A new projection, and lots of bugfixes. Have fun!

More bugfixes! Fixed a potential crash when reseting OpenGL (might help people who could not run the game?), some details of the new player shapes, and some other minor stuff.

The player Ratlings now have tails, and lots of other bugfixes! Mostly for non-standard tilings and custom landlists.

Four new player shapes, and some minor bug fixes:
- fixed slaying + discord graphics
- other active orbs now extend the duration of Orb of Recall
- fixed CR5 and MCR not appearing in PTM
- alt unlock condition for CR6
- fixed the floor graphics in dual tilings

This is not really a big update that adds a new land or a major new way to play the game, but more of an "we need to change the minor version number so we won't have to do 13.0ż". There was more work on new games using the HyperRogue's non-Euclidean engine, RogueViz, than HyperRogue itself. The RogueViz Collection is launching on Steam soon. Please wishlist!

https://testx-steam.c5game.com/steamstore/app/2271110/RogueViz_Collection/ style=button

To celebrate the change of the minor version number, two new lands have been added -- however, they are just new Crossroads variants. Crossroads VI is based on Great Walls crossing at 60 degree angles; to give more use out of Orbs of Purity, these crossroads also feature Canyon Hags who can curse you. Master Crossroads is a crossroads that connects only to other crossroads, so if you are in, for example, Crossroads IV but you would prefer to be in Crossroads III, you can try finding the Master Crossroads to switch.

Nevertheless, there have been a lot of small updates and bugfixes since 13.0. For people who have not been following HyperRogue closely, here are some larger features:
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• In classic roguelikes, the highscore list mentioned how you died, so you could look at your highscore and see what tends to kill you. These death reasons were often amusing, and in roguelikes such as ADOM players even used to collect death reasons. This was harder to achieve in HyperRogue, where you usually do not die because of a hit by a single enemy, but rather, you are checkmated by multiple enemies. But this is fixed now! You get a story describing the checkmate, such as \captured by Icewolf and Yeti while blocked by ice wall,\ or \captured by Sand Worm while blocked by sand dune\.
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• New land structures! In addition to the standard separation by "great walls", and classic alternative options such as the "chaos mode", and recently introduced "horodisk" or "ideal Voronoi" modes, we can also play on a land network based on Crossroads II, Crossroads IV, and the new Crossroads VI.
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• Some new tilings and honeycombs to play in, such as the tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb, or a hex-based honeycomb in Nil geometry. Additionally, the shapes of tiles in Goldberg-Coxeter tilings have been improved, and the style can be changed based on several possible rules.
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• HyperRogue lets you do lots of things to change the basic workings of the game. For example, as mentioned above, you can change the geometry and tiling to mostly whatever you want; the game tries it best to work in the given tiling -- by adapting some lands, and disabling those which it thinks would not work well. However, it is still possible that some lands are not correctly balanced, disabled even though you like them, or not disabled when they do not work. Hence, we added a new mode which allow you to customize your game, by picking a list of lands, and also possibly rebalancing their monster and treasure frequency. Additionally, there is a custom mode manager, which lets you see the modes you have played in, and play them again, or save them to files to share with other people!
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• The game has been translated to Chinese!\

And, as usual, lots of other minor improvements and bugfixes, about which you can read in the detailed changelog. Have fun!

Again, it was quite a long time since the last major update (12.0, from 2021). Of course, the work never stopped -- improvements were continuously added to the game, so if you were following HyperRogue closely, you have seen these. For less active followers, here is a summary of the most interesting new stuff.


Many roguelikes ensure their longevity by providing ways many different ways to play the game. This is done both by having many possible inventory-based builds (as reflected in HyperRogue's Orb Strategy Mode), but also by giving a choice of playing multiple kinds of characters, with different strengths and weaknesses; for example, the five different characters in Hydra Slayer, or 27 different species in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, further augmented by specialization and deity choices. However, this kind of specialization often relies on changing the damage produced by various kinds of attacks -- HyperRogue, with its focus on geometry and one-hit combat, was relatively lacking in this area. Could we still have something similar while still maintaining the focus on geometry?

