Elona is a roguelike game created by Japanese developer Noa. Its name is short for "Eternal League of Nefia". Noa began developing Elona in 2006, and based it on roguelikes such as Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM) and Angband. Noa has also two other role-playing games in development, Shade and Etherwind. A reviewer at Insert Credit praised Elona as "very well-made" and compared its character development system to that of ADOM.
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. The player first takes control of their character, who survives a disaster at sea, in the north of Irva's northwestern continent, Tyris. 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.
Elona is programmed in the Hot Soup Processor (HSP) procedural language. Noa promoted the game with an Adobe Flash shooter game, Elona Shooter, released in October 2009 on Kongregate.
There are various Elona Variants after Noa has abandoned the game's development, such as the Elonaplus (Elona+) by Ano Inut and Omake_Overhaul_modify.
Gameplay
While there is a main dungeon consisting of several difficult boss fights, the gameplay is very open ended and there are almost no references to the main dungeon. The player is free to explore the world and other dungeons at his or her own pace. Gameplay largely consists of performing random quests to earn money and platinum coins while searching dungeons for higher level loot. Like many rogue likes, gameplay is very random; a high level player may be killed in a single critical hit from a low level monster, or a low level player may suddenly encounter a boss monster beyond their ability. NPCs are also heavily randomized; they may suddenly read a cursed scroll, summoning monsters that set the town on fire.
Of particular note is that it is very difficult to play as a full wizard. The player must successfully read spellbooks, which are very hard to obtain due to the randomness of the town vendors, which generates spell stock for a particular spell. Once the player runs out of stock for a spell, he or she is not able to cast it anymore, and mana to cast spells is extremely limited, even with a wizard-friendly race and feats selected. Wizards also have to cast a spell many times to level it up to increase the damage, which can take a very long time due to limited spell stocks and mana, whereas a warrior simply has to complete a few dungeons to find appropriate equipment.
Elona+ Changes to casting:
It is now very much easier to play as a full wizard or priest. Starting spellbooks are common drops in the games first dungeon "Puppy Cave", and can be farmed endlessly until you have a good kit to proceed to other harder dungeons. Similarly, Spell casters start with skills to sustain casting for longer than before. Think of it like Dungeons and Dragons, in which you must "rest/sleep" to regain spells. End game wizards are very viable and have tremendous flexibility with the Ally system that is in place, enabling you to train your own tank mob, and support mobs. With membership in the Wizards Guild, pure casters have great near-godlike power.
Race
The 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.
