The Roguelike thread.

I enjoy roguelikes very much. Sometimes I get these "seasons" when I absolutely must play a roguelike that I'm familiar with or start looking for new ones I have not tried.

They are a very likeable form of entertainment - as most of them are free, small, easy to obtain (as in download a meg or two), easy to learn but hard to master, demand very little computing power, run pretty much any operating system,
inherently contain a high amount of randomness (replayability, endlesness), lots of challenge and surprisingly many high quality roguelikes are still under active development. There are also graphical tiles available for almost every roguelike out there for those who are turned off by ASCII only visuals.

Before going any further, I'll throw in a couple of interesting links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike

Guide to Roguelike Games
http://users.tkk.fi/~eye/roguelike/

Temple of the Roguelike
http://www.roguetemple.com/

Roguebasin
http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

The best roguelike I have ever played is Ragnarok (aka Valhalla).
Originally a commercial game, the development was finished in 1995 and it was released as freeware. A magnificent game. Highly recommended. But sadly, it's only for Dos(box) and ceased development.
http://members.chello.at/theodor.lauppert/games/ragnarok.htm
http://roguelikes.sauceforge.net/pub/ragnarok/

Another favourite of mine would be nethack. Everyone knows nethack so....

This time around I decided I'd try to get deeper into the pits of Angband, an old legendary roguelike with years of development behind it, a descendant of Umoria which in turn is a descendant of Moria.

Angband is still actively developed here:
http://rephial.org/

Any angband veterans here?

What do you guys think is the best roguelike out there?

As one of the developers, I'm obligated to say Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

peterb, some more info & promo, please

I'm really dissapointed at the lack of enthusiasm towards roguelikes at a board like this. Cease and repent!

LOL, give it time. I personally like ADOM more than either Nethack or Angband, but all three are fixtures on my computers.

http://www.adom.de/

I also like the DOOM RL.

http://doom.chaosforge.org/

Can't say a lot that hasn't already been said though. One thing I like about them, and what almost had me developing my own RPG using the ASCII char set, is that the devs can focus in on gameplay entirely, and not visuals. The only reason I dropped it is since I prefer party based games over solo-play in general, so I feel the need for graphics.

Now I have some more links to go through when I get off work, if I get off work.

Dungeon Crawl is a fairly "pure" roguelike made by a guy named Linley several years ago. It has a simple interface, and is probably most like a mixture of Nethack, and UltraRogue. Stone Soup is an effort that began a few years ago to bring the abandoned Dungeon Crawl source code into the modern age, and to continue refining and improving the game.

It is a comparatively hard game, but also comparatively unique: there is very little "boilerplate" or time spent doing the same repetitive things every game (as, say, the first few hours of Angband always turn out). Every game is different. I like it a lot.

Zakhary said:

I'm really dissapointed at the lack of enthusiasm towards roguelikes at a board like this. Cease and repent!

Click to expand...

Sorry, you said ASCII.

Good to see you back around though, Zach.

I'm no longer hardcore enough to play roguelikes... but from time to time I play a bit "Endless Depths", a Neverwinter 2 Mod "in the spirit of roguelikes"

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2ModulesEnglish.Detail&id=82

magerette said:

Sorry, you said ASCII.

Good to see you back around though, Zach.

Click to expand...

Yeah I've never actually "left". Just been way too busy with my first real (as in suitable for my level of education) job!

peterb said:

Stone Soup is an effort that began a few years ago to bring the abandoned Dungeon Crawl source code into the modern age, and to continue refining and improving the game.

It is a comparatively hard game, but also comparatively unique: there is very little "boilerplate" or time spent doing the same repetitive things every game (as, say, the first few hours of Angband always turn out). Every game is different. I like it a lot.

Click to expand...

How complex is it.. compared to say - nethack? (and everyone knows that in RL's complexity is a must). How "stable" and "well established" is it? I noticed the version number being something like 0.3xx? Still a beta?

Zakhary said:

How complex is it.. compared to say - nethack? (and everyone knows that in RL's complexity is a must). How "stable" and "well established" is it? I noticed the version number being something like 0.3xx? Still a beta?

Click to expand...

