I looooove Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. There was a five-year period or so where it was about the only game I played. (Things got worse when I discovered that there are two-week tournaments that are essentially a war on productivity... How many times and in how many different ways can you beat the game in a two-week period? Your team is depending on you! Down with sleep!)
The core concept is that all choices should be /meaningful/. 'No-brainers' are ruthlessly pruned away, or given interesting side effects that could be situationally useful or terrible. And also, avoid anything that looks like grinding. These people speak my language...
A surprising amount of my enjoyment of DCSS comes from seeing it as a dialogue with NetHack -- for the first few months I played, I kept thinking 'ohh, yes, that mechanic is obviously a rejection of the baroque [intrinsics|identification metagame|whatever else] mechanic'.
I like DCSS, but I’ve found the recent releases are making it less fun by removing mechanics I liked. E.g. removing inventory weight limits, food types and nerfing abilities that modify the dungeon.
I've been playing Hack/Nethack since 1982-ish. My friend got it for his IBM PC, and we were both addicted. The only reason why I kept asking for a computer for my parents was so that I could play Hack. I was the one who figured out that the Amulet of Yendor was underneath a boulder on level 26. My friend, however, one-upped me. At some point, his version of Hack was corrupted, so every time he read a scroll of identify, the game would crash. So he had to go through the entire game without reading a scroll or using rings. He was able to make it through the entire game and finish it, which I admit is an impressive feat.
I've been playing Nethack since, although I haven't played it in the last few years because of work and kids. There was a time in Nethack where it wasn't as complicated, but once they added all the deeper features, I've never completed the game and ascended. The game is now so deep and so complicated that I couldn't solve it without reading the cheats, and even following those, and even saving my games and redoing them, I've never gotten to the point where I could ascend. I'm really good at surviving the lower levels and stealing from shops, but I've never been able to figure out how to ascend. At some point, I should reattempt this now that I'm locked down for 2 months.
It can certainly be completed without spoilers, but it requires a bit of trial and error. I managed to ascend after 2-3 months of intense play...and a lot of dying. I think part of the joy of playing nethack is discovering how things work, so highly recommend not to read any spoilers. The best way to learn the mechanics is to install the game locally and play in explore mode. The game offers a lot of alternate ways to do stuff (because of conducts), but if you don't care about conducts characters tend to become a bit too powerful towards the end game. It's all a matter of surviving the early game, where you don't have resistances, skills etc. and where most people give up.
I was in a similar boat but finally mustered the commitment to mount a serious ascension attempt that spanned a couple of months part time (playing iNethack on the phone helped). It was SO enjoyable despite being killed by the High Priest of Moloch on level 45.
My daughters (21 & 23) have inherited this addiction though the prefer the isometric Vultures’s Eye.
First encountered Nethack in 1988. Only ever ascended once in the early days. It’s definitely gotten harder over the years. But maybe that’s just my attention to detail deteriorating.
If you’re looking for a fresh roguelike rabbit hole, check out Cogmind. It’s PC only but takes RL in an interesting new direction. (Not affiliated with it other than begin somewhat addicted.)
I know permadeath is a core mechanic of roguelikes, but I absolutely hate it. It's an artificial time waster.
Imagine trying to learn a piano piece, but instead of being able to practice the hard parts over and over until you've mastered them, you always have to restart from the very beginning at the first mistake.
Net result: you get extremely good at the beginning, to the point that it's boring, and you always get whooped by the hard part because you barely ever get to practice it (you have to sink an hour doing easy stuff just to get 5 seconds practicing the hard stuff)
While this is very true of roguelikes it is not absent from other genres as well.
In MMOs it is common to deal with boss mechanics of increasing difficulty with a reset should the party wipe. Some MMO developers try to curb this somewhat by having the difficulty climax around the middle rather than the end.
Technical games often have this as well, with games like DDR and Guitar Hero having some sets of songs that have lengthy intros only to suddenly get hit with the difficult segment later. Think Freebird.
Nothing wrong with disliking the mechanic, though. It's a common-enough dislike that it's spawned the rogue-lite genre where you still need to go through "the slog" but you accrue things from all of your previous (mis)adventures over time such that the early bits often go by faster (or can be muted/ignored).
