Playing LambdaHack

The following backstory blurb is a copy of the sample game intro screen:

LambdaHack is a small dungeon crawler illustrating the roguelike game engine of the same name. Playing the game involves exploring spooky dungeons, alone or in a party of fearless explorers, avoiding and setting up ambushes, hiding in shadows from the gaze of unspeakable horrors, discovering secret passages and gorgeous magical treasure and making creative use of it all.

The madness-inspiring abominations that multiply in the depths perform the same feats, due to their aberrant, abstract hyper-intelligence. They look out for any sign of weakness or indecision, ready to tirelessly chase the elusive heroes by sight, sound and smell.

What to expect

LambdaHack is a turn-based game. You issue a command. Then you watch its results unfold on the screen, without you being able to intervene. Then the dust settles and you have as much time as you want to inspect the battlefield and think about your next move.

Once the few basic command keys and on-screen symbols are learned, mastery and enjoyment of the game is the matter of tactical skill and literary imagination. To be honest, a lot of imagination is required for this modest sample game, but it has its own distinct quirky mood and is playable and winnable.

The game differs from classic roguelikes in a few ways:

player manually controls each member of his squad, though often the best tactics is to scout with only one character (a classic roguelike feel) and let others guard important areas
the game is turn-based, but with visibly high granularity --- projectiles fly gradually over time with varying speeds and can be sidestepped or shot down; less so explosions that are swarms of projectile particles (turn-based just the same)
time passes and factions pursue their goals on a few levels simultaneously, while other floors are frozen (but all are persistent)
the same laws of simulated world apply to all factions and all actors, whether player-controlled or AI-controlled; e.g., the same field of view calculation, skill checks, equipment limitations, rules for item and terrain use
combat mechanics is deterministic; randomness comes only from AI decisions and procedurally generated world
there's (almost) no HP regeneration; attrition ensures all past (silly) decisions matter; HP of every actor starts at around half max
each character has 10 uniform equipment slots, which fill quickly given that most melee weapons have cooldowns
each faction has a single shared inventory of unlimited size, which has a physical location on the map and so can be ransacked

If the game window is too large for your screen or the game doesn't start or you experience other technical issues, please consult README.md or describe your problem on Discord or Matrix or the issue tracker. Contributions of all kinds are welcome. Please offer feedback to mikolaj.konarski@funktory.com or, preferably, on any of the public forums.

Starting your adventure

Commands for starting a new game, saving and exiting the current game, configuring convenience settings and toggling AI control of the party are listed in the main menu, brought up by the Esc key. Game difficulty level, from the new game setup menu, determines how hard the survival in the game is. Each of the several named optional challenges make the game additionally much harder, but usually simpler, as well. Not that in-game hints don't take challenges into account so kindly ignore, e.g., advice to use ranged combat more often, if the chosen challenge bans ranged combat use altogether. Of the convenience settings, the suspect terrain choice is of particular interest, because it determines not only screen display of the floor map, but also whether suspect tiles are considered for mouse go-to, auto-explore and for the C-? command that marks the nearest unexplored position.

Game scenarios, as ordered by their number, lead the player along an optional story arc. The first two adventures double as tutorials that offer rudimentary preparation for the main game, the long crawl. They gradually introduce exploration, stealth and melee combat, helping the player develop his repertoire of squad formations and move patterns, suitable for different tactical contexts. When the player loses, a defeat message for the scenario appears with hints about strategies known to work in the given tactical context. Alternatively, the player may postpone reading these messages and instead try to puzzle out the tactics himself --- this is not so hard, as there are not yet so many moving parts to figure out in the first two adventures.

In the third scenario, the main 'crawl' game mode, the player starts employing ranged combat, stealth, light sources, item and terrain alteration. As soon as the player learns to navigate the initial levels of crawl, but still dies a lot, it makes sense to return to the remaining short adventures. They bring forth many extra game features and tactics and prevent the player from missing half the fun by trying to play the crawl just like a normal roguelike with spare heroes. The extra scenarios continue the plotline from the initial tutorial adventures in the form of flashbacks and eventually lead up to the events that start the main crawl adventure. The training they provide has narrow focus, drilling a particular skill set, even as exotic as opportunity fire management, a frantic race to the exit and big asymmetric melee battles. The challenge the scenarios offer may be, accordingly, quite extreme, particularly at higher difficulty settings and when striving for high scores.

