Barony

A Podcast Review of Barony: This week we play the "first person roguelike" from 2015 that is the most unique nethack-clone we've seen, Barony! Or is it pronounced, Bare-Oh-Knee? (it's not)

Despite this being a 3d first person game, this episode is probably the closest to covering Nethack we'll ever get so we do a lot of discussion of traditional roguelikes and our Nethack experience! We both went through a phase of being deep into Nethack (David ascended!) and Barony truly wears its inspiration proudly. We consider how some mechanics translate to the modern sensibility (is hunger fun?) and try to understand what is going on with the minotaur. Is it adding something to the game? Why isn't it on a timer?

While it was definitely fun to revisit Nethack from a new perspective and with co-op, we grapple in this episode with when difficulty is fun and when it is demoralizing. Turns out Danny cannot stay alive in this game and maybe that shaded his more negative experience. This one was another one where we had to reach consensus for tier list placement - we did enjoy playing together but felt there was a little bit of sauce missing from the experience. It was a little slow and the metagame did not feel super well adapted to the modern day.

Interview with the dev: https://indiegraph.wordpress.com/2013/12/11/interview-with-the-creator-of-barony/

LyciantYT channel: https://www.youtube.com/@LyciantYT