I may be picking nits, but I would argue that what a roguelike needs is richness, not complexity. There are roguelikes that are, comparatively, not very complex, yet are still lots of fun -- Larn is the example that comes to mind. Likewise, anyone who has played Omega will tell you that the additional complexity didn't really improve the game all that much (and, indeed, was partly responsible for it being a buggy mess.)

NetHack occupies a special place in my heart, and in the heart of all roguelike fans. Much of its complexity is great -- the class system, for example, or the praying and sacrificing mechanics. But there's also a lot on Nethack that is complex not because it's fun, but just for historical reasons, and sometimes that complexity hurts the game. The best example of this, for my money, are the Sokoban levels. They were created, more or less, as a joke, but now the joke is not only enshrined in the game, but has become part of the standard "winning" strategy, so if you want to play a solid game of nethack you spend 25 minutes or so in the early midgame playing the exact same game of Sokoban you've played 65 times before. In my personal opinion, that's not good game design.

If I compare Crawl to Nethack I'll only come off as arrogant, so I don't want to do that directly. I still play NetHack, just as I obviously play Crawl. But what I can say is that we consciously try to think about balance and gameplay, and that we actively strive for game mechanics that give the player tactical freedom while imposing strategic constraints. Put simply, the only high-level imperative in Crawl is that there is general pressure to continue going deeper into the dungeon, balanced against greatly increased risks as you do so. But there is no place in the game where the action stops because you absolutely have to do such-and-such a thing while standing on one leg to get this one specific item.

The other general effect is that mobs in Crawl can be deadlier than in some of the other games. Especially early in the game, the tactical challenge is centered around manuevering such that you are only taking on one monster at a time.

Stone Soup 0.3.4 is the current released version, and 0.4 is just about ready to go (and source for it can be obtained via subversion). Despite the low version number, Stone Soup is extremely stable, and I'm quite proud of the work the team has done to make it so. Hundreds of people are playing Crawl Stone Soup on http://crawl.akrasiac.org to completion, which I take to be a good indicator of its stability.

As an aspiring game designer, complexity for complexity's sake is bad. Everything added or removed to the game should directly affect the primary reason for playing it; to have fun. It also offers plenty of opportunities for bad balancing, bugs, and other stupid mistakes.

This is why I leave out starvation and exposure to the elements as dire threats; having to manually eat, sleep, and make shelter generally detracts from the gameplay. I only leave sleep as a quick-heal function; assuming the casters heal everything they can, rest, then heal up if necessary when they have the energy; resuming rest to recover their energy otherwise.

The DS is a great home to rogue-likes these days. I'm butt-deep into Etrian Odyssey these days, and dying frequently - and loving it!

Brilliant though Etrian Odyssey is, it's more of a wizardry-like than a roguelike; the "window" instead of overhead view and the fixed, not random dungeons are key.

Dungeon Hack, which shared an engine with the Eye of the Beholder games, had quite a bit of variety in it's random dungeons. It's a bit obscure, one of the later SSI AD&D-based games. I'm not sure it qualifies as a Rogue-like, but it's still fun.

big_anemone said:

Brilliant though Etrian Odyssey is, it's more of a wizardry-like than a roguelike; the "window" instead of overhead view and the fixed, not random dungeons are key.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I meant to say that the DS is home to most of the good new roguelikes and classic-style RPG's ...

So of all the roguelikes you've played on the DS, which one do you like best? Not that I really need another game - Etrian Odyssey II will keep me busy for months.

Shiren the Wanderer. Hands down.

azraelck said:

Dungeon Hack, which shared an engine with the Eye of the Beholder games, had quite a bit of variety in it's random dungeons. It's a bit obscure, one of the later SSI AD&D-based games. I'm not sure it qualifies as a Rogue-like, but it's still fun.

Click to expand...

Ive been thinking of giving it a whirl once I go through the EOB trilogy. Dungeon hack always interested me even though I dont fancy roguelikes - I think its mostly the graphics (or the lack of).

I tried to play Dungeon Hack on maxed out parameters back in the days (maximal treasure, monsters, Keys/locked Doors and Dungeon-Size) and after around two Thirds of the Game there was no Memory-Space left and the computer couldn't create the needed Items (i.e. Keys for the locked doors) any more

IIRC I started again with minimal treasure and next to no locked Doors/Keys and it worked then.