The main adventure, the long crawl, is the only one that takes place in a multi-floor setting, requiring lots of time to beat. The focus is on resource management and survival, including terrain transformation using tools, spotting environment clues and guessing and countering opponents' strategies. The player has a choice of exploring a single level at a time or portions of many floors along a single staircase. On some levels he may explore and loot with a single scout, eluding most opponents. On others he may be forced to change pace and perform a complete exterminatory sweep involving his whole party. On yet others, his best course of action may be to defend a key location until the first wave of attackers is broken. The large game arena calls for strategic thinking, including resource management and area denial. Thus, the crawl scenario is the most replayable adventure, but even the small ones can be refreshed by striving to beat a high score and by ramping up the difficulty settings.

Exploring the world

The map of any particular adventure consists of one or many levels and a level consists of a number of tiles with a particular terrain kind on each. The game world is persistent, i.e., every time the player visits a level during a single game, its layout is the same (unless modified by other actors).

Letters and digits on the game screen are likely to represent actors. On the other hand, terrain is depicted with non-letter and non-digit characters and with zero 0. Blocky solid symbols are likely to be non-passable and/or not translucent terrain. White, cyan and green terrain is usually inert, red is burning or trapped, blue activable or trapped, magenta activable or searchable.

Items lying on the ground are represented with non-letter and non-digit characters, just as terrain, though rarely with blocky symbols. In case of doubt, one of the aiming commands (/ and KP_/, that is, / on the keypad) cycles through all visible and remembered items on the level and another (* and KP_*, all with default keybindings) through all foes. Also, pointing at a map position with MMB (middle mouse button) displays a short description of its contents.

Pointing with RMB enters aiming mode, in which pointing again or pressing Space key or MMB decreases detail level of the description. If a foe or interesting terrain is being pointed at, tilde key ~ shows the relevant lore details. The basic terrain kinds are as follows.

terrain type                          on-screen symbol

bush, transparent obstacle            %
trap, ice obstacle                    ^

wall (horizontal and vertical)        - and |
bedrock                               blank
tree, rock, man-made column           0
rubble                                &
stairs, exit up                       <
stairs, exit down                     >
closed door                           +

open door (horizontal and vertical)   | and -
corridor                              #
ground                                .
water, other fluid                    ~

smoke, fog, open fire                 ;
workshop, curtain, foliage            :

The four groups above, from top to bottom, block movement but not view, block both, block neither, block view but not movement. Additionally, each tile, regardless if open and if translucent, may be permanently lit with ambient light or not.

Actors are marked with lower and upper case letters and with characters @ and 1 through 9 (but never 0). Player-controlled heroes are always bright white and at game start they are selected (e.g., to run together) so they have a green highlight around their symbol. If player manages to take control of animals or other actors, they retain their letter and color, but gain a highlight as well.

So, for example, the following map shows a room with a closed door, full of actors, connected by a corridor with a room with an open door, a pillar, a staircase down and rubble that obscures one of the corners. The lowest row of the larger room is full of items.

------       ------
|@19.|       |....&&
|r...+#######-...0.>&&|
|Ra..|       |[?!,)$"=|
------       ----------

Leading your heroes

The heroes are displayed on the map with bright white color (red if they are seriously wounded) and symbols @ and 1 through 9 (never 0). The currently chosen party pointman is highlighted on the map with yellow. The easiest way to control your team is to run a short distance with your pointman using Shift-direction or LMB, switch the pointman with the Tab key, repeat. In open terrain, if you keep consistent distance between teammates, this resembles the leap-frog infantry tactics, in which the immobile team members cover the movement of the others. For best effects, try to end each sprint behind cover or concealment (note that a thin pillar is neither, but a single shadowed spot may be enough to hide in the dark).

