Elona (video game)

Elona is a roguelike game created by Japanese developer Noa. Its name is short for "Eternal League of Nefia".[1] Noa began developing Elona in 2006, and based it on roguelikes such as Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM) and Angband.[2] Noa also has two other role-playing games in development, Shade and Etherwind.[3][4] A reviewer at Insert Credit praised Elona as "very well-made" and compared its character development system to that of ADOM.[5]

Elona
Developer(s)Noa
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows
ReleaseAugust 31, 2007
Genre(s)Roguelike
Mode(s)Single-player

The game is set in a fantasy world called Irva. The player creates a character, with one each of eleven races and ten classes, to battle monsters, practice magic, perform music, or take on various other roles. It is possible to change a value in the configuration and play as special "debug" races, such as a god. Firstly, the player takes control of their character, who survives a disaster at sea in the north of Irva's northwestern continent, Tyris.[6][7] North Tyris contains many towns and dungeons, with randomly generated elements, that the player can explore as they deal with or avoid creatures, townsfolk, other adventurers, and the corrupting effects of a seasonal phenomenon called Etherwind. The player can take quests and make their character believe in one of several gods to enhance their skills and earn various bonuses.[7]

Elona is programmed in the Hot Soup Processor (HSP) procedural language.[8] Noa promoted the game with an Adobe Flash shooter game, Elona Shooter, released in October 2009 on Kongregate.[1][9]

There are various Elona Variants after Noa has abandoned the game's development,[10] such as the Elonaplus (Elona+) by Ano Inu[11] and Omake_Overhaul_modify.[12]

Gameplay

Those experienced with roguelikes (Angband, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Nethack) will expect Elona to revolve around a main dungeon and quest, but Elona instead leaves much of the action up to the player. There are few references to the main dungeon in the Elona world. Instead, gameplay often revolves around completing randomly-generated quests and pilfering dungeons for higher-level loot. Aside from the open-world nature of the game, Elona plays very similarly to other roguelikes with its heavily randomized gameplay elements.

Of note is that players often say that pure wizards are extremely difficult to play due to the relative rarity of spellbooks and the way that the casting system in Elona works. However, Elona+, an improved version of Elona, makes several substantial changes to spellcasting. These changes are regarded as extremely beneficial for players who wish to play as wizards.

Character creation

The playable races in Elona are the Yerles, Eulderna, Fairy, Dwarf, Juere, Elea, Snail, Lich, Goblin, Golem, and Mutant.

Online content

Elona allows players to create custom maps and content and upload them to the server. These maps can be accessed via randomly spawning moongates in town. Caution should be taken when entering moon gates, there may be no way back except via dying, and many moongates contain a wide variety of bizarre ways to kill the player, ranging from cats that kill in a single hit to kamikaze monsters that set off a massive chain reaction explosion when killed.

With the online setting chosen, players can also see other player's death messages (but not encounter them in-game) and the manner in which they die, such as starving to death in a dungeon or being killed by a rock thrown by an old man.

References
  1. Noa. "Elona: Eternal League of Nefia – Official Site". Archived from the original on May 31, 2010. Retrieved May 30, 2010.
  2. Noa (August 12, 2009). Elona (Windows) (1.16 reloaded fix 2 ed.). Level/area: English readme file (readme_ENG.txt in game's top folder).
  3. Noa. "Shade" (in Japanese). Retrieved February 22, 2010. Shade ver0.25; 558 KB; shade.zip; 2000/3/27
  4. Noa. "Etherwind" (in Japanese). Retrieved February 22, 2010.
  5. Zepy (August 2, 2007). "News: Elona". Insert Credit. Archived from the original on October 14, 2009. Retrieved January 16, 2010.
  6. Noa. North Tyris Elona Plus.png [Screenshot] (in Japanese). Retrieved February 22, 2010. (The picture is a map that shows Tyris in the northwest region of Irva.)
  7. Noa (August 12, 2009). Elona (Windows) (1.16 reloaded fix 2 ed.). Level/area: Introductory sequence, North Tyris overworld, "Norne's Travel Guide" pop-ups, and in-game help ('?' key during play).
  8. Noa (October 31, 2009). "掲示板のFAQ、日本語化、質問など" [Bulletin board's FAQ, Japanese conversion, questions, etc.]. Elona forum. Archived from the original on July 24, 2011. Retrieved May 9, 2010. Elona is made in HSP. (ElonaはHSPで作られています。)
  9. Noa (October 27, 2009). "Play Elona Shooter". Kongregate. Archived from the original on May 31, 2010. Retrieved May 30, 2010. Title screen: Elona is a freeware Roguelike RPG I created. Visit my WEB to download it now!
  10. "Ylvania - Elona/Elin Official - Elona". ylvania.org (in Japanese). Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  11. "ElonaPlus Wiki*". wikiwiki.jp (in Japanese). Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  12. "Omake overhaul modify*". jugem.jp (in Japanese). Retrieved 2018-02-13.
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