Roguelike Games

That's right, you're getting TWO posts from me today! Who knew such a thing was possible??

My bro-in-law sent me some links to a game type I never even knew existed. And in keeping with the "Summer Of Free", these games are all free and legal to download online! Woohoo!

My first impression is that the unique gameplay (and not the graphics) is the chief draw here. I'm just checking them out myself now, so I can't really comment, but here is what he sent me. Next time you're bored and need a free way to pass some time, well here ya go!

Thanks, Sean! You rock, bro!



Date: Thursday, June 24, 2010, 9:32 AM

Hey bro,

I've been poking around on the internet for the last couple days,
looking into a genre of game called "roguelike"... These games seem to
be sort of the precursor to modern RPGs and are largely inspired by
D&D, so I immediately thought of you. They have a few defining
characteristics: Randomly created dungeons, permanent death (i.e.,
you can save your game as often as you want but once your character is
dead, that's it), and turn-based play. Anyway, I'm not really
qualified to do a review for your "Summer of Free" because I'm just
messing around (and I'm not very experienced in terms of RPGs), but I
thought I'd shoot you some links if you wanted to try any of them out.
We're talking super old-school here... the simpler ones (graphically)
require some imagination but seem like they could be pretty cool once
you're used to them. Most of them are keyboard-controlled so if
there's a tutorial or instructions I recommend reading them to learn
the shortcuts.

First, some links for general info and history if you're interested:
http://members.chello.at/theodor.lauppert/games/roguelk.htm (an
introduction to roguelike games with some links)
http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/ (a wiki with info on the
ridiculous number of roguelike variants out there)
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Roguelike (the
obligatory Wikipedia entry)


And now the games... I checked to make sure there are Windows versions
of all of these, and they all seem to be still pretty widely played
and/or updated:
http://rephial.org/ ("Angband")

http://www.adom.de/ ("Ancient Domains of Mystery")

http://crawlj.sourceforge.jp/down_e.html ("Crawl")
http://sourceforge.net/projects/crawl-ref/files/ ("Stone Soup", an
update to "Crawl" with prettier graphics... grab the file "0.6.1 >
stone_soup-0.6.1-tiles.win32.zip" )

http://www.nethack.org/ ("NetHack")
http://github.com/clivecrous/vultures/downloads ("Vulture's Eye", A
graphical update to NetHack... grab the
"vultures-2.1.2-eye_win32-1.exe" file)

http://tome.te4.org/ ("Tales of Middle Earth")

So far I've played "NetHack" and "Crawl Stone Soup"... There are tons
more (such as the original "Rogue") but these should get you
started... :) Besides, the older ones would be more of a hassle
because they'd probably require a DOS emulator like DOSBox
(http://dosbox.com).

Also, another game that is more of an old-school action/adventure RPG
with pre-made levels (and was written because the author didn't like
"Rogue"), is the "Kroz" series:
http://www.3drealms.com/news/2009/03/several_old_games_released_as_freeware.html
(you'll *definitely* need DosBox for those).

Or maybe you're not really into these old games... That's cool too. :)

-sean