Sword Of The Stars The Pit Forum

'.the Pit is one of the more solid roguelike titles on Steam, especially in a relatively flooded market.' Sword of the Stars: The Pit is a science fiction roguelike, originally released on Steam in 2013, where you are tasked with getting to the bottom of the titular 'Pit,' a dangerous and labyrinthine alien facility deep underground. It takes a traditional approach to its subgenre, with procedurally generated dungeon floors, plenty of stats to upgrade, and an expansive set of items, but executes most of those elements quite well and stands out from much of its competition as a result.The story in The Pit, as with many roguelikes, is basic and mainly presented as introductory text before the title screen. A 'Xombie' sic plague has overtaken a planet, and alien tech from a subterranean installation could hold the secret to finding a cure.

There are other small bits of story information peppered throughout the game, usually in the messages you find and decipher while playing, but these are mostly atmospheric in nature rather than contributions to a grand overall plot. Despite the lack of traditional storytelling, The Pit does manage to present a bit of world-building through gameplay. As you wander deeper into the dungeon, encounters with a variety of alien species, robots, and items give a sense of a broader universe outside the confines of the titular Pit itself. Also, as a disclaimer, I have not played the Sword of the Stars 4X strategy games that reside in the same universe as The Pit (somewhat surprising as I've played so many space 4X games I should really be writing for Space4XFan.com), so there may be stronger story connections with the races and technology of those games.The intricacies of gameplay, not to mention the level of challenge, are the main factors that bring me back to The Pit every few years since its release. As you plunge deeper into the dungeon, difficulty mounts in multiple dimensions.

Of course, as expected with any dungeon, the monsters get bigger, scarier, and more numerous, and the floor layouts expand in size and complexity. In addition, you must keep your hero fed as time progresses (the game is turn based but time passes with each action). You start with some meager rations which will run out relatively quickly, leaving you scrounging for food in random containers. Beyond just the food scarcity, players also need to conserve ammo, watch equipment durability, and be wary of various status effects that can quickly get out of hand if not treated. These challenges, however, are one of the main draws of the game, as you always feel you can get a bit farther in the next attempt if you tweak your strategy and get a bit lucky.Speaking of food, there is also an extensive cooking and crafting system in The Pit. Not only does this give players a better way to stay fed, but it also allows for the creation of some useful items, like weapons and lock picks, from junk picked up during the run. The crafting recipe mechanic is also where The Pit has a bit of a 'metagame' component.

On any given attempt, you may find messages which can be partially or fully deciphered (based on your Decipher stat). Many of these messages hold background story fluff, but others contain recipes which are saved for use in future runs.

The less scrupulous player can always just research all of these recipes online, but I found it more enjoyable to discover them on my own and feel a sense of progression despite dying time and time again.At the core of all of The Pit's gameplay mechanics is how you develop your character. There are a lot of stats you can specialize in, including various weapon and foraging skills. Even though each character has starting tendencies and equipment that encourages a certain play style, I enjoyed customizing my character over the course of a given run for a semi-unique experience each time.

Sword of the Stars: The Pit is a science fiction roguelike, originally released on Steam in 2013, where you are tasked with getting to the bottom of the titular 'Pit,' a dangerous and labyrinthine alien facility deep underground.

For example, if I found a good rifle early on, I might specialize in the Rifle skill to make the best use of it. Metro conflict rona r34. I also might want to raise my lock picking skills to access locked ammo crates, which become progressively more difficult to open as you go deeper.The Pit does not impress graphically, but the visuals do not impede the game either. There are a fair amount of palette-swapped enemy sprites, and overall enemy design is not particularly unique. Some of the player character designs also looked a bit goofy to me.

One good graphical choice, however, is how the Pit itself changes as you delve deeper, beginning with a typical cave look and steadily evolving into a more technologically complex alien facility.The music of The Pit is somewhat limited in quantity, but it suits the game's grim and claustrophobic nature well. The title theme is ominous and lends some weight to your impending descent, but at the same time, it has a few opening notes that I had difficulty not humming during the weeks I played the game. The main in-game music is a repetitive chiptune that mostly stays in the background, adding some atmosphere but also not standing out. After many playthroughs, I did start to wish for a bit more variety, but the lack of music was never something that affected my gameplay experience much. The sound effects are relatively basic, with beasts growling, robots beeping, and various gun/explosion sounds.

The sound design is mediocre overall, but some of the weapon effects have a resounding quality that makes them just a bit more satisfying than normal.I would be remiss if I didn't discuss the multitude of DLC that has been released for The Pit since its initial debut in 2013. The Mindgames and Gold Edition DLC are the largest, and I highly recommend them for a more complete experience. All of these (the base game, Mindgames, and Gold Edition) have since been bundled together as the 'Osmium Edition.' The Mindgames DLC expands your arsenal and character development with Psionics (essentially a magic system), which can do anything from harm enemies to manifest bread for you to stave off your hunger as you explore (in the game, anyway). The Gold Edition DLC adds quite a bit as well, including four new characters and an extension to the dungeon's depth.

The remaining DLC are single character packs that add new heroes you can use to challenge the dungeon. Some of these are quite unique, such as the necromancy-wielding Lich, but others may not impress those looking for wildly different experiences.Whether played with DLC or not, The Pit is one of the more solid roguelike titles on Steam, especially in a relatively flooded market. It is challenging but generally fair and allows the player a lot of choices in character development while providing a good atmosphere for dungeon delving. While its graphics and sound may not impress, The Pit's gameplay will keep players unafraid of long streaks of failure and ensure they come back to challenge it 'just one more time.' © 2019 Kerberos Productions. All rights reserved. © 1998—2020 RPGFan Media, LLC.

