A space marine is stationed on a base on the Mars moon of Phobos as a portal opens inside the base. The portal brings an invasion of demons from hell that massacre and possess all the soldiers at the Phobos base. Only one space marine survives and he is the only hope against this onslaught of evil.
This is the background of DRL, an ASCII-text-based game formerly called DoomRL. Does this premise sound familiar? It should be because the roguelike game was created as a parody of Doom, the seminal first-person shooter that popularized its genre. The complete former title of DRL was Doom the Roguelike.
The creator of the game, ChaosForge, has gone on to create the next version of its game, called Jupiter Hell. The upcoming game will still be a multiple-level turn-based roguelike RPG and it will have the same premise but it will have a modern look and a different location, Jupiter instead of Mars. It will now use graphics and will be rendered with 3D models but an ASCII-text interface will be included with the game for those who prefer it.
To fund the further development of the game, ChaosForge relied on crowdfunding using Kickstarter. They planned to release the source-code of DoomRL once the Kickstarter campaign had reached its goal.
Gaming website Kotaku reported that the lawyers for the owner of the Doom trademark, Bethesda Studios, issued a cease-and-desist order demanding that all references to Doom be stricken from their game or else be shutdown. This forced ChaoseForge to rename DoomRL to DRL and release the source-code before the campaign had ended.
The Kickstarter campaign has completed and it seems to have surpassed its goal. The developers seem to deem it a success. Someone from ChaosForge, Darren Grey, posted on the Kickstart project update page that they were in a festive mood since the end of the Kickstarter campaign.
They appear to have been working hard throughout the campaign evidenced by their lack of sleep. Grey said that the team has had a few days off to catch up on sleep.
According to updates on the Jupiter Hell Kickstarter campaign page, now that they are well rested, ChaosForge is now looking ahead to 2017. They are getting ready and preparing for the coming challenges.
Grey said that the backer forums and Inner Circle forums will be ready soon. The backer forum includes access to development polls when the developers face a particularly troubling decision in terms of game design.
The Inner Circle forum is where backers can access the earliest prototypes that are posted there. Invitations to each of the forums will be sent out to backers once Kickstarter has finalized the backer list.
ChaosForge's support/preorder page for Jupiter Hell is still live on their website. Grey mentioned that the extra payment options for preorder, beta, and alpha access were for people who wish to support the game.
The most expensive tier, the limited-time Inner Circle is still available for now by popular demand. Some of the original Kickstarter bonuses though, such as posters, are no longer available for the preorder tier.
All funds raised through their support page on their website go towards the stretch goals for the game that were listed on their Kickstarter campaign page. The extra payments they have received so far are helping to get them closer to Jupiter's moon Io.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
