Surely there must be others here who know the joys of murdering letters and picking up bits of punctuation. Or tilesets. Those are things too. Be they the Western sort or the Japanese sort (think your mystery dungeons) it has a place here. I am a bit iffy on the roguelikelike/roguelites being considered here (think ftl or rogue legacy) but I guess they can go here too? Anyway. I have a fondness for these things though I am exceptionally awful at them. Most of my earliest exposure to the things was through nethack, which I found to largely be perplexing. It was fun but not like a thing I ever felt I was progressing in. The DoomRL was far closer to what I wanted. And then I decided to try Angband and I finally realized what I wanted out of these games. Something slow and ponderous, with a homebase, and where the main focus is on deep dives with few kills. It's also a relatively non-complicated game that can be picked up by the player without a guide, as compared to nethack. While you'll likely want to check out the forums to see what people think about specific gear choices, since gear selection is the main thing with character progression in Angband, or about stat layouts you can generally pick up and play the thing. And this is an aspect of them that I find so interesting. It's such a small community and such a small set of games, that we can easily trace back the family tree. That is in fact a thing the community does, splitting the games into the bandlikes and the hacklikes and so on and so forth. And they each have their own rather clear styles and appeals. Nethack appeals to lovers of things like DnD manuals and minutiae. The sort of detail orientated sorts who like to keep open cheatsheets while they play. Angband favors far slower players who do not like heavy amounts of extraneous shit to remember. Crawl, like Angband, styles itself for the lover of the not complicated but whereas Angband is primarily a very slow and exploration heavy game, Crawl is very fast paced and combat orientated. It even has a button for auto-exploring since clearing out the floors is part of the point of the game, as opposed to grabbing some shit you might need along the way and running to the stairs as fast as you can. And you can trace back some of these design choices to games before it. DCSS, what I am calling Crawl, originates from Nethack, for example. Specifically in the form of Linley's Dungeon Crawl, born out of a want to change things for the better. DCSS then forked off from there and has since continued its culture of a relatively open development team whose main focuses are on keeping the game interesting, unique, fun, fast and not tedious. But Angband has an entirely different history, not coming from nethack and thus hack but from Moria. Its development culture also favors variants very heavily, while Crawl, as a friend of mine has shared, doesn't appear to be as big on the concept. And that's just very fascinating.
Currently I am not very far into Angband. There's 100 floors and your goal is very simple. One, descend 99 floors. Two, kill Sauron. Three, kill Morgoth. Now getting that far and surviving? That's the hard part. I've thus far only gotten to floor 18 in my few days of playing the game. One thing I really like about the game is that death appears to be very important in that it is one of the big methods in which the game teaches you things. This is true of this genre in general, but I feel that it pulls this off better than Nethack, the other one I have experience with. Largely because the systems at play in Angband are much simpler. I don't like having to study to the degree necessary to really play Nethack. Though I don't mind some opaqueness, as in the case of, say, Angband's vaults and how depth and item and monster generation works. That's more like extra stuff you learn on the side after the fact. The current strategy I'm employing is the deep diving strategy which seems to be in vogue at the moment. The original big thing was to, apparently, farm very specific floors for very specific drops. With changes in how the game works, such as defaulting the game to have selling turned off, that's since changed to the deep dive. Just aggressively go down as far as you possibly can while still being able to kill at least something. Since the better shit is down further and you'll level up faster that way anyway. Then once you have enough shit to speak for you can recall back to the surface and repeat the system. Either by diving down from the surface or by recalling and continuing your dive. After a point the recalling to dive seems to become mandatory because of how fucking long the dungeon is. It's just not economical to keep resetting the depth after a point. The other thing I want to try and mess with soon is the ironman challenge, so no going back to the surface. Probably mixing it with the deep dive. So I can grow more accustomed to surviving in the dungeon without access to the surface, and get better at dealing with just the dungeon itself. Very weird to me is coming back to this genre and having to learn again that item and money hoarding just...isn't really a thing. I mean you can do it but it just hurts you more than it helps. So just blow through those potions. Who the fuck knows if you'll find anymore but if you aren't using it then it's fucking useless. This is especially true of a game where I can return to the surface and buy more scrolls and potions basically whenever I feel like it. There does seem to be a benefit to some hoarding though, given the home stash. I've mostly been keeping resistance potions and other shit there since that becomes a big issue later in the game. So more preparing for bits that I know will come up and then treating those resources the way I treat my others: easily expendable goods. I've also decided to say fuck it and throw caution to the wind with potions and scrolls. I'll just drink all the shit I come across early on because none of it has seemed lethal yet and it's better I know what I have on hand early than to wait until I can buy enough identify scrolls/staves.
Moria was the inspiration for Diablo, though Diablo was isometric 3D and real-time, not turn-based. I've played a lot of Moria way back (like, 1990 or so), and a fair bit of Nethack over the years. Nethack is a good work break; it runs in a terminal, doesn't take over your whole display, and is turn-based so nothing happens until you move, so you don't have to stay playing to survive. I agree with @Aondeug above that Nethack is designed for people who like complexity and having to know and look up stuff. It's a bit "by programmers for programmers" in terms of the mindset of play required. It's also a fascinating puzzle to play with because there are so many ways for objects, monsters, the player etc. to interact. Nethack, for instance, gives you a wand of polymorph, which changes whatever it's pointed at to something else of similar type. You can use it on piles of treasure you don't want, to see if any of them change into something that's useful. You can use it on a powerful monster in the hope that it turns it into a weaker monster of the same basic type. You can use it on yourself. In that case, YOU change into a monster, within a limited choice of things that work; monsters that are somewhat sapient, basically. Those with enough brainpower to be you. But if you're wearing dragon scale mail, a wand of polymorph will turn you into a dragon of the type of dragon whose skin you're wearing. As that dragon, you can breathe fire. You can fly over obstacles and are thus not affected by floor traps or dangerous substances on the floor. Furthermore, you can lay eggs if you're a female dragon. You can eat these, throw them at enemies, or you can keep them in your pack until they hatch. If they hatch, you now have a baby dragon that calls you Mama and follows you around. Ridiculous, complicated adventures.
Far, far too complicated for me. I will stick with the various bands thank you very much. Other fun things about Diablo's development...the removal of permadeath, adding of multiplayer, and the realtime aspect were all added in by Blizzard. Blizzard North was fairly stubborn about the removal of permadeath and turns. However, as the story goes, while playing around with an in-development version of the game Brevik killed a skeleton in realtime and decided that it was awesome. This situation only worked out for two games and an expansion pack though before a massive line of resignations and the eventual killing of the group and the Diablo 3 project and an unnamed non-Diablo project. A big part of why Blizzard North wanted to keep the turn-based aspect was the strategy element, which several fans of the genre mention. Brevik and the team found the agonizing over possible decisions being your last to be nerve-wracking and thrilling in their own sort of way. It apparently couldn't beat a skeleton exploding in glorious form in realtime though.
If you do then at least from what I know here's some tips about potential ones to start with... Nethack - as described above it's a very finnicky and detail heavy game. If you love looking up shit on wikis and studying a game though it is your best bet. Also if you like weird and unusual combinations of things. Like using a silver, I believe, ring to hold a cockatrice corpse as a weapon. This is also a lovely game for fans of fantasy novels and such, as it is filled with references to things like Conan and Discworld. Its really silly tone speaks to some people in a way that the bands do not. Angband - if you want something slower paced which you can learn without 18 million hours of reading then this is a good bet. Unlike nethack all the floors re-randomize each time you go through them and the town exists so you are never in danger of losing due to lack of supplies. Your main focus is on running like a coward and grabbing neat shit so you can repeat that till the end of the game. The main thing with developing your character is made through gear selection choices. Sil - an Angband variant that introduces skills and a smithing system, among several other things. The game has also been shortened a good deal, and the lore is more consistent with the Tolkien novels if you care about that bit. Crawl - if you want something simpler than nethack but far more fast paced and combat oriented. This is also a good choice if you want things like skills or talents from various other games. Each class and race and god combo has unique abilities and such that you gain over time, making for unusual and interesting playthroughs each time. Like nethack it has a persistent dungeon though so you are always on the move. The idea seems to be getting lots of neat and cool shit to play with. Has a variety of other strange modes of play like sprint, a mode where you see how fast you can get through a floor. DoomRL - what's classified as a coffeebreak roguelike. It's fast paced, it's short, and it's stupid. Much like its inspiration. If you want to just dive into the concept this is one of your best bets with the coffeebreak games. Tales of Maj'Eyal - started out originally as a band variant until it became its own thing. It, from what I understand, has a robust and weird original setting. So if you care about lore you might want to look at this one. Want a plot? Come here. This may also be where you want to go if you care about unlocking shit over time, as some of the classes and such must be earned through gameplay (or through donations). Alternatively head to roguebasin and look about I suppose.
Had a fascinating Nethack run. The first wand I come across on level 4, I try to do the old engraving "Elbereth" trick to identify (most wands do something identifiable if you try to engrave with them). It's a wand of wishing. That early. I've never had one drop that early before. So I wish for blessed scrolls of recharging and got a single one. It only had one charge, so I used the recharging scroll to get 3 more. Next, +2 gray dragon scale mail to get me lots of armor plus magic resistance. Then speed boots. Then gauntlets of power for that 25 STR (perfect for a melee character; I was a valkyrie). Then for the final "squeezed out" charge on a dead wand, Grayswandir bc good weapon needed. Then I upgraded my longsword to Excalibur by dipping it in the first fountain I found, on the first try. So of course I die through being stupid, trying to melee a floating eye, getting paralyzed, and then slowly poked to death by a wood elf on level 7. Great silly fun though!
Reminds me of how the first ego I got in Angband I died really soon after it. I was so excited. It was rad. And then I got cocky and too stubborn. Paid for that dearly. Did learn though and I did make it closer to my goal of floor 20.
I really like roguelikes, despite being very bad at them. I'm more into survival/simulation ones, like dwarf fortress, Cataclysm DDA and unreal world. I kind of gave up on dwarf fortress because I could never get the military system to work right. This thread may have just convinced me to try nethack some time.
I think we already had a thread for roguelikes? But that's okay. My personal faves are probably Crypt of the NecroDancer and FTL: Faster Than Light.
Been fucking around with Sil. It's very different from Angband in terms of...most things. There some similarities obviously because it's built off that code, but it's a vastly different experience. There's no town or money and floor scumming is prevented via the constantly ticking down minimum depth counter. The monster AI is also a lot more sophisticated than it is in Angband. This, plus the entire lack of easy escapes through things like phase door or teleport, leads to the game demanding different tactics position wise. And really demanding a lot more care in positioning. There seems to be no cannon fodder enemies. Just. At all. Everything is hideously lethal to you at the start and everything remains hideously lethal to the end. Also stealth. Stealth is not the "your stealth stat is how many steps you can take before shit wakes up" shit that it is in Angband and a good deal of roguelikes. It's instead a series of constant skill checks made with each turn. This means that you are more than capable of playing entirely pacifist builds that can beat the game. Because you don't kill Morgoth. You steal from him. And this is where I am very pleasantly surprised. When I heard "More lore compliant variant!" I was expecting like we'd hack away hobbits and that'd be it really. But no. All the races have their in-universe fucking Elvish languages ass names like Noldor and Edain. There are houses whose bonuses are based on what those families are canonically known for. Weird non-canon compliant enemies like centipedes were replaced at some point with other ones that do work like deadly thorn bushes and spiderlings. The special qualities your weapons have are things like "Longsword of Doriath" and "Short Sword of Gondolin". There's no DnD style magic, instead you sing to produce a variety of effects. Elberth's name scares off evil things, singing of the Two Trees of Valinor increases your light intensity, and there's even a song that increases your stealthiness. All of the enemies, races, and houses get descriptions that are accurate to the lore (notwithstanding the fact that FA lore is a clusterfuck canonicity wise). Even the elements work! There's no acid, but some of its destructive properties got pushed into fire. Morgoth's big on fire after all. And darkness is an element! Wow. There's so much weird little bullshit that is lovingly detailed off Tolkien's work and it's just amazing. i can literally be luthien and steal the silmaril from his crown by singing and dancing my way through the hordes of evil just like the books
ahahahaha guess what I still see my dad playing sometimes to this day. (I've played a fair bit of Dwarf Fortress, but I tend to lose direction pretty quick, and I have Problems with the last few versions because they give you SO MANY MIGRANTS and it drives me up the wall. Last time I played it was even ignoring the population cap I set.)
ToME1? Also Dwarf Fortress is weird and complicated and I can't learn how to play it because it's even more opaque than nethack is. But god damn is it wild to hear about. Like I'll read stories about it or look at the wiki and just be like "Is this actually a game or a collective fever dream due to fluorinated water?"
ToME 2.3.5, actually, back when it was "Troubles of Middle Earth." They had most of the described parts of Arda mapped out and a bunch of LotR characters as NPCs who just kinda show up sometimes, alongside a metric crapton of completely non-lore-compliant Pangband/Zangband monsters and magic and whatnot, resulting in a rather surreal experience where one easy way to get ahead early on when playing a sorcerer is to sneak over to Minas Tirith as soon as possible and ask Aragorn to teleport you to the 53rd floor of a dungeon full of sandworms, because I guess he can do that now and that exists now. Yeah, DF has an incredibly impenetrable interface. I actually learned by playing a modded version where dwarves didn't have to sleep or eat and were basically invincible, so the learning cliff wasn't quite so steep.
You don't become the king of Gondor without being someone who can teleport people to a maze of sandworms.
Pacifist stealth build or Luthien baps sleeping people in the face and lets them wander around drunkenly before she aggressively sings lullabies.
Pixel Dungeons is a fun one available on Android (idk about ios). It's also open source and has a bunch of spin offs so you can probably find one to your taste. (Shattered Pixel Dungeon is my personal fave) Desktop Dungeons is another one I've played. It's pretty puzzle like at times. I remember another rougelike-esque game that was a zombie survival where the goal was to survive as long as possible on the map. Can't recall the name of it or how to find it though
I have tried Pixel Dungeon if only because sometimes I don't feel like dealing wit my mac and having to think about Sil's skills and such and I just want to click at my screen and die and wonder what the fuck just happened that blob fucked my ass oh my god. It's all like the black jelly or whatever is getting pumped and then he wrecks my ass. I have not really managed to learn it at all yet. But it is a thing to do when I am tired and fucked up on the bus.
Do you want to know the trick to that fight? Nope, googling turned up Rogue Survivor which is ofc dead
