Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Announcements => Other Announcements => Topic started by: Lycus on November 09, 2011, 06:23:15 PM
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I was just wondering what you guys think are the roguelikes that all fans must try to get a proper feel for the genre and the mechanics found in roguelike games.
Being a relative newbie to roguelikes, the only ones I'll put out there are Dungeon Crawl, Nethack, Adom & Dwