Pointless

About

Pointless was written in seven days, as part of the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge.  Its home on the web is http://www.zincland.com/7drl/pointless

Setting

You have spent thousands of lives repeating the same life. Dying isn't an end; nor is it the next step in the journey. It is just a restart to the beginning.

But you can't just memorize lottery numbers, however, as each world is unique and different. You instead learned the actual rules of the world. Hundreds of lives were spent struggling to invent novel uses of the materials scattered in this island.

For many turns you were driven by the desire to win. There must be a victory condition, some key, that would unlock you from the wheel and let you move on. Or just end.

You have long since given up on that belief. You have done all that can be done. And yet the prospect of another world still faces you.

Features

What is the point of game features if they do not provide a way to win more efficiently? Surely all things below peak-meta are useless baubles that should be shorn off and discarded as we seek the perfectly formed "gameplay loops" our dopamine receptors crave?

Pointless has no win condition. So, thus, there are no unnecessary features; as there are no necessary ones. Live a long time, or live a short one, you are dead at the end either way, and the world has been re-built afresh.  Does the careful simulation of snow fall and drift during world generation contribute to any core gameplay?  Irrelevant.  There is no core gameplay.

Whether you seek to defeat monsters in the dungeon, farm mushrooms, build a boat to sail, or just see how many toes you can lose; the quest is up to you!

Pointless is at its core a very traditional roguelike.  Players of Nethack will find themselves at home.  But if the excess of keyboard commands is daunting, hit [Esc] and select Popup menus on the Options menu.