All video games are an artificial time waster. You either get roguelikes or you don't. You clearly don't.
Let's take your analogy and flip it around:
Imagine trying to play a game, but instead of a logical progression with consequences, you can just pick it up from whatever point you like. If you die, it doesn't matter. You can just completely skip over that part and head to the next. In fact you can begin the game at the final boss if you want.
Net result: you get extremely good at nothing to the point that it's boring because you never have to practice or repeat a single thing.
Personally, I like permadeath. It makes the game more thrilling. I understand your view, and that's why I added extra lives as an option for my players.
>Net result: you get extremely good at the beginning, to the point that it's boring, and you always get whooped by the hard part because you barely ever get to practice
That's what I used to think, and I agree, some not so good roguelikes feel like that no matter how far you get, more of a roguelite, but I find rogue legacy is bad for that, but the good ones i've enjoyed tend to be rich in mechanics that you slowly master with each failure.
The point of roguelikes isn't the same as most action/adventure/rpg whatever games. It isn't about memorizing and mastering the levels, but about memorizing and mastering the mechanics of the game itself.
Sure there'll be some cheapshots, out of balance levels, and just plain lousy runs, but the more you play, the more you learn hoe to be good and you get further or play better on successive runs.
I do agree though, I like the idea of some kind of permanent progression between runs, I think that would solve some of the permadeath pointlessness feeling, i've seen some games do it alright, but none have really been that great. The consequences for failure still tend to be too high and it ends up making it feel like even more of a grind...rogue legacy comes to mind again...
Personally, i've been thinking of some kind of hybrid between lufia 2's ancient cave dungeons with an item system like diablo's would make for an interesting change up.
Have certain rare chests that contain maybe items and maybe spells or something that last permanently between runs if you make it to a certain level or something, so while you'd be repeating from the beginning, you'd be starting a little more well equipped as you progress.
Angband has a cheat death option, I usually play with it on. Of course I try very hard not to die, but I enjoy the game more if I don't have to start again if I make a mistake. There are so many parts to the game, permanent death is only one and I'm happy enough playing without it.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup has an interesting approach to this in that (for many character builds) the start of the game is equally dangerous as any other part. It also has boss fights scattered throughout so you can never just drift through; you are always worried that around the next corner there will be a regal teleporting giant frog, or a feline wizard with nine lives, or a brother-and-sister duo where the death of one sibling provokes a grief-induced rampage in the other.
The flipside is the instant save points like in a NES emulator where because you can restore the stakes are so low. If it's a game where you can avoid death by careful enough play, then it can be fun to have real stakes (time and boredom) at work. Like betting a lot of money in poker.
Ragnarok deserves more than one paragraph. Among many of it's great features was the one I personally loved most: sometimes you could meet a ghost of your past self, complete with all your inventory. Sometimes I even made this my strategy, dying as lots of scribes (weakest class at start, who carried a highly prized and rare item, a quill), then starting as blacksmith, which was easiest to survive in early stages. Quill was essential to win: you could always switch class to scribe after some level to write scrolls, but finding a quill was extremely hard.
I’ve been playing iNethack on my phone (Uses 3.4.3). I ran into a ghost of myself last night. I was in a 1 square dead end tunnel with no digging tools and out of food. I thought I was going to starve to death before it finally moved. Really starting to have fun with it, but can barely make it 12 levels down :).
Each year Roguebasin hosts the 7DRL challenge where people look to create a finished roguelike in seven days. I participated this year and found it a pretty thoughtful meditation on the genre.
There's a lot of gems in here, and in older 7DRL entries as well.
The nature of the format means that games (the ones that are actually finished) are focused, often highlighting one or two novel gameplay mechanics and/or mood/design elements. Anything more than that and the designer can't finish in 7 days. This also means that entries from 10 years ago is just as playable (IF you can get them to run) as the entries from this year.
Cogmind (mentioned elsewhere on this thread) started as a 7drl.
Each year they have judges grade each entry, so you can look at archives like http://www.roguetemple.com/7drl/2010/ to find the highest-rated ones and focus your search there, if you like.
