Party based roguelikes?

[getter77]

I will bump this on the occasion of my shamefully forgetting perhaps the most fitting one of all to share here given the roots it has in a sense here in the lands of Rephial and Oook---folks should totally encourage the dev to pick back up on his ambitious project...

Peleron's Brilliant Rebirth

http://www.kolumbus.fi/topi_ylinen/peleron/

[Zireael]

The best party-based rougelike is... no-reload Baldur's Gate with the SCS tactical mod. (Well, there's no randomization by default, but the G3: Item Randomizer mod can fix that if you're so inclined. I mainly play for the possibility of "perfect" play, so I avoid it.)

Of course, being a *band'er at heart, I always play solo no-reload BG. On the upside you're ridiculously overleveled for the early parts -- unfortunately you don't gain much power past level 25-30 or so (depending on class).

I would encourage anyone of the *band persuasion to try it!

Seconding this so much.

[bio_hazard]

This is pretty different than the other games mentioned so far, but I just discovered FTL: Faster Than Light a couple of weeks ago and I've been enjoying it. I got it for $5 on the App Store but I'm not sure what normal prices are on Steam or elsewhere. Maybe more a "rogue-lite" than "rogue-like". Battles are real-time but you can pause at any time and as much as you want. Otherwise it's basically an eight-level "dungeon" (i.e. sector in space), with random encounters and some randomness to the outcome of those encounters. It has permadeth and progression of both ship and crew, and has unlocks and achievements that open up new ship designs for example.

The party aspect is a pretty important part of the game- you start with a small crew but usually need to buy or rescue more crew-members to survive at higher levels. Buying crew trades off against other things you need for your mission. There are several races all with their own pluses and minuses, so which ones you want may depend on your strategy. Each character gains experience depending on what it was doing- so it's painful to lose a key crew member. There are even special events or options that can become available if you have someone on your crew of a certain race.

Pretty fun, although so far I've only been competitive on Easy