[HN Gopher] HyperRogue - A non-Euclidean roguelike
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HyperRogue - A non-Euclidean roguelike
Author : stared
Score : 128 points
Date : 2025-11-02 11:40 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (roguetemple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (roguetemple.com)
| versteegen wrote:
| HyperRogue is specifically hyperbolic (and very cool! See also
| RogueVis), but of course there are a number of non-Euclidean
| roguelikes. One of my favourites is Smart Kobold [1], which
| really amazed me at the time, particularly as it was made in just
| 7 days for the 7DRL! It's so called because pathing through a
| non-Euclidean map is very difficult for a human but trivial for a
| computer or a kobold. The map looks 2D, but is made out of small
| pieces that are (seamlessly) joined together at their seams to
| connect in unexpected ways. Jeff Lait also used the code for
| other 7DRLs (I honestly wouldn't know which is best to recommend)
| [2]
|
| [1] http://www.zincland.com/7drl/kobold/
|
| [2] http://www.zincland.com/
| integralid wrote:
| If I understand you correctly, the game geometry is actually
| euclidean but world contains many seamless portals?
|
| I think geometry being euclidean or not is specifically about
| parallel lines, and the term "non-euclidean" is sightly misused
| for other kinds of spatial gimmicks. At least that's what I
| learned after watching several ZenoRogue videos (HyperRogue
| channel) :)
| zenorogue wrote:
| Yeah, Jeff calls it "non-Cartesian". He changes the topology
| but the geometry is Euclidean. There are also lots of
| roguelikes doing other experiments with topology, tilings,
| dimensions (Verdagon 7DRLs, geometry episode of Roguelike
| Radio, etc.)
| jerf wrote:
| If your geometry has portals, the parallel line postulate
| will no longer hold. If your portals can have different
| angles between the entrance and the exit you can straight up
| cross "parallel" lines, and even if you require them to be
| oriented at the same angle you'll lose "when given a line and
| a point exactly one parallel line can be drawn".
|
| Euclidean geometry is an extremely precise geometry, and
| there is nothing wrong with calling _any_ deviation from it
| "non-Euclidean". Since Euclidean geometry is a fairly
| specific point in geometry-space, the only real objection is
| that calling something "non-Euclidean" doesn't tell you much
| about what it _is_ , but Euclidean geometry isn't a bad
| choice for a "default" geometry and at least it tells you
| it's not that. There is no requirement for it to be
| continuously curved in some spherical or hyperbolic manner to
| be "non-Euclidean". Even just permitting a single portal into
| an otherwise Euclidean geometry would utterly shred Euclid's
| Elements from top to bottom.
|
| By my examination of the original postulates, not only would
| portals wreck the parallel line postulate, it in fact ruins 4
| out of 5 of them, leaving only that a line can be
| continuously extended (and that line can still self-
| intersect, which may in fact violate the definition of a
| "line" and mean all 5 axioms are busted if you really dug
| in). It means it is no longer possible to draw a line between
| any two points (portals can shadow portions of the space such
| that some points are not connectible), cicles lose a lot of
| their properties that we rely on (imagine the unit circle,
| and a portal starting x = .5 and going straight up... they're
| no longer necessarily continuous), right angles may not be
| equal to each other any more (portals can change the apparent
| angles, or give two interpretations rather than one), and of
| course the parallel line doesn't hold. Putting portals into a
| geometry fairly comprehensively makes it non-Euclidean.
| zenorogue wrote:
| No, you are confusing geometry and topology here. Topology
| does not change when you stretch the space but changes when
| you cut/glue it. Geometry does not change when you cut/glue
| but changes when you stretch. So portals change the
| topology but the geometry is Euclidean (you get a Euclidean
| manifold). This are the meanings used by mathematicians
| working in these areas.
|
| (The original meaning is of course about breaking 5th
| postulate while all the others hold, showing that it was
| possible was a celebrated result in mathematics, while it
| is trivial to break the postulates in some arbitrary way.)
| oofbey wrote:
| By that logic, the game Portal is non-Euclidean. Which
| might be true in a certain interpretation. But nobody looks
| at portal and thinks it's anything but a normal 3D world
| with portals.
