Omega (Game)

Omega

GAME » on 1987

An ASCII-based traditional roguelike set in a fantasy open-world environment.

Overview

Omega was initially developed by Laurence Brothers between 1987 and 1989 and is known for pioneering the genre of open-world roguelikes. While it has seen very little development since 1989, it has been seen as a likely source of inspiration for later open-world roguelikes such as "Ancient Domain's of Mystery".

Gameplay

Upon starting a new game, the user is presented with 2 different character creation methods. The first method is to generate a character with random stats. If this option is selected, the user is immediately thrown into the world with no context. The second method is to "play yourself". If the user chooses to play themself, they are asked a series of questions regarding their physical and intellectual capabilities in order to determine the player character's starting attributes. If this method of is chosen, the user is presented with a brief character background which has them playing the role of a software engineering student who gets transported into a fantasy world after running a mysterious executable on a school computer. The player character begins their journey in the city of Rampart with very little to guide them. They can join a variety of guilds, each with their own requirements and advancement rewards. A player can embark on a variety of quests, each of which requires the player to find and explore a different location on the world map. There are a handful of unique dungeons, towns, and other locations for the player to explore. As is typical in the traditional roguelike genre, most locations are procedurally generated. Additionally, dying results in all progress being lost and the player will have to start the game over from the beginning. Multiple endings are achievable. The simplest ending is achieved by saving up enough money to buy a condo and retiring. Alternatively, a player can win the game by becoming the leader of one of several guilds in the game. Each guild will ask the player to complete a challenging task before awarding them the guild leader position. The final method of beating the game is to become an "adept", which requires the player to complete a dangerous trial ending with a face-up against Death himself.

Versions

While there are several official releases, they were developed for legacy platforms such as MSDOS. Several third parties have released builds which run on modern operating systems, such as WinOmega, which runs on modern versions of Windows. Additionally, some versions have seen the addition of tile-based graphics, which differs from the official releases which used ASCII-based graphics and run in a terminal.

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