This is not that great of an article, IMO. A prominent developer of one of the roguelikes mentioned says:
> you can immediately see that this article was stitched together by throwing some wikipedia articles together if it references the Berlin interpretation
> it's also hilarious if the guild of disgruntled adventurers is referenced as fun addition :)
> I'm not sure if I should feel insulted [by the article's description of my roguelike]
I mostly agree with these. I also feel a bit slighted by one of the descriptions. I'm also not sure quite what to make of the fact that they don't mention the two most prominent recent roguelikes: caves of qud, and cogmind.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (https://cataclysmdda.org/) is ab open source post-apocalyptic near future scifi roguelike. The best way to play it is with a launcher:
Cataclysm: DDA does a great job at being a semi-realistic 21th century zombie apocalypse. Vehicles, guns, prepping, martial arts, ridiculous amounts of crafting; it has it all. It's best in genre, IMO.
Cogmind was mentioned elsewhere; robots, guns and commercial-level polish.
(Personally, I'm working on a gun-oriented RL in my spare time, but it's going pretty slow ATM.)
Teleglitch is an awesome scifi/survival horror roguelike. The graphics are quite interesting, too. Be warned it's masochistically difficult.
Duskers is another scifi roguelike with a pretty cool premise: you command a bunch of remote drones while they explore randomly-generated derelict ships, possibly infestated with aliens and/or rogue robots. Your drones are generally helpless against hostiles, so the key strategy is to avoid rooms with enemies (or find creative ways to destroy them without a direct confrontation). Very, very cool.
an important aspect of rogues is the interaction with the world, using a fantasy background allows to take a lot of shortcuts in world building, imagine you join the game the first time and you have to select a role, you kinda know what to expect from an elf range or a dwarf thief, but if the world is original content, say like rogue trader, most of the initial choices are arbitrary and disorienting on the first few games and can impact negatively on the perception of the game system
As luck would have it, I've spent much of the afternoon working on my orc rogue in nethack 3.7.0 via ssh on hardfought.org. Being elderly and self-sequestered from the plague has its rewards...
While more of a twin stick shooter, Enter The Gungeon deserved being mentioned here. I've spent the last 4 months with that game and it's still fun. I has a huge number of weapons, actives, passives, synergies which can be combined in crazy ways (some break the game deliberatly). Almost no run plays like the other.
I think ETG is technically a "roguelite", but yes, it's a wonderful entry. Binding of Isaac is another, but it's so dark and disturbing that it puts many people off - which is a bit of a shame, because mechanically, it's spectacular. Dead Cells, Nuclear Throne, Crypt of the Necrodancer (and its sister game, Cadence of Hyrule), Risk of Rain, and Wizard of Legend are some of my recent similar favorites, too.
Slay the Spire is often also called a roguelike, and if it gets its teeth into you, watch out. Steam says I have 350 hours logged in it and I still enjoy the heck out of it.
So I am a gamer for sure, spent tons of time playing all the dark souls, bloodborne, sekiro over the past 4 or 5 years. After souls i was left wanting, a void in my game life so to speak. Monster Hunter World captured my attention for a good while. Then i found roguelikes and specifically Darkest Dungeon.
I had seen people playing on twitch, it looked cool. Turn based, RPG, permadeath, difficult. All up my alley. Jumped into it and got my butt whooped for a while but then it clicked. And BOOM i was off, many months later and hundreds of hours later i was done with Darkest Dungeon.
Since then, Slay the Spire baby. Wow that game owns hard. about 300 hours here. It's a deck-building (card game) turn based rogue-like. Recommend it to all!
Funny I'm trying to make a rogue-like game with my son these last days. Anyone has experienced using the C library `notcurses`, or some demo project ? (the library seems to be made to on purpose break curses API compatibility for the sake of sanity)
Shout out to Lincoln-Sudbury RHS where Hack began...and JOVE!
Can't imagine that fantastic experiment happening again;
PDP-11 running Unix given to a cohort of teenagers to maintain.
Thanks Brian!
Nethack definitely has a place in the history of roguelikes, but for people reading this HN thread, please don't play it as your first roguelike.
It was not only my first roguelike but also the first C codebase that I ever played around in. I was blown away in the 90s installing Linux as a teenager and it coming with GCC built in. I owe the dev team for getting me really interested in computers as more than a consumer of games.
