Caves of Qud - Early Reflections

 I have about 50-60 hours in the video game Caves of Qud (wikipedia). I have been enjoying it a ton. I am going to share some thoughts I have on it.

 

1. Water

 

Water, in the game, serves several purposes. It is necessary as a basic bodily need, in game; you need to drink it or you die. Thus collecting water is a necessary part of the game. It steadily gets used up, only to be replenished. It serves as fuel for travel across the map: the farther you go, the more water is used.

 Water is currency: you use it in trade as a bartering item. This makes sense; it is sparse in the setting and thus valuable for its biological function. You can gain and lose water not only through the collecting and drinking, but also through trade. More uses are gained for water (payment), but it combines two types of resources, supplies for travel and money.

 Water is a tool. In NetHackian style, water comes with a context menu of actions you can use it for. For instance, you can pour water, onto a nearby NPC, yourself, or on the ground. Despite its value, pouring out water is sometimes the only way to save your life. There are monsters which can set you on fire, and water comes in handy for dousing yourself. You could be immolated without using up your precious water. Water-as-tool sacrifices long-term possibilities (trade and travel) for short term security.

Water in Qud is multifaceted in its game function. It creates a resource chokepoint: many goals require water. It is mostly infinitely verstatile as a resource: it can unlock many items and locations that get you further to the goal. All goals are funneled through quantities of water so that you cannot succeed without it.

 

2. Combat and the Exploration Snowball

 

Most combat is pretty simple in outcome: you die or the other thing dies. As far as I know, there is nothing in the way of parley, intricate stealth mechanics, and obviously no real-time technical maneuvers to master (the game is turn-based). Combat interactions are not something to master skills of; it is a series of hurdles that you either make the jump or die. Though it is possible to perform combat poorly, there is a low skill ceiling. 

This leads to a point of what the game wants you to focus on: not on combat mechanics, but on building resources towards combat. Combat is a nigh-necessary party of the game (in most game modes) and thus must be overcome, not by mechanics, but through item acquisition and character advancement (abilities, mutations, cybernetics, etc.). You obtain these things through the exploration of the setting, and again through combat. 

By exploring you gain the means to win fights, and by winning fights you gain the experience and items to fight tougher enemies. The snowball begins. Your game options increase exponentially the farther you explore.

I played all but my last 5 hours of Qud on Classic mode, which is a permadeath mode (you die, you start over entirely from scratch). I reached the second of the major settlements of Qud at about the 45-hour mark. I learned many lessons along the path of many deaths, but also saw very little of the world. I started a Roleplay mode game, and I've seen much more and can handle much more. I saw that the snowball can happen, and when it rolls, it rocks!

Not only do the quality of items at your character's disposal increase, but general resources as well. Water becomes trivial to obtain, but also becomes a hindrance. It is heavy, and when overburdened, your character cannot move. Resource and inventory management thus become a drawback of your progress. The snowball can only grow so big before falling apart or needing massive reorganization.

The overall progressive character of the game is almost negligibly mechanical: unlike a FromSoftware game, there is no mechanical skills for the player to master. However, in planning and decision making, Qud offers not just avenues, but open fields to explore: proceed in any direction and you will find something that could advance the snowball. Or kill you.

 

3. Flavor and Lore

 

Qud is known for its deep algorithms for producing the history of its world. You load up a new game, and the screen shows its generations messages. The resulting world is a Dwarf Fortress-esque science-fantasy realm with shrines to emperors of the lost empire, books left at ruins that are nearly priceless to traders, and "odd trinkets," technological scrap from bygone eras of humanity. You can explore ancient tombs, lost ruins, and hear preachers in market places proclaim the myths of a religion borne from bygone fantastic eras of the world.

 This all has a muted quality, a background presence. It is not part of a "main quest line," per se, but instead an omnipresent reminder that you live in the wreckage of something once greater. By exploring, you learn more, but there is something always inevitably destroyed, and thus a piece of history lost. It is, by design, incomplete fragments.

This is risky design. It tries to evoke curiosity in the player by presenting mysteries, but could just end up not having enough hooks to draw in anyone. My experience has been somewhat in between; it often pays off to investigate the lore, but rarely piques curiosity. In the end, it has to be placed in its proper place: a mode of exploration and advancement.

The rare books in the setting may be exchanged for experience points, thus finding and exploring ruins are incredibly potent forms of exploration. Similarly, odd trinkets and artifacts can be tinkered to build gadgets and such. These rewards provide forms of advancement, some not accessible otherwise, by investing yourself in the lost civilization, with or without personal curiosity. Indeed, this is great game design as it promotes interactivity, as a game is often expected to, rather than dumping lore, which could fit into great book design.

 

4. Overall Impression and Further Play 

 

I want to keep exploring. I have to at least finish a run! And there's so much I haven't talked about since I know so little of the game: I have been playing only melee mutated human build, and haven't touched cybernetics hardly at all. 

I'd also love some to compare this to other roguelikes or RPGs. Old School RuneScape, the obvious choice, I think shares many features worth writing about. Nethack I need to make more progress before I can comment too much. Bringing Qud to the table is also a very rich topic (especially considering it has an incarnation in Vaults of Vaarn).