Cogmind is an indie rogue-like RPG. Take control of a basic robot and explore a living world filled with other bots, battling and upgrading yourself along the way.

Bot life

Looking like a futuristic Dwarf Fortress right down to the ASCII art, Cogmind is a graphically basic RPG with a huge amount of content. Designed to look like an early 1980s computer, the green and black colour scheme and tile colours rules will instantly be familiar to veteran gamers. Players begin as a basic robot with little in the way of combat or movement abilities. Chunks of discarded machines can be added to the bot, offering upgrades to speed or power at the cost of energy consumption or heat efficiency. The world is populated by both neutral and hostile robots which carve out a procedurally generated map as turns progress, offering a huge amount of choice on how to progress. Bots can be built for pure weapon proficiency or for silent take downs via a choice of nearly 1000 parts. The first stumbling block for a game like Cogmind is learning the control scheme and figuring out what everything does, but a huge amount of information makes this a fairly painless experience.

Singular work

Cogmind is a fantastic RPG experience. Created by a single developer, the game shows the years of care and devotion put into it and provides a treat for fans.