But, it's creaky and idiosyncratic and has a lot of sharp edges that people who have been playing it for decades are quick to forgive, but if you're coming to the genre from, well, anything else, you're going to get put off, hard.
[+] [-] sdenton4|6 years ago|reply
Their design philosophy is fantastic: https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/master/crawl-ref/docs/cr...
The core concept is that all choices should be /meaningful/. 'No-brainers' are ruthlessly pruned away, or given interesting side effects that could be situationally useful or terrible. And also, avoid anything that looks like grinding. These people speak my language...
[+] [-] mherdeg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fiddlerwoaroof|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmarreck|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pfarnsworth|6 years ago|reply
I've been playing Nethack since, although I haven't played it in the last few years because of work and kids. There was a time in Nethack where it wasn't as complicated, but once they added all the deeper features, I've never completed the game and ascended. The game is now so deep and so complicated that I couldn't solve it without reading the cheats, and even following those, and even saving my games and redoing them, I've never gotten to the point where I could ascend. I'm really good at surviving the lower levels and stealing from shops, but I've never been able to figure out how to ascend. At some point, I should reattempt this now that I'm locked down for 2 months.
[+] [-] mihaifm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schoen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phs318u|6 years ago|reply
My daughters (21 & 23) have inherited this addiction though the prefer the isometric Vultures’s Eye.
First encountered Nethack in 1988. Only ever ascended once in the early days. It’s definitely gotten harder over the years. But maybe that’s just my attention to detail deteriorating.
[+] [-] dmbaggett|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyridines|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abhorrence|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] umvi|6 years ago|reply
Imagine trying to learn a piano piece, but instead of being able to practice the hard parts over and over until you've mastered them, you always have to restart from the very beginning at the first mistake.
Net result: you get extremely good at the beginning, to the point that it's boring, and you always get whooped by the hard part because you barely ever get to practice it (you have to sink an hour doing easy stuff just to get 5 seconds practicing the hard stuff)
[+] [-] seangrogg|6 years ago|reply
In MMOs it is common to deal with boss mechanics of increasing difficulty with a reset should the party wipe. Some MMO developers try to curb this somewhat by having the difficulty climax around the middle rather than the end.
Technical games often have this as well, with games like DDR and Guitar Hero having some sets of songs that have lengthy intros only to suddenly get hit with the difficult segment later. Think Freebird.
Nothing wrong with disliking the mechanic, though. It's a common-enough dislike that it's spawned the rogue-lite genre where you still need to go through "the slog" but you accrue things from all of your previous (mis)adventures over time such that the early bits often go by faster (or can be muted/ignored).
[+] [-] the5dysfunction|6 years ago|reply
Let's take your analogy and flip it around:
Imagine trying to play a game, but instead of a logical progression with consequences, you can just pick it up from whatever point you like. If you die, it doesn't matter. You can just completely skip over that part and head to the next. In fact you can begin the game at the final boss if you want.
Net result: you get extremely good at nothing to the point that it's boring because you never have to practice or repeat a single thing.
[+] [-] aww_dang|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grawprog|6 years ago|reply
That's what I used to think, and I agree, some not so good roguelikes feel like that no matter how far you get, more of a roguelite, but I find rogue legacy is bad for that, but the good ones i've enjoyed tend to be rich in mechanics that you slowly master with each failure.
The point of roguelikes isn't the same as most action/adventure/rpg whatever games. It isn't about memorizing and mastering the levels, but about memorizing and mastering the mechanics of the game itself.
Sure there'll be some cheapshots, out of balance levels, and just plain lousy runs, but the more you play, the more you learn hoe to be good and you get further or play better on successive runs.
I do agree though, I like the idea of some kind of permanent progression between runs, I think that would solve some of the permadeath pointlessness feeling, i've seen some games do it alright, but none have really been that great. The consequences for failure still tend to be too high and it ends up making it feel like even more of a grind...rogue legacy comes to mind again...
Personally, i've been thinking of some kind of hybrid between lufia 2's ancient cave dungeons with an item system like diablo's would make for an interesting change up.
Have certain rare chests that contain maybe items and maybe spells or something that last permanently between runs if you make it to a certain level or something, so while you'd be repeating from the beginning, you'd be starting a little more well equipped as you progress.
