Welcome, adventurer. I can see by your well-developed thumb muscles and unkempt look that you have vanquished many a virtual foe. You grow tired of the softness of modern-day video games, the comforts of save points, difficulty settings, and yea, even the most beautiful graphics dispaly. You hunger for more! Well, adventurer, look no further!
Alright, enough of that business. If you're anything like me, you get kind of tired of new, big budget games every now and then. Not that new games aren't great - they are - but I often feel a yearning for something... different. There are lots of ways to satisfy my gaming nostalgia; I can break out my old consoles, fire up DOSBox (which just released a new version!), or even play some classics on the Wii's Virtual Console or the XBLA. Sometimes, none of those satisfy my need for an infuriatingly hard, complex game that will kick my ass but leave me wanting to play more. That's when I turn to roguelikes.
It all started back in 1980 with Rogue. Well, the genre gets its name from Rogue, though some earlier games had features it would borrow, such as Adventure and Dungeon in the mid-70s. In those days, many all-text adventures abounded in the relatively new world of video games. Rogue was one of the first to abandon lengthy text descriptions in favor of drawing out the dungeon before in you ASCII, representing items, characters, and dungeon features with character symbols. The game, played on UNIX systems, became very popular. It was unlike many previous fantasy-adventure games in several aspects, making use of randomly-generated levels that increased replayability. Its popularity was so great that is spawned several similar games, including Moria and Hack . These in turn spawned many games over the years - roguelikes are in development by small teams or single programmers still today.
In fact, many modern games have characteristics of roguelikes or are even something similar to roguelikes themselves! You may have been exposed to roguelike qualities and didn't even know it. Games like Diablo or the .hack series borrow heavily from roguelikes, and nods-of-the head to the games can be found in many current games. The Mystery Dungeon series of games (such as Pokemon Mystery Dungeon or Izuna on the DS) are examples of somewhat simplified roguelike models. A premium module for Neverwinter Nights, called Infinite Dungeon, is very similar to Nethack.
Roguelikes typically share a few main characteristics. First of all, it is standard for a roguelike to be displayed in ASCII. They often have very complex sets of commands that may have little or no function at first glance (such as inscribing words with your finger or an item in Nethack). It takes some time to familiarize yourself with the commands - they're all keystrokes and can be unintuitive. Roguelikes also usually have at least some randomly-generated dungeon maps and very, very complex inner workings. I'm talking to the point that you can dip things in potions to get certain effects, or that killing even one cat could cause you trouble later on in the game. No two games of any roguelike are typically the same. They also usually have a fantasy flavored setting, though some, such as the Doom roguelike, venture beyond that. Lastly, and most importantly, roguelikes hate you. They want you to die. Over and over and over. In every imagineable way. Oh, and when you die, that's it - your character is dead and gone. No saves. Roguelikes are tough, and you have to be tough to play them.
So, are you still interested? You actually made it this far without falling asleep through the Video Game History Lesson? You are truly a great adventurer. First of all, here are my tips for being successful at roguelikes:
1. Read all the help files available. Read about all the commands. If you don't read at least the on-line help in each game, you'll have no idea what your commands are or how certain things affect the game. If you have a question, read about it - educating yourself about the game is the only way to win.
2. Be patient. Never rush. In any situation, take inventory of all your options. Many deaths in roguelikes are due to impatience and rushing. Just keep it cool and you'll live longer.
3. Don't be afraid to use some spoilers. The game is probably very, very deep, and you'll have no idea about half the things you can do without reading up.
Now, allow me to make some recommendations! For someone who has never played a roguelike before, I generally recommend Nethack. It's one of the most popular roguelikes on the block, and for many reasons. Your goal in Nethack is to get to the bottom of the dungeon (which features many randomly generated and some static levels for special encounters/locations) to retrieve an item and sacrifice it to your god. Sounds easy, huh? For a roguelike, it has a generally nice learning curve, and the combination of races and classes makes it fun to play even if you never get past D10. Nethack was originally released in 1987, and is still under development even today - pretty cool, huh? Oh, and for you wusses, Nethack offers several graphical interfaces that don't use ASCII (a draw for people who hate text and are pansies).
Graphics, pssssh.
Another roguelike I'd recommend, and my personal favorite, is Thomas Biskup's brainchild, Ancient Domains of Mystery (called ADoM for short). If Nethack wants you to die, ADoM hates everything about you and wants your soul to suffer eternally. Not for the faint of heart. Unlike many roguelikes, ADoM features a static overworld (I'm a big fan of this) which contains many randomly-generated dungeons. In ADoM, corruption is spreading through the Drakalor Chain, and it's up to you to find the source and stop it. You gain corruptions along the way that give you certain powers, but eventually, you'll die of them. There are about 200 race/class combinations in ADoM, so no two games are ever alike. Not for the faint of heart, but a great and very deep game.
There are tons of other roguelikes to choose from, so here's a list to get you started. Try them out until you find one that appeals to you, and then get ready to die. Over and over and over. You'll love it, I promise.
Nethack (Spoilers)
ADoM (Spoilers)
Linley's Dungeon Crawl
Crawl Stone Soup (stil-developed Crawl iteration)
ToME
Angband (Angband has more than 60 variants!)
DoomRL
Oh, and lastly, it's worth mentioning that most roguelikes are open-source projects (which leads to the variants and continued development of roguelikes). If you're really masochistic, you might want to explore developing your own roguelike variant or your very own roguelike from the ground up. If you're that crazy, I've got some resources you might be interested in.
rec.games.roguelike.development
Roguelikedevelopment.org
T-Engine (ToME's LUA interface is in alpha!)
ToME Wiki (some T-Engine documentation)
QHack (Thomas Biskup's roguelike skeleton in C)
Good luck, I hope you avoid many YASDs!
