. At least I'll recognize a pogo stick if I come across one...
The classic way to identify a berry is to just cram it into your food hole and see what happens.
Not too bad! While this is in effect, it's easier to identify tech items. And now that we've found out what a Vorzay berry does-
It automatically adds it to our list. How about that other berry?
nom
What? Why did it automatically pop the world map up? Hey, that's not where I was a moment ago!
Well, balls. Still, since I don't know where I'm going, any part of the map is as good as any other, right?
A quick look at our status screen. Teleportation leaves me temporarily confused, which means I'll randomly move in the wrong direction when I take my turn. Also listed: my bonuses to attack from my stats and my Military Genius mutation. I'm much more effective in melee than at range.
Those monsters are just a Goon and some prarie chickens. Junk enemies. Even confused, killing them is no big deal. The Goon tries to run away after I hit it once, which means I may as well show off how ranged attacks work.
There are no ranged launchers, just ammunition. Pick what you want to throw-
And move the cursor over to your intended victim. Range matters, but line of sight does not. Trees or intervening enemies are no barrier to my throwing arm!
My shitty stats, on the other hand... Well, I have more darts where that came from.
When you miss, your ammo often lays on the ground to be picked back up. Also, I gained a level! Yay! Each level earns you more HP, and has a chance of randomly increasing one of your stats. No such luck this time.
That other yellow thing there is another tape recorder. You always get tape recorder 2 on the second screen you visit. ... Even if you got there by teleportation. It's futuremagic, I don't have to explain this shit to you.
Well, I've got a destination now. Let's just check the world map again...
Shit. Nothing for it but to start walking. It is nice that the game tracks which squares you have visited.
FUCK. I hate this berry. Every turn, you have a chance to drop an item from your inventory. Even if you were wielding it. The only way to mitigate this is to take advantage of the restriction of only one item per square. Stand on an item, and keep mashing the rest button until klutziness wears off, then put all your shit back on. Still, better to have ID'd this early and gotten it out of the way, and an orange berry doesn't last that long.
This happens, too. Your dexterity and armor class go in the shitter.
Just because you're sitting on your ass waiting for a berry to wear off doesn't mean new monsters can't wander by. I was lucky I didn't have to fight the snail bare-handed. A strength up is nice, though!
A little further along, I come across this beauty. Some squares have buildings in them. Buildings can have nice loot in them, but they take a long time to explore and I just can't be bothered right now. We'll see the inside of buildings soon enough.
Ringmail is slightly better armor than heavy fur. Obnoxiously, you have to <U>nuse the old armor before you can <u>se the new armor. Verisimilitude, I guess!
Toadstools aren't all THAT threatening, but being sick is a pain in the ass. You take a slight penalty to attacks, but more dangerous is that while you're sick sometimes you'll waste turns.
So classy! There are varying degrees of being sick, incidentally, it's not just a binary condition.
A very nice find! This berry gave me bonus experience. Since it was blue, it was a pretty hefty chunk; enough to earn me a level. That red W is worrying, though. Woodpeckers can destroy your equipement when they attack.
I got away unscathed, though. If I had actually been wearing anything actually good, I would have been much less cavalier.
Well, now! This is the other kind of random feature you can come across. Holes can lead to danger, but they can also be very rewarding.
Dark tunnels function differently than the overworld map. The entire tunnel fits on a single screen, and is shaped like a meandering cavern with thick walls. Vision is limited to a single square away. In a tunnel, there will only be a single type of enemy, but there will be a bunch of it. This means they can either be a cakewalk or absolute murder. This cyan r is a repair droid, which makes me greedy.
Repair droids are fairly easy to kill, and they have a chance of dropping a random small tech item when they die, so I could potentially find a lot of great loot on top of the normal rewards for exploring a tunnel. There's a slight problem, though...
Repair droids can hit you from more than one space away, and monsters aren't affected by darkness. If I'm not careful, I could get murdered by things I can't fight back against.
Yes, give me that sweet sweet science.
This place has already paid off! Now, I just need to not get cocky.
I got cocky.
The high score page only lists each name once. Since I didn't beat the score I got when I did a practice run as Tendales, I don't even get to put my name down for posterity. Solution: Future mutants get dumb unique names.
I'm sure I can do better next time, right?