Pointman hero's attributes are displayed at the bottom-most status line which, in its most complex form, looks as follows.

*@12   2m/s Calm: 20/60 HP: 33/50 Pointman: Haskell Alvin   6d1+5% 4d1

The line starts with the list of party members, with the current pointman highlighted in yellow. Most commands involve only the pointman, including movement with keyboard or keypad or LMB (left mouse button). If more heroes are selected (highlighted in green), they run together whenever : or S-LMB (LMB while holding down Shift) over map area is pressed, though that's usually not a precise enough method of controlling a team. Any sleeping hero is highlighted in blue and can be woken up by yelling with % key, which also taunts and unnerves nearby enemies.

Next on the bottom-most status line is the pointman's current and maximum Calm (morale, composure, focus, attentiveness), then his current and maximum HP (hit points, health). The colon after "Calm" turning into a dot signifies that the pointman is in a position without ambient illumination, making stealthy conduct easier. A brace sign instead of a colon after "HP" means the pointman is braced for combat (see chapter Moving and acting).

In the second half of the bottom-most status line, the pointman's name is shown. Then come damage dice of the pointman's melee weapons and the pointman's appendages, ordered by their power. The dice of the first recharged weapon, the one that is going to be used now, is adorned with percentage damage bonus collected from the whole equipment of the pointman. If the dice are displayed with upper-case D instead of lower-case d, the weapon has additional effects apart of the usual direct damage. The nature of the effects can be appraised via the equipment outfit menu. Only the most common piercing direct damage, denoted by the damage dice, is affected by the percentage damage bonus. The other direct damage kinds, such wounding and burning, are represented by extra added integers and are not scaled by bonuses from melee skill nor maluses from the opponent's armor.

Weapon damage and other item properties are displayed using the dice notation xdy, which denotes x rolls of y-sided dice. A variant written xdLy is additionally scaled by the level depth in proportion to the maximal level depth (at the first level the result is always one; it grows up to the full rolled value at the last level). Section Battling monsters below describes combat resolution in detail, including the role of the percentage bonuses.

The upper status line describes the currently visited level in relation to the party.

5  Lofty hall    [33% seen] dire basilisk    [__**]

First comes the depth of the current level and its name. Then the percentage of its explorable tiles already seen by the heroes. Then the common focus of the whole party, coming from the aiming crosshair marked on the map with a red box and manipulated with mouse or movement keys in aiming mode. In this example, the crosshair points at a dire basilisk monster with its hit points drawn as a half-full bar.

Instead of a monster, the aiming crosshair status area may describe a position on the map, a recently spotted item on the floor or an item in inventory selected for further action or, if none are available, a summary of the team composition. For example, this form

5  Lofty hall    [33% seen] spot (71,12)    p15 l10

indicates that the party is aiming at an exact spot on the map. At the end of this example status line comes the length of the shortest path from the pointman's position to the spot in crosshair and the straight-line distance between the two points, one that a flung projectile would travel if there were no obstacles.

Moving and acting

This chapter is a copy of the few initial pages of in-game help. The in-game help is automatically generated based on a game's keybinding content definitions and on overrides in the player's config file. The remaining in-game help screens, not shown here, list all game commands grouped by categories in detail.

Walk throughout a level with mouse or numeric keypad (right diagram below) or the Vi editor keys (middle) or the left-hand movement keys (left). Run until disturbed with Shift or Control. Go-to a position with LMB (left mouse button). In aiming mode, the same keys (and mouse) move the aiming crosshair.

      q w e          y k u          7 8 9
       \|/            \|/            \|/
      a-s-d          h-.-l          4-5-6
       /|\            /|\            /|\
      z x c          b j n          1 2 3

Press KP_5 (5 on keypad) to wait, bracing for impact, which reduces any damage taken and prevents displacement by foes. Press S-KP_5 or C-KP_5 (the same key with Shift or Control) to lurk 0.1 of a turn, without bracing.

