7DRL contest 2007.

Tactics on the Net: War of Wizards

In this year’s seven day roguelike (7DRL) contest, english contestant Icey, mainly known for his in-dev roguelike Paprika, managed to develop and actually release a tactical roguelike for two players. Would its name be shortened, it would be WoW, but we don’t talk about World of Warcraft. Instead Icey’s game is named War of Wizards.

One vs. One

The parties of this war, however, are just two persons – mighty wizards in a random generated dungeon, with the goal to wipe out the opponent. A memory sneaks in my mind at this point – Orthanc, Middle-Earth, where Gandalf fought against Saruman. Although WoW has no plot or story behind its simple, but effective mechanics, and although it has nothing to do with existing literature, it immediately made me travel to an inner – phantasy star on which everything is possible.

War of Wizards has been written in Visual Basic 6, so it needs Windows and the VB6 runtime. All other requirements are met by the download, so unpacking the zip-file and starting the game is all one needs to do. Non-Windows-users may be happy to hear that WoW seems to run smoothly using Wine (tested with Wine 0.9.32).

Besides playing the actual game, the program also offers a chat function, so even the community aspect will be retained when playing together WoW.

How it Works

Often it is said that multiplayer roguelikes are impossible, due to their turn-based nature. In the past, games like MAngband have proven the opposite. Now, with War of Wizards, there’s a new example of working multiplayer, although it is restricted to two participants who fight against each other.

The first step after unzipping the game by both players is to find out at least one IP address. This address is needed to connect two WoW processes. While one player starts to »listen« for the second player’s program to connect, the second player has to enter the IP of the waiting player. Once done – and not behind a restrictive firewall – both players should see their @ and the parts of the dungeon the @ is able to see.

As WoW implements line of sight, there are typcially two stages in every game. At the beginning, one has to find the opponent in order to make most spells work. Once found, the real battle can begin.

The spells are the sole possibility to harm the enemy and make its HP decrease to zero. They are, however, not casted by readings scroll found in the dungeon or similar items. Instead the game offers randomly generated choices of possible actions. In one turn, you might have the choice to teleport to another part of the dungeon. In the next turn, you might have the chance to cast thunder bolts. You might, it’s never clear which spells will be offered next.

Like a Board Game

In some sense, War of Wizards reminds me of classical board games. In typical roguelikes, you explore the dungeon to find an artifact or destroy some evil creature. In WoW, the dungeon is similar to a randomly generated board and the wizards are the pieces one has to move.

The wizards have to be positioned into a tactically advantageous position. Afterwards, the best of the available spells has to be casted, always regarding the current dungeon layout, the different properties of the spells and, of course, the health of both wizards. One false decision and the game may be lost.

It’s very interesting to be forced to always re-think a given situation due to the random spells. So the game offers a good mixture of short-termed (re)actions and long-termed planning to conquer the enemy.

The Future

There is, however, some potential for improvements and it would be great if this 7DRL turns out to become one of the greater roguelikes one days. Icey already confirmed that it could be possible for both players to work together to explore a dungeon, and with some rewrite of the network-code (at the moment both instances of the program have the same rights; to support more than two players a server version of the game was needed) it would be possible to increase the number of involved players.

It makes fun to play this game and I would recommend trying it out to everybody who is interested in new paths which roguelikes can follow.

Mario Donick