|
| Here the geometry is very unusual. But using the existence
| of portals to define that seems insincere.
| Mond_ wrote:
| > It means it is no longer possible to draw a line between
| any two points (portals can shadow portions of the space
| such that some points are not connectible
|
| This feels a bit like saying that putting a wall in a room
| makes it non-euclidean since there's now a barrier in the
| way.
|
| I know where you're coming from, but this is confusing
| geometry and topology. (Curvature vs. how the space is
| connected.)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > This feels a bit like saying that putting a wall in a
| room makes it non-euclidean since there's now a barrier
| in the way.
|
| Maybe that's what H. P. Lovecraft meant about non-
| Euclidean architecture in R'lyeh. ;D
|
| (It probably isn't - the quote from _The Call of Cthulhu_
| says "the _geometry_ of the dream-place he saw was
| abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of
| spheres [...] ".)
| zahlman wrote:
| Considered in three dimensions, I would guess that _most_
| Rogue-likes (in a narrow, classical sense) are non-
| Euclidean (in that broad sense): the down stairs on one
| level don 't necessarily line up with the up stairs on the
| next.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| At least in Angband, the game explicitly tells you that
| you pass through a maze of staircases. The level you just
| left still notionally exists, but you can never find it
| again.
|
| (This is also true of the recall effect, for no reason
| stated by the ingame text. But then again, the ingame
| text never claims anything other than that you'll recall
| to a particular depth, as opposed to a particular place.)
| jhbadger wrote:
| Wouldn't any geometry that violates any of Euclid's five
| postulates be non-Euclidean? Yes, the parallel lines one is
| the most famous, but surely a geometry that violates any of
| the other four would be too.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| How would you violate one of the other four?
|
| Postulate 1 defines what a line is.
|
| Postulate 2 defines what a direction is.
|
| Postulate 3 defines what a circle is.
|
| Postulate 4, in modern terms, doesn't say anything at all.
| (We aren't even sure why the Greeks felt it was necessary
| to state it!)
| mouse_ wrote:
| Jeff Lait is a major source of inspiration to me. I will one
| day ascend with the black heart of Beazl'bub!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > It's so called because pathing through a non-Euclidean map is
| very difficult for a human but trivial for a computer or a
| kobold.
|
| That sounds like an artifact of the display. Pathing through a
| non-Euclidean map is, for example, a major game mechanic of
| Super Mario Galaxy; it's not difficult at all.
| MoltenMan wrote:
| Super Mario Galaxy is not non- euclidean; it's just a regular
| 3D projection onto a 2D screen. The spheres you travel on are
| technically non-euclidean if you consider the surface in a
| vacuum, but you aren't playing on the surface, you're playing
| in a full 3D space.
|
| Additionally, 2D sphere surfaces are very understandable
| because they can actually exist in our 3D world and we're
| used to them; hyperrogue has a hyperbolic non-euclidean 2D
| geometry which is impossible in real life, much more
| confusing, and impossible to display with no confusion. I
| don't know what Smart Kobold is, but I presume it's also not
| just a regular 3D game like Super Mario Galaxy.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > but you aren't playing on the surface, you're playing in
| a full 3D space.
|
| That is not true in any meaningful sense. You can jump. But
| you can't move through the 3D space. You're stuck to the
| surface of the closest sphere. All of your pathfinding
| problems are non-Euclidean pathfinding problems.
|
| If you were a sprite embedded within the surface, moving
| from sphere to sphere by using pipes, that would add
| nothing to the difficulty of pathing around the sphere.
| MoltenMan wrote:
| Good point, the movement is more isomorphic with a fully
| spherical 2D geometry game than I was thinking. But I
| still wouldn't say it qualifies as non-euclidean in the
| same sense as hyperrogue at all, given that you aren't
| fully stuck on a sphere (and they don't give any way to
| change the view to a top down 2D spherical geometry view;
| because it's actually just a regular 3D game).
|
| More relevantly to your original comment, it is always
| going to be far easier to understand 2D spherical
| geometry (possible to create in 3 dimensions, we see it
| every day) than 2D hyperbolic geometry (not possible to
| create in 3 dimensions, completely foreign to us), so I
| don't think it is a 'display' issue at all.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I played this on android a couple of years ago but eventually
| uninstalled it. Now it appears to be missing from the Play store?