HyperRogue 13.0 includes an option to play the game with another weapon: a crossbow instead of the classic blade! A classic traditional roguelike strategy is: when attacked by an overwhelming force of multiple enemies, move into a corridor, forcing them to attack one by one; HyperRogue combines this idea with hyperbolic geometry, making this strategy work even in open space, due to the geometry of the world itself. But why use your blade to attack them one by one, when you could also have a penetrating attack that kills the whole straight line of enemies in a single shot? As a counterbalance, the crossbow takes several turns to reload.

Rethinking the concept of a straight line was fundamental for the development of non-Euclidean geometries; in HyperRogue, it becomes even more sophisticated, because this geometric concept needs to be interpreted in terms of grid tactics. Some roguelikes let you fire your ranged attack at any point, while in some, they work a bit like a Queen in chess: ranged attacks can be aimed only cardinally or diagonally. And in some, it depends on the type of ranged attack used. So, the crossbow could actually be a few different weapons. A crossbow which shoots only in "bull lines" is less universal than one that can shoot along any tile-based approximation of a hyperbolic straight line, but it takes less time to reload. There is also a third option, but we will just let you see for yourself.


Of course, while the character in HyperRogue does not change that much, neither by player's customization nor by gaining in-world experience, HyperRogue focuses on changing the world itself, or the rules of the game. There is not much new in terms of whole new modes -- unless we count new options for the real-time multiplayer mode of HyperRogue, such as PvP or split screen or using dual focus projections -- but one of the things that can be changed is the geometry of the world... or, at least, the tiling.
Probably the most popular mathematical discovery of 2023 was the discovery of hat[arxiv.org] and Spectre[arxiv.org] tiles, which can tile the whole Euclidean plane by themselves, but only in non-periodic ways. Soon after this discovery, this tiling became available in HyperRogue.

While the rules of HyperRogue are specially designed for hyperbolic geometry, you can e.g. play the Minefield land in the Hat/Spectre tiling, to get a more original variation on Minesweeper. There are more options to customize the geometry of the world -- for example, the format to specify arbitrary periodic or some horocycle-based 2D tilings[github.com] has been extended, three-dimensional geometries no longer include only regular hyperbolic and spherical honeycombs but their cells can be subdivided, and there is an option to play only on a finite portion of an infinite geometry. These are likely less balanced, but still cool for experimentation or visualization.

If you do not want to change the geometry of the world, you can still change how it is structured... New options shown in the images above replace the usual HyperRogue land structure (lands separated mostly by hyperbolic straight lines) with alternative ones. In one, every land is bounded by a horocycle (a shape existing only in non-Euclidean geometry that looks a bit like a circle but is actually infinite)...

In another, the hyperbolic plane is subdivided into lands like in a Voronoi tessellation -- some points are chosen as centers, every tile gets assigned to a land depending on which center is closest to it -- but where the centers are very rare... so rare that they are infinitely away[arxiv.org].


HyperRogue is not only about great roguelike gameplay, but also about non-Euclidean visualization! Since 2019, we could play in Thurston geometries; however, roguelikes were designed to be played in 2D, and most people find them less fun when you can move in three dimensions. Also since 2019 we could play the usual 2D game of HyperRogue, but view it in full 3D. However, this 3D view was restricted to use the 3D version of that 2D geometry: hyperbolic plane in three-dimensional hyperbolic space, sphere in three-dimensional spherical space, etc. Now, the HyperRogue engine features a large list of embeddings. Unfortunately, for the standard "hyperbolic soccerball tiling" that HyperRogue plays best in, only 3-dimensional hyperbolic space, and the "product space" where the third dimension is added in the Euclidean way, works. However, a sphere can be embedded in 3D Euclidean and hyperbolic geometry, and for the Euclidean plane, especially when wrapped in flat torus, there are lots of options -- including all Thurston geometries, and more! These are explored in this video.

Another new thing is an option to create a world with portals between different geometries; we have shown this in this video with over 1M views, and the HyperRogue engine can be used to create spaces likes this, by placing bricks in different geometries like in Minecraft, connecting them with portals, and exploring them in VR. There is no real gameplay in these worlds, but hopefully we inspire other game developers to try new stuff!

On top of that, there was of course a large number of minor bugfixes and improvements. To get updates on HyperRogue and our other projects faster, join the HyperRogue discord server[discord.gg]. Also wishlist RogueViz Collection for a collection of smaller non-Euclidean games. Have fun, and good luck!