Displace enemies by running into them with Shift/Control or S-LMB. Search, open, descend and melee by bumping into walls, doors, stairs and enemies. The best, and not on cooldown, melee weapon is automatically chosen for attack from your equipment and from among your body parts.

The following few commands, joined with the movement and running keys, let you accomplish almost anything in the game, though not necessarily with the fewest keystrokes. You can also play the game exclusively with a mouse, or both mouse and keyboard (e.g., mouse for go-to and terrain inspection and keyboard for everything else). Lastly, you can select a command with arrows or mouse directly from the help screen or the dashboard and execute it on the spot.

keys         command
I            manage the shared inventory stash
g or ,       grab item(s)
ESC          clear messages/open main menu/finish aiming
RET or INS   open dashboard/accept target
SPACE        clear messages/show history/cycle detail level
TAB          cycle among all party members
*            cycle crosshair among enemies
/            cycle crosshair among items
M            modify any admissible terrain
%            yell or yawn and stop sleeping

Screen area and UI mode (exploration/aiming) determine mouse click effects. Here we give an overview of effects of each button over the game map area. The list includes not only left and right buttons, but also the optional middle mouse button (MMB) and the mouse wheel, which is also used over menus to move selection. For mice without RMB, one can use Control key with LMB and for mice without MMB, one can use C-RMB or C-S-LMB.

keys         command (exploration/aiming)
LMB          go to pointer for 25 steps/fling at enemy
S-LMB        run to pointer collectively for 25 steps/fling at enemy
RMB or C-LMB start aiming at enemy under pointer/cycle detail level
S-RMB        modify terrain at pointer
MMB or C-RMB snap crosshair to floor under pointer/cycle detail level
WHEEL-UP     swerve the aiming line
WHEEL-DN     unswerve the aiming line

Note that mouse is optional. Keyboard suffices, occasionally requiring a lookup for an obscure command key in help screens.

Battling monsters

The life of heroes is full of danger. Monstrosities, natural and out of this world, roam the dark corridors and crawl from damp holes day and night. While heroes pay attention to all other party members and take care to move one at a time, monsters don't care about each other and crowd and stampede all at once, sometimes brutally colliding by accident.

Monsters are depicted on the map with letters. Upper case letters are unique monsters, often guardians of special floors, resources and keys to other areas. Lower case letters are the rabble. If there are humans not from our team, they are marked with @ and 1 through 9 in other colours than white.

When a hero walks and bumps into a monster or a monster attacks the hero, melee combat occurs. Hero running into and displacing a monster (with the Shift key and, in case of keypad movement, alternatively a Control key), does not involve inflicting a damage, but only causes an exchange of places. This gives the opponent a free blow, but can improve the tactical situation or aid escape. In some circumstances actors are immune to the displacing, e.g., when both parties form a continuous front-line.

In melee combat, the best recharged equipped weapon (including fighting organs that are not on cooldown) is taken into account for determining the damage and any extra effects of the blow. To calculate the damage dealt, the outcome of the weapon's direct piercing damage dice roll (but not any additional direct damage summands such as wounding or burning) is multiplied by a percentage bonus. The total bonus is calculated by taking the damage bonus (summed from the equipped items and organs and conditions of the attacker, capped at 200%) minus the melee armor modifier of the defender (capped at 200%, as well). However, at least 5% of damage always gets through, even if the bonus is nominally below -95%, so excessively strong armor acts only as a buffer against high melee skill of opponents.

The current pointman's melee bonus, armor modifier and other detailed stats can be viewed in the skill menu, accessible via the # command, which summarizes all the stats conferred by organs and conditions listed in the organ menu, invoked by @.

In ranged combat, the projectile is assumed to be attacking the defender in melee, using itself as the weapon, with the usual dice and damage bonus. This time, the ranged armor skill of the defender is taken into account and, additionally, the speed of the missile (based on shape and weight) figures in the calculation. You may propel any item from your inventory (by default you are offered exclusively the appropriate items; press + to open all choices). Only items of a few kinds inflict direct damage, but some have other effects, beneficial, detrimental or mixed.

In-game detailed item descriptions contain melee and ranged damage estimates. They do not take into account enemy armor nor damage from effects and, if bonuses are not known, guesses are based on averages for the item kind in question. The displayed figures are rounded, but the game internally keeps track of minute fractions of HP for all actors in all calculations.

The combat stress drains Calm, gradually limiting viewing radius. If Calm reaches zero and the actor is sufficiently impressed by his foes, the actor defects and surrenders unto their domination. Whenever the monster's or hero's hit points reach zero, the combatant falls down and gets permanently incapacitated. When the last hero is disabled or dominated, the adventure ends in defeat. Eliminating the last monster at a given time not always results in victory.

Attacking from a distance

Before the player presses f to make a ranged attack, he may spend time moving and setting the aiming crosshair in aiming mode. However, this is not often needed, since crosshair is set automatically as soon as a monster comes into view and can still be adjusted for as long as the missile to fling is not chosen.

Nevertheless, sometimes before flinging you want to examine the level map tile by tile by moving the crosshair or to assign persistent personal targets to party members. The latter is essential in the rare cases when your henchmen (non-pointman characters) can move autonomously or fire opportunistically (via innate skills or rare equipment). Also, if your non-pointman character is adjacent to more than one enemy, setting his target makes him melee a particular foe.

You can enter the aiming mode with the * and KP_* keys that select enemies or the / and KP_/ keys that cycle among items on the level. You can move crosshair with direction keys and assign a personal target to the pointman with the RET key (Return, Enter). The details about the shared crosshair position are displayed in a status line close to the bottom of the screen, as explained in chapter Leading your heroes above. You cycle aiming mode from foe to spot and to vector with the \ key, which is useful, e.g., when a monster vanishes but you still want to fling at its last known position.

Combat and Speed

During combat there are some more nuances to movement and actions that are worth considering. Every action takes an amount of time (equal for most of the actions). The time that it takes a unit to act is relative to its speed and additionally affected by the team's communication overhead.

Any member of the squad that has not idled (either moved, used inventory, attacked or lurked attentively) will incur a 10% speed penalty on all members of the team on the same level, including themselves, but excluding the pointman. This is a penalty for the time and energy they had to spend to take note of any changes that could be relevant to the squad and for the overhead needed to communicate it and get it acknowledged by the other squad members. In this way, a squad where 4 teammates take actions every turn will work at 60% speed. By the same token, regardless of how numerous the team is, never more than 10 normal speed teammates can act in the same turn (the moves of the others are going to spill over to the next turn).

The pointman is an exception to this rule. The pointman may perform melee attacks or any other action without incurring a team overhead penalty. This may make it preferable to melee with the pointman, even though any team member can melee and pointmen can also perform many other actions. Also, this prevents a pointman from being slowed by the team residing elsewhere on the level, making any solo pointman vs pointman duels fairer.

In a short scenario this may not be terribly relevant, but in longer engagements the overhead can make a big difference in damage per second that a team can put out. E.g., it's a crucial and context-dependent choice whether to hurry towards a lonely meleeing teammate, thus lowering the damage output, stay put, fling a projectile, or perhaps get the meleeing teammate to retreat towards the team. Over a long run, such choices influence the speed of HP attrition and if it outweighs the benefits of exploration.

Winning and dying

You win an adventure if you escape the situation alive, which may prove difficult, because your foes tend to gradually build up an ambush squad blocking your escape route. On the other hand, in scenarios with no open escape routes, the only way to survive is to eliminate all opposition, which is not a small feat, either.

If escape without a fight to the death is possible, your score is based in equal parts on the speed with which you manage to leave the deadly environment and the proportion of gold and precious gems (including the elixirs that are stored in precious crystal boxes) you manage to plunder and carry off. Note that engaging in wanton slaughter is counterproductive in such a setting, because it wastes time and non-unique enemies never carry valuables, but stash them instead.

