Barbelith Underground > Games & Gameplay

(I'm amazed - it seems no one's ever posted a topic on this subject. Are roguelike games some kind of guilty, secret pleasure for those of you who play them?)

Roguelike games, for those who aren't aware, are roleplaying games with text graphics. Generally the rooms and corridors are drawn out with ASCII or ANSI characters, the main character is represented by a certain character (usually an @ ) and other creatures and objects by other characters. Play is turn-based, and the game system is usually standard RPG fare (numerical stats, XP points and levels, etc). Most Roguelike games randomly generate a substantial portion of their content each time you play the game, so that no two games are alike.

What makes roguelikes so interesting is that, with no fancy graphics to burden them, remarkably complex games can be fit into a very small space. Nethack for example has been in development for just about 20 years, and almost all of it has gone toward refining gameplay, adding new features, and generally making the game more intricate and interesting. ADOM is full of secrets (it is uncharacteristically close-source) that dedicated fans have spent years working out. Roguelike games have such a cult following that they have been the inspiration for major games like Diablo and Dark Stone, whose randomly-generated, dungeon-crawl styles only differ from roguelike games in that they are real-time and less elaborate.

Roguelike games are also notoriously difficult. They do not allow you to keep saved games in case you die, and die you will - over and over and over. Most people will go through hundreds of characters before they ever beat Nethack, if indeed they do ever beat it.

So - can we get some roguelike players coming out of the woodwork? Discuss their history, your favourite ones, any roguelike games that I might have missed.

(I hate repeating a word so many times in a single post. Roguelike roguelike roguelike. It loses meaning after awhile. Roguelike.)