[+] [-] nmarriott|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamthemonster|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freepor|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrtweetyhack|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Andrew_nenakhov|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pfarrell|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schoen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danbolt|6 years ago|reply
https://7drl.com/
[+] [-] philsnow|6 years ago|reply
The nature of the format means that games (the ones that are actually finished) are focused, often highlighting one or two novel gameplay mechanics and/or mood/design elements. Anything more than that and the designer can't finish in 7 days. This also means that entries from 10 years ago is just as playable (IF you can get them to run) as the entries from this year.
Cogmind (mentioned elsewhere on this thread) started as a 7drl.
Each year they have judges grade each entry, so you can look at archives like http://www.roguetemple.com/7drl/2010/ to find the highest-rated ones and focus your search there, if you like.
Roguelike Radio usually has a show about the 7drl results, e.g. http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2018/05/episode-145-7drls-2018... .
[+] [-] earenndil|6 years ago|reply
> you can immediately see that this article was stitched together by throwing some wikipedia articles together if it references the Berlin interpretation
> it's also hilarious if the guild of disgruntled adventurers is referenced as fun addition :)
> I'm not sure if I should feel insulted [by the article's description of my roguelike]
I mostly agree with these. I also feel a bit slighted by one of the descriptions. I'm also not sure quite what to make of the fact that they don't mention the two most prominent recent roguelikes: caves of qud, and cogmind.
[+] [-] jhallenworld|6 years ago|reply
I think it's this: https://github.com/RoguelikeRestorationProject/urogue1.03
[+] [-] platz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] autarch|6 years ago|reply
Windows GUI launcher - https://github.com/remyroy/CDDA-Game-Launcher/releases
Linux/Docker CLI launcher - https://github.com/houseabsolute/catalauncher/releases
The Linux one is mine and could in theory work on macOS too. Patches are welcome.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|6 years ago|reply
Cogmind was mentioned elsewhere; robots, guns and commercial-level polish.
(Personally, I'm working on a gun-oriented RL in my spare time, but it's going pretty slow ATM.)
[+] [-] the_af|6 years ago|reply
Duskers is another scifi roguelike with a pretty cool premise: you command a bunch of remote drones while they explore randomly-generated derelict ships, possibly infestated with aliens and/or rogue robots. Your drones are generally helpless against hostiles, so the key strategy is to avoid rooms with enemies (or find creative ways to destroy them without a direct confrontation). Very, very cool.
[+] [-] gaogao|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Andrew_nenakhov|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LoSboccacc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] every|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oweiler|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheald|6 years ago|reply
Slay the Spire is often also called a roguelike, and if it gets its teeth into you, watch out. Steam says I have 350 hours logged in it and I still enjoy the heck out of it.
[+] [-] floatboth|6 years ago|reply
Congratulations Amy, slex has been noted by Ars Technica now :D
[+] [-] nyolfen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jim_and_derrick|6 years ago|reply
I had seen people playing on twitch, it looked cool. Turn based, RPG, permadeath, difficult. All up my alley. Jumped into it and got my butt whooped for a while but then it clicked. And BOOM i was off, many months later and hundreds of hours later i was done with Darkest Dungeon.
Since then, Slay the Spire baby. Wow that game owns hard. about 300 hours here. It's a deck-building (card game) turn based rogue-like. Recommend it to all!
[+] [-] ridiculous_fish|6 years ago|reply
I Carbonized [1] Angband to make it playable on OS X. Then I Cocoaized it a few years later. What a rarefied game, that you can play it for years!
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_(API)
[+] [-] allan_s|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsilence|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmorse|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamikaze675|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unbalancedevh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpeterso|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philsnow|6 years ago|reply
It was not only my first roguelike but also the first C codebase that I ever played around in. I was blown away in the 90s installing Linux as a teenager and it coming with GCC built in. I owe the dev team for getting me really interested in computers as more than a consumer of games.
But, it's creaky and idiosyncratic and has a lot of sharp edges that people who have been playing it for decades are quick to forgive, but if you're coming to the genre from, well, anything else, you're going to get put off, hard.
[+] [-] autarch|6 years ago|reply