| zenorogue wrote:
| Google Play is not very friendly to small developers who do not
| want to share their home address (not their fault, it is some
| recently introduced EU law), but the Android version can be
| downloaded from itch.io
| RunningDroid wrote:
| It's also available in the official F-Droid repo:
| https://f-droid.org/packages/com.roguetemple.hyperroid
| card_zero wrote:
| > some recently introduced EU law
|
| Is it?
| mamonoleechi wrote:
| you can get it here:
| https://f-droid.org/packages/com.roguetemple.hyperroid/
| iberator wrote:
| Nah. It's ultra boring in comparison to nethack, pathos or more
| complex games like revengate(!) or greedy cave.
|
| My listing of similar games:
|
| - Grim Omens 3/5 - Revengate 4/5 - Dungeon Crawl Soup (on pc) 4/5
| - The greedy cave 5/5 - Pathos 4/5
| nrjames wrote:
| Brogue (Community Edition) also is awesome!
|
| https://github.com/tmewett/BrogueCE
| philsnow wrote:
| Nethavk is much much too baroque, a confusion of ideas and
| one-turn unavoidable deaths (well, avoidable if you know the
| secret handshake)[0]. It's like a cupcake recipe that has 40
| ingredients and is dripping with extra stuff on top.
|
| Brogue, on the other hand, is perfectly simple but perfectly
| well-executed, a five-ingredient recipe that lets every
| ingredient shine.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| ahhh, rainy sunday and i get a recommendation for abstract
| indie games, today is going to be a good day...
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| ...Project Silverfish[0] is really entertaining so far...
|
| [0]https://store.steampowered.com/app/2941710/Project_Silverf
| is...
| integralid wrote:
| >ultra boring
|
| Of course, this is just your opinion, presented as an objective
| fact.
|
| HyperRogue is one of the few roguelikes that I got sucked into.
| In comparison, I never "got" DCSS and despite several tries I
| always got bored immediately.
| zokier wrote:
| I like hyperrogue but I think it is arguable that it is not
| very good as a roguelike; I like it more as a puzzle game.
| The thing is that in hyperrogue each of the worlds is almost
| entirely self-contained, and the choices you make in one
| world, or the order you go through the worlds, do not really
| impact the overall run in any major way. So it lacks the
| combinatorial explosion of possibilities that many good
| roguelikes (incl nethack) have.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Everybody understands that it's an opinion, it's a social
| convention, no need to spell it out. Just like people saying
| "broccoli are bad" doesn't need to be subtitled with "it's a
| matter of taste" or this dress looks ugly implies that it's a
| subjective take on aesthetics.
| lock1 wrote:
| Like other sibling comment said, I think it's just your
| personal opinion. I don't think The Greedy Cave is that complex
| or belong to traditional roguelike category, more like MMO's
| grindy number game with some microtransaction.
| ytrt54e wrote:
| The curse of Hacker News broke the website
| zukzuk wrote:
| AppStore says it's not available in Canada for some reason.
| zenorogue wrote:
| AppStore only accepts games compiled in a new version of XCode,
| and I have only a very old Mac on which it does not seem
| possible to install such a new version.
| tomhow wrote:
| Previously:
|
| _How to create a game using hyperbolic geometry? (2020)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36448270 - June 2023 (44
| comments)
|
| _HyperRogue: A puzzle roguelike in a non-Euclidean world_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26073813 - Feb 2021 (34
| comments)
|
| _HyperRogue - a non-Euclidean roguelike_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17432974 - June 2018 (38
| comments)
|
| _HyperRogue - A non-Euclidean roguelike_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9744353 - June 2015 (33
| comments)
| trinsic2 wrote:
| I like the concept, but from the video it feels a bit
| claustrophobic.
| egeres wrote:
| Imagine this inside miegakure (https://miegakure.com/)
| MoltenMan wrote:
| Actually highly recommend this game. I got a lot of fun out of it
| when I discovered it a few years back, and it especially works
| well as an airplane time waster game. I'm not generally one for
| roguelikes but this one really is incredibly fun.
|
| You can buy it on steam too if you want to support the developer!
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