If killing all foes is required, your score is most influenced by the number of turns you spent overcoming your foes (the quicker the victory, the better; the slower the demise, the better). Bonus points, affected by the number of heroes lost, are awarded only if you win. The score, in all cases, is heavily modified by the chosen game difficulty, but not by any other challenges (which are, however, distinctly announced in the high score listing).

When all your heroes fall, you lose, but you are going to invariably see a new foolhardy party of adventurers clamoring to be led into the unknown perils. They start their conquest afresh, with no experience, no supplies for survival and no equipment, and new undaunted enemies bar their way. Lead the new hopeful explorers with wisdom and fortitude!

FAQ

Q: Why do I summon hostile animals all the time, why do I defect to the enemy faction every level, why am I constantly sabotaging my own adventure, what is going on?

A: Whenever anything bad happens, notice it and use it as a learning experience. Especially if it happens often or periodically. Check carefully the messages overlaid on the map and in history log, look at your outfit, organs, stats. Observe coincidences. Build conjectures. Deduce. Prevent. Adjust. Win. Whomever told you bumping is enough, lied.

Q: Why is my hero immobile?

A: Perhaps he's just sleeping (blue box indicates that)? If so, you can wake him up with the % command. If he's not asleep, his movement skill may be temporarily drained. Switch to another hero or perform some other productive action different from walking or wait with KP_5 or rest with R.

Q: Is autoexplore safe?

A: Not at all. It doesn't try to guess which hazardous terrain you want to avoid and which to barge through, so be prepared to abort exploration if open fire or slippery ground comes into view. Unless you have HP to spare. Oh the other hand, running is very safe and go-to is rather safe.

Q: Why does the percentage of explored tiles turn from 100% to 99%?

A: Apparently enemies transformed a tile from unexplorable terrain kind to explorable. The new tile has never been seen by the player, so the percentage is no longer at 100%.

Q: Why when a single hero gets ambushed and is fighting at close quarters, his distant teammates don't jointly come to his rescue.

A: The teammates wait for him to come back into the formation instead so that they may assume a front line and then melee their foes together. The immobile heroes are assumed to be pinned to their positions by fear and shock, but also by their imperative to hold formation, so as to defend an important position or avoid running piecemeal into a trap or into friendly fire or avoid breaking concealment and revealing their position or leaving a vantage point from which they can observe and relay enemy movement. For untrained teams, simultaneous synchronized squad movement is not feasible. It would be practical if all squaddies had cameras, with a few drones overhead for best effect, and if a team of off-site coordinators analyzed the situation and micromanaged them all. This is not the case here.

Q: Why is the noise I'm hearing "indistinct"?

A: That's because it's out of direct hearing range of each teammate on the level, but ponderous enough to be perceived by all as vibrations and echos from afar. Any other noise adjective indicates that the noise is heard by at least one teammate and how far it is from the pointman (who may or may not hear it directly, as signalled by his Calm drop).

Q: Why are there two 'weakened' conditions in the organ menu of my hero?

A: Each team has a different recipe for their weakness brew. Consequently, multiple affliction by the concoction from a single team prolongs a single malady, but affliction by concoctions from many teams causes concurrent ailments, with compounded effects, but independent and short durations. The benefit of the mechanism is that it's possible to tell the perpetrator team of any ailment. The exceptions are the conditions that activate each turn, e.g., healing (regeneration, various resistances that effectively cure each turn) or wounding (poison). These are similar regardless of the team and so the condition is always only prolonged.

Q: Why is a harpoon in my shared inventory stash charging for hundreds of turns?

A: This is an artifact of time running independently on each level. Any ideas on how to improve this game mechanics are welcome. A workaround is to drop and then pick up the item on the level you want to use it. When picked up, it gets recharged after, randomly, from one to two times the normal cooldown period of the item and then recharges normally while it's used on this level.

Q: Why the bottom line displays a weapon with a timeout to the right of a weapon without timeout? Doesn't it mean the former is never used?

A: Yes, it's never used and, quite possibly, it's your party inventory management mistake and if not, at least a very special situation and the display turns your attention to it. Shuffle the equipment among your team if you want the weapon to get used.

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