After almost 10 years, the rat skull will finally return in Shattered Pixel Dungeon v2.4.0 as one of the game's new trinkets! It was formerly a quest item that I removed way back in v0.2.1. Now the skull will passively boost the chance for you to encounter rare exotic enemies like albino rats or crystal mimics. This means a bit more challenge, but also more rare loot!
I really love this game. I just picked it up about a year ago, and got sucked in hard.
I love a lot of the detail to little things: scrolls can burn, potions can shatter, the rat king, pulling piranha out of water kills them, skeletons can't bleed - stuff like that goes a long way in my books. It's all stuff I found out by mucking around and playing.
It's also a tough game. I rarely win, but I find playing it very relaxing despite the fact you die once and you're hooped. It's like building sand castles or something - yeah it might not last, but it's fun seeing what you can do and how far you get.
I also like that it's turn based as everything you do is a small decision and small decision can influence large ones.
All that said, I swear this game is out to get me sometimes. I had 3 blessed anks, fell in a pitfall trap (died), got 360 no scoped by an evil eye immediately after (died) jumped by a Ripper (died) and then fell victim to another trap when my levitation potion ran out...on level 24...
Thanks for the kind words! I don't deserve all the credit here though, a bunch of the little details you mention were in the game back when it was Pixel Dungeon, being made by Watabou.
Yes, it’s open source and there are a couple of forks, but also forks of ShPD etc.
ShPD is nearly ten years old, so quite a few things changed over time. Boss fights are different, alchemy got extended a lot and other things changed, extended or added. After ShPD was forked, the original Pixel Dungeon introduced a duration system where upgraded weapons and armor degrade and become +0 again at some point if not repaired.
I mostly know ShPD because it is/was the only PD fork on F-Droid. Originially I played PD a few times, but I had a hard time, and then tried ShPD, where it was easier for me to progress … I still died quickly, but it was fun.
Yep! There's shattered pixel dungeon, regular pixel dungeon, etc. I seem to recall something like "sprouted" pixel dungeon? I can't remember, this is all years and years ago. I'm very surprised to see this community on Lemmy! I've been playing these games for nearly a decade (particularly shattered pixel dungeon), and it's really cool to see a community still going strong.