Right - I have looked at it a number of times, but even the graphics version is pretty bad. I guess some roguelikes, like Rogue, want the whole level or a ton of the level on the screen at one time, which precludes nice sprites. I don't need anything fancy, but I need my imagination to be sparked at least a little bit. Maybe one day I will try it, but so many games to play…
Yeah, I can't be bothered with ASCII only, these days. I think the last one I played was TomeNET.
I mostly just stick to the games with nice tile graphics like DCSS, ToME, etc.
I recently saw there is a sequel to ADOM coming out, Ultimate ADOM, so I decided it was time to have another try at beating ADOM. Multiple deaths later it still feels like an distant goal. I am making progress but it's quote horrible how you learn things with a death. For eg. I had a great monk going who didn't even need weapons then I saw a cool looking glaive and thought I'd equip it to identify it. But it was auto cursing and every attack you made with it would make you more evil, which I didn't notice, then because I was a champion of neutral god who'd changed alignments he sent an army of spectres after me who could walk through walls and permanently drain strength so I couldn't even move because I was too heavy, etc, etc. It's pretty brutal, that game.
But apparently Ultimate ADOM is aiming for a more casual experience. It'll be going with a DCSS style branching dungeon without a world map, doing away with tedious identification requirements on items, even adding some features like Grafting, which you may have seen in the insanely difficult roguelike IVAN where you can cut off monster limbs and attach them to yourself. An early preview mentioned something about grafting a dragon head to your arm and breathing fire. Also, Mindswap spell where you can permanently swap entire bodies with a monster. It does look like there are very few starting races/classes compared to original ADOM but I think mindswap will make up for that.
But, yeah. I wonder if anyone has been working on replacement graphics for Caves of Qud. There's a few pixels there to work with. 16x16 should be enough for some alright detail, though I'm not sure what they are at the moment.