Quite a long time since the last update! Version 12.0 fixes this. It includes two new lands, VR support, and has many other feature and improvements!

Is HyperRogue the only game where tessellations of non-Euclidean spaces play a major role? Well, no -- while the wonders of hyperbolic tessellations are rarely used, spherical tessellations can be found in any game using dice! When you roll a die and see how the numbers change, interesting things happen as a result of the difference in the geometries of the die and the surface. Many HyperRogue players are dice collectors. Why not have both?

Meet the sentient dice in the Dice Reserve! They like to be in the position where the highest number is on top, but some bad guys rolled some of them into other positions. Will you help them?

Dice Reserve can be found when you have at least 90 (150 in Orb Strategy Mode) treasure.

Every land in HyperRogue comes with a new Orb -- a sphere of beneficial magical power. The Cursed Canyon is a land full of Curses. Curses are similar to Orbs, but their powers are mostly negative. You may get weaker, slower, powerless, or afraid of water. You get cursed by moving over curses, or when attacked by a Canyon Hag. You are also pursued by the Shadow, already known from the Graveyard. Will you be able to survive and profit despite all the debuffs and nasty enemies?

Cursed Canyon can be found when you have at least 36 (90 in Orb Strategy Mode) Elixirs of Life, Pirate Treasures, Chrysoberyls, Tiger's Eyes, or Powerstones.

When HyperRogue was first released, it had only the traditional-style roguelike "graphics": # for walls, letters for monsters, dots for empty spaces. These visuals were truly amazing: easy to read, and let your imagination run wild, better than any graphics. But art is needed to, to feed the imagination. How would a non-Euclidean space really look? HyperRogue took a rather surprising path, starting with vector-based 2D graphics, then 3D effects, experiments with full 3D geometries, ultimately becoming a rather universal engine for non-Euclidean visualization.

Now, the RogueViz engine supports Virtual Reality (SteamVR)! This brings a new twist to HyperRogue, as well as the non-Euclidean falling block game Bringris and the RogueViz demos. Turn HyperRogue's FPP mode into the immersive experience. There are many interesting choices when designing non-Euclidean VR visualizations. The geometry works differently in a non-Euclidean space, so some obvious things in Euclidean visualizations (including tons of so-called "non-Euclidean" videos which have nothing to do with non-Euclidean geometry) are, well, no longer obvious. Should the relative headset movements be translated exactly to the virtual space? If so, if you move to another place in VR and return to where you started, you are probably NOT in the place where you started in the real world. And vice versa. This is because the geometry works differently! How should the binocular vision work? Should we just render the inner view from two points? If so, distances are not perceived correctly, and in the recently introduced even weirder geometries this does not even work, so we might want to use other methods. The engine lets you configure various details, such as the above, the length of the absolute unit (i.e. the scale of the non-Euclidean space), and so on. Hyperbolic crochets are much better in real life than any images or videos can show -- but you can get some of the fun by playing HyperRogue on the Hypersian Rug in VR. The 3D models are still not great (roguelike players do not need this stuff), but if you want to play FPP mode with monsters shown as letters, or view the classic Poincaré disk or any other 2D or 3D model in VR, this works too, of course!

There is more!
There have been also lots of minor bugfixes and improvements. For people who want to fully explore the world of HyperRogue but are less familiar with roguelikes, there is a "casual" mode which lets you save the game after collecting an Orb of Safety and load it many times. For even less challenge, there is the cheat mode and puzzle/exploration mode as usual.

Join the HyperRogue Discord, follow ZenoRogue on Twitter, and have fun!

While we have worked a lot on HyperRogue recently, we concentrated mostly on experimental features; for people interested in the classic, core non-Euclidean puzzle-roguelike gameplay, the most interesting thing is probably the lands, and there have been no new lands for some time. Version 11.3 includes three new lands, and has many other feature and improvements!

See the blogpost[zenorogue.blogspot.com] for more details.

The latest version of HyperRogue let us play three-dimensional non-Euclidean worlds. However, there are more interesting geometries possible in three dimensions!

See the blog post: https://zenorogue.blogspot.com/2019/09/hyperrogue-112-thurston-geometries-free.html