I'm wracking my brain looking for this game from my youth (90's-00's): a top down roguelike with an extensive editor for items/monsters/etc
Platform(s): Mac, OS 9 compatible (but maybe made for earlier OS?)
Genre: Top down turn-based Roguelike RPG
Estimated year of release: Probably 90's to early 00's, might have come on a MacAddict Magazine demo disc? Felt like it could be a small throwback project, very 1980's in design
Gameplay: At its core, it was an old school rogue-like (random map generation, permadeath, 8-way turn based movement, equip items, cast spells, fight monsters, etc). There was only one player character. There may have been ranged weapons and spells, but I don't remember how you used them. There was no story to be spoken of; the main goal as far as I played was explore, survive and acquire loot/power. Magical spells and portals could teleport you across the map, there were probably multiple levels. You'd receive gold from defeated enemies and I think you could spend it at the towns? You definitely could get robbed though.
I remember this because when you booted up the game you could opt to customize/add to the monsters/items/etc that you encounter in the game. With extensive dropdowns/menus/textboxes, you could set all their stats and attacks and special abilities (including stealing gold), as well as how those abilities are described in the plain english log (so the "Cheesehog" I invented would "steal your cheese" when it actually stole gold). You also set the sprite the monster/etc used and sounds they made.
This editor aspect was what really caught my fascination with the game, and I had nearly forgotten about this game itself and was misattributing the gameplay/customization to Yipe III until I looked into it and boy that is a different game. I've looked through all the 90's Mac software repositories I could find and haven't turned up anything, I feel like this might have been a very small production or passion/personal project.
Graphics/art style: Simple colorful non-animated sprites in a square grid view of the game world, where the player/items/monsters/towns/etc only take up one square each (but can overlap). Artistically, it felt somewhere between Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Exile and Minotaur: Labyrinths of Crete, leaning toward cartoony. The whole game seemed to take place underground or in a dungeon.
The game view takes up the right (I think?) side of the screen and the rest of the UI is very much a standard Roguelike layout: hero name, health and mana numbers, statistics, equipment, and a log of the action in plain english ("you pick up the sword", "you attack y for 5 damage", etc).
The style and theme of the world was generally generic medieval mythical magical dungeonland, but individual sprites could break the theme for no discernable reason. For instance, there were different types of towns (medieval, western, eastern, etc?) incongruous with the setting that played a stereotypical song when you entered them. Monster sprites ranged from just faces to full bodies; a hobgoblin would just be a face, but a dragon would be fully rendered.
Different types of the same monster/item were indicated by different colorations of the same sprite. Many metal/magical things had this very simple gradient (see the shields/magic mirror in the minotaur vid link). The magical sounds were very similar to Heroes of Might and Magic.
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