About the game

Boohu is a roguelike designed for a short session, the kind you can finish during a coffee break. Every year the elders of your village send someone to the Underground to collect medicinal simella plants. This year it is your turn, and the way back is a magical monolith somewhere deep down. Between you and it there are monsters and a lot of dark corridors.

The game is built around a few ideas. There are no experience points: killing things does not make you stronger, so a fight is a cost that you pay only when it is worth it. Your character changes through the aptitudes it learns and the few items that it finds: a better weapon or armour, a shield, potions and rods with a limited number of charges. Terrain matters (dense foliage and doors block the line of sight, and a corridor lets you meet monsters one at a time), and the monsters have different abilities that you have to learn about and answer with the right tool.

The author lists Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and Brogue among his influences. The result is a game with simple commands, fast turns and a complete adventure in a short time, shown with tiles (or plain letters) and a text description for everything you examine.

Playing it here

Click Play and the game loads in the page (about 5 MB, downloaded only when you press the button). In the first menu press P to play, then Enter to get past the introduction screens. The game keeps its saves in this browser: S saves and quits, and the next time you press P the game continues. Clearing the site data erases it. The page makes no requests outside this site. A keyboard is the best way to play; the mouse also works for walking and examining.

The "Statistics" button in the corner shows the summary of your run (what the

key writes in the original game).

Controls

Key	Action
Arrows, hjklyubn or numpad	move and attack
. or 5	wait a turn
r	rest until you are well again
o	explore automatically
G	travel to the nearest stairs
> or D	go down the stairs
x	examine
e or g	equip or pick up
q or d	drink a potion
t or f	throw an item
v or z	use a rod
i	inventory summary
% or C	character and quest information
m	previous messages
?	help
S	save and quit
Q	quit without saving

Tips

Do not fight everything. With no experience, running away is often the best play. Doors and corridors help.

Check the side panel. It shows your equipment, your health and magic points and the number of simellas you carry.

Use the examine key on unknown monsters. The description tells what they do.

Try your rods in a safe moment. Knowing what each one does is half of the game.

FAQ

Is it hard? Yes. A run is short, and the first ones usually end quickly; reading the descriptions helps.

Can I choose a class? No. Everyone starts the same and changes through the aptitudes and items that appear in the run.

Does it work on a phone? Not well: it is built for a keyboard.

Is the game finished? The version here is a development version of 0.14 from the author's repository.

Credits and licence

Boohu was made by Yon (anaseto) and is free software under the ISC licence. The tiles come with the game; the letters in them were drawn from the Source Code Pro font (Adobe, SIL Open Font License 1.1). A part of the path-finding code derives from go-astar by Michael Charles Alexander (MIT). The licence texts, including the Go language licence, are in the licence file linked from this page. We compile the game from the author's source, with no changes, and host that source next to the game.