Caves of Qud wins the Hugo Award for Best Game or Interactive Work

Hey hey people

https://invidious.reallyaweso.me/watch?v=o_PBfLbd3zw

Hello brother of the merchant's guild

Wooo. Really glad it won and mad props to Bucklew (who is a great bsky follow)

And ignoring the long chain from someone who never even looked at the grpahics of this or old windows games:

Honestly? Qud might be one of the best Steam Deck experiences out there. No, I don't know how that happened either. But the UI and graphics scale perfectly (after a lot of work by the devs) and the game is shockingly gamepad friendly. And with it being one of the weirdest AND most approachable roguelikes out there (come at me Berlin), it maps perfectly towards quick sessions.

I love QUD and I have never in my wildest dreams thought to try to play it on the steam deck. I'll have to give it a go sometime
- FWIW I've played it almost entirely on the Steam Deck it works perfectly well. They did a great job.

:D

Live and Drink

Well deserved!

It's one of the few games where I truly felt I was in an alien/different (sci-fi) world.

Well deserved. Live and drink, friend.

Hey hey people, COQ here

Seth's Comment section on this vid specifically is an absolute cesspool
- As was his video itself
- What video are you referring to? All I could find searching on YouTube was a single stream with comments disabled followed by pages of videos complaining about how "woke" the awards are.

I like the game but I never finished it. I got pretty far when setting it to checkpoint mode, but lost interest near the end.

I don't really understand the game in detail so I don't know all the good builds. Extra legs and guns seemed strong.

The graphics are too primitive for me, which is a shame. I don't consider myself a graphics snob, but this looks like something that came out 35 years ago.

What do you expect a roguelike (in the most classical sense) to look like??? It's like complaining about all the numbers in spreadsheets.
Yeah I feel the same way. I grew up with 8 bit graphics and every time I pick up my steam deck I'm amazed at how things look today, how far we've come. I have no desire to go back to the way things were. I know this means I may miss out on some cool experiences, but there's so much other stuff to play and so little time. It's great that people enjoy the retro look but it's not for me.
- People are sensitive about this. I didn't think our opinions were controversial but you got a downvote within a few minutes of leaving your comment. That was fast.
  We're not even criticizing it, just saying it's not for us. I was born in 85 and used computers in the computer lab at school in the 90s that were too old to even have mice, they were keyboard only. We played educational games on them like Oregon Trail and lots of math games. These graphics remind me of those. I'm just not interested in going back that far.
okay i hadn't played it yet. you had me worried it was

kinda lookin bullshit. i'm not a graphics snob but i can't go back to that. here's caves of qud

it's fucking gorgeous if you ask me, but i've just seen screenshots and art is subjective
- Yeah, there's a definite Commodore 64 aesthetic to it, but it feels like every pixel is meaningful. It's all just detailed enough to be able to tell what's going on.
- It also have great effects for explosions and, iirc, mind attacks thingy.
- I also think it's a nice-looking game. The graphics help convey the setting really well, IMO. I really enjoyed it.
- For me, "primitive" is not the main problem (though I'm getting a bit sick of pixel art), it's more blue-green hue is off-putting. It might match the theme of an alien planet, but it lokks like it would give me headache or something.
- Well Rogue did come out 45 years ago. 35 years ago was around the end of the NES/start of SNES generation.
- First screen is much more readable at a glance.
The game was in development from 2007 to December 2024 so not that far off...
It's surprising how quick you can get used to the graphics with the amazing world building. I wasn't sure at first, but now I love the visual style.
Obviously not for everyone though.
It's a traditional roguelike with tiles...
Honestly yeah, graphics snob. I agree that if you played it for a few hours you'd get used to it.
this looks like something that came out 35 years ago.
Super Mario World came out 35 years ago. There's no excuse for a game to look this primitive in 2025.
- The "excuse" is it is appealing to some and not you, which is fine. I personality love the art style (it's what got me interested in Qud in the first place).
- Not all games are about graphics, and this looks completely serviceable to me. I understand struggling with ASCII roguelike interfaces (never really got the hang of it myself), but everything here looks easily identifiable.
- In my opinion Story and experience has a greater impact than graphics.
Same, I could play it if it was like nes pixel art even. But this looks like it was developed on windows 95 when only ascii art was available.
And the constant text updating you on what is around you bcz the graphics are so primitive.
Based on the description I thought it would be really interesting. But after watching a YouTube video, I was like, eehhhhh, not for me.
- developed on windows 95 when only ascii art was available
  There was never such a time...
- You know the Hugo is usually given to authors of books?