GearHead

GearHead is a series of free Science Fiction roguelikes that focus on Humongous Mecha while still retaining some traditional Dungeon Crawling elements.

Atypically for roguelikes, GearHead has plenty of important NPCs and a developed Backstory about the power struggles between totalitarian empires and opportunistic corporations. The game world is also remarkably open - the first game features several cities with factions to join and arena combatants to challenge. The games also utilise random plot generation for quests and main storyline alike - The Villain may be a criminal overlord in one game, and a totalitarian government's agent in the next.

The first game, GearHead, focuses on the player creating a career in East Asia, near the fictional city of Snake Lake. The second game, currently under development, takes place in space instead.

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 * Absurdly Spacious Sewer: There's albino alligators in the sewers beneath Snake Lake.
 * After the End: The Age of Superpowers ended in the Night of Fire, making most of the Earth uninhabitable. The Federated Territories are the largest chunk of inhabitable land in the world.
 * Advanced Ancient Acropolis: The Ziggurat. Also a Temple of Doom.
 * The Antagonist: Varies from game to game, but is always fairly dangerous. Typically somehow connected with Aegis Overlord.
 * Beam Spam: Averted. While energy weapons recharge automatically, overuse will cause them to heat up one's mecha.
 * BFG: Omnipresent in the GearHead universe. Mechas commonly have big weapons, and some people carry personal scale weapons designed for taking out mechas.
 * Charles Atlas Superpower: It's possible to build a Bare-Fisted Monk who can tear mecha apart.
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: Elisha Kettel, though she's not the worst by any means.
 * Critical Existence Failure: Averted. You can lose subsystems without dying.
 * Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Spiritual characters tend to feel this way, though there is an in-game philosophy that allows you to reconcile spirituality with the loss of your humanity. If you haven't taken the trait, however, a spiritual character will suffer increased problems from cyberware rejection.
 * Designer Babies: In the backstory, the Idealists.
 * Duct Tape for Everything: No matter how badly one's mecha is damaged, it can be fixed with enough duct tape.
 * The Empire: Aegis Overlord. They are among the antagonists of the first game.
 * Experience Points: Somewhat atypically, experience can be obtained by using non-combat skills as well. Lockpicking and mecha repairing grant large amounts of experience, as do prayer and scientific experiments.
 * The Federation: The Federated Territories.
 * Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: The source of a lot of the monsters floating around the Territories.
 * Humongous Mecha: It is a mecha fighting game.
 * Impossibly Graceful Giant: Any mech with MV 0 is literally as agile as a human.
 * Jack of All Stats: Averted - a player who attempts to learn too many different skills will have to pay extra experience for training any of them, slowing their advancement.
 * Level Scaling: Almost all encounters' difficulty is scaled according to the player's reputation. Loser players will not typically get to even try fighting strong bad guys.
 * Lost Superweapon: A recurring element in the first game.
 * Lost Technology: All over the place. About half of it is safe to use, if you're lucky.
 * Macross Missile Massacre: Swarm missiles.
 * Magic Versus Science: Spirituality versus Pragmatism. This personality axis determines whether you understand the world through spirituality, mysticism and religion, or through science and reason.
 * Magnetic Weapon: Railguns and Gauss guns are both commonplace in GearHead universe.
 * Mega Corp: Kettel Industries, BioCorp, and RegEx from the first game. More in the second.
 * Military Mashup Machine: A possible result of some tinkering with mecha designs.
 * Mundane Utility: Riding a humongous death tank is a faster way to travel than walking.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast:
 * One-Hit Kill: Very common - several high-end weapons can total a mecha in one shot. This is also probably the reason why neither of the games enforces Final Death.
 * Recycled in Space: GearHead 2's description in Ubuntu's package repository puts it this way:


 * Spirituality is Magic: Meditating at shrines can develop your experience and occasionally give you statistical boosts, especially in the Shrine Tour.
 * Science Fantasy: Some of the elements in the first game shade into this.
 * Shrines have magical effects.
 * Clan Ironwind has a prophecy about an outlander who will join the clan and lead it to greatness.
 * Sidequest: Some of these are precreated, others are generated based on the current situation. For example, citizens will offer mecha combat missions if they are under attack by a raider faction.
 * Splash Damage: Explosive weapons, naturally, can cause this. In a slightly different variation, weapons with the HYPER-flag deal the damage inflicted to the entire mecha, not just the targeted subsystem.
 * Transhuman: The Extropian philosophy is about abandoning one's humanity and upgrading with cybernetic implants.
 * Travel Cool:
 * Base on Wheels: Any walking or rolling mecha.
 * Cool Airship: Any skimming mecha.
 * Cool Plane: Any flying mecha.
 * Cool Starship: In GearHead 2, some mecha are spaceworthy.
 * Wrench Wench: Hyo Lee, and you can also make your own character this.
 * Wretched Hive: Snake Lake Waterfront.
 * Wrench Wench: Hyo Lee, and you can also make your own character this.
 * Wretched Hive: Snake Lake Waterfront.