With retro graphics and vicious gameplay, Sword of the Stars: The Pit is a game that hearkens back to days long ago.

The term “roguelike” is used to describe a sub-genre of RPG featuring layer upon layer of randomized dungeons populated by all manner of beasts, traps and treasure. The name comes from the famed early videogame Rogue, an ASCII-based proto-RPG that has inspired and influenced a remarkable number of games in the decades since and that’s famous for being perfectly happy to kill players who get out of line, or just get unlucky.

Sword of the Stars: The Pit is a new, and very true, addition to the genre. Your planet is being ravaged by a deadly plague, and your only hope for a cure is at the bottom of “The Pit,” a legendary facility dug deep into the Feldspar Mountains by the alien Suul’ka. But the Suul’ka are famed for their death-dealing ways, and no expedition into The Pit has ever returned. It’s a pretty thin setup, but games like this aren’t known for being big on story, so it’s an excusable flimsiness.

You’ll play The Pit as either a Marine, a Scout or an Engineer, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. It’s a good balance, in the sense that they’re all terrible; the Marine can dish out all sorts of damage to enemies but his thick skull keeps him from being of much use for anything else – bad news when the bullets run out – and while the Engineer is far more adept at accessing computers and repairing broken equipment, his value in a fight is dubious. Characters have three stats – might, finesse and brains – and a wide variety of skills ranging from ranged and melee weapon proficiencies to computers, medical, mechanical, scrounging and more. Each class starts off with a big bonus to the appropriate stat and skills, but can increase any of them with each level.

The interface uses the WASD keys for movement, arrow keys to aim weapons and the spacebar for most (but not all) other interactions, a bit of an awkward setup at first but functional and easy enough to adjust to, and the turn-based movement means you can take a break at any time and come back to the action at your leisure. The game has one save point that automatically marks your progress when you quit, and if you die, it’s wiped and you’re back to square one.

The Pit looks, sounds and plays like a game straight out of the mid-90s, with a deliberately pixelated visual style that’s not ugly by any stretch but that can grow monotonous at times. Aside from geometric variations, level designs are cookie-cutter affairs with dull, repeating backgrounds and very sparse room decoration, often nothing more than a single bed or table. It’s a largely unavoidable consequence of the game’s procedurally-generated nature, but there’s simply no getting around the fact that it’s not the most exciting visual experience ever.

Sound effects are likewise fairly minimal. Enemies make brief but not exactly terrifying noises, weapons produce little more than pops and beeps and although there is a soundtrack, for some reason it plays at a much lower volume than the sound effects, to the point that it’s almost impossible to hear – unless you’re at the menu, where it’s much louder and actually pretty groovy. The occasional bits of voice acting that spill out randomly when an enemy is killed also play at such a low volume that they might as well not be there.

But the gameplay’s the thing, and this is where I’m torn. On anything beyond “easy” mode, The Pit is a nasty, mean-spirited game, as roguelikes generally are, but I can’t help thinking that in some ways it goes a little too far. Hidden traps will blow you up, burn you with acid or choke you with poison just for stepping on the wrong square, and doors are often randomly booby-trapped, sometimes to good effect and sometimes to very ill. Weapon upgrades called “Bio-mods” have completely random effects on your arsenal, sometimes good and sometimes bad, and there’s no way to tell which it will be without installing, after which it’s too late.

Supplies are very hard to come by, especially for the marble-brained Marine, who is almost wholly reliant on explosives and lockpicks to open uncooperative containers and doors; bullets tend to be scarce, forcing players to rely on melee attacks with a knife to conserve ammo, yet that drives up the threat of poisoning or disease, which requires specialized medical equipment to cure – which is even scarcer. Worst of all is the constantly looming specter of hunger – the hunger meter ticks down with alarming speed.

Supposedly helping counterbalance all this is the crafting system, which lets players use “cookers” or “lab stations” to whip up a variety of items ranging from basic foodstuffs to advanced, high-tech equipment. The trouble is that recipes are required, and they’re only available in encrypted alien messages stored on random (and, to be blunt, rarely found) computer stations that must be accessed and then decrypted before they can be read. Experimentation will uncover recipes as well, but items used in failed attempts are lost and cookers and lab stations have a limited number of uses, discouraging an excess of messing around. Recipes you learn in one game will be valid in all others, the idea being that you’ll accumulate recipes and grow better prepared to survive over multiple games, but you can expect to play for an awfully long time before your recipe book is anywhere near respectable.

(There is one way to avoid the wait: Hit up your nearest Sword of the Stars: The Pit forum and look for recipe lists. It’s technically cheating but it will make your life, at least as it relates to this videogame, a lot easier. Developer Kerberos Productions is a good place to start.)

The part that has me torn is that a lot of roguelike fans will say that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be; that games like this are supposed to be difficult, capricious and unfair, and that keeping you from the end is the whole point. I’ve been around long enough to know that’s a valid point, but I suspect that Sword of the Stars: The Pit might be a little too hardcore for its own good. For serious aficionados of the genre this is a must-play game, but everyone else would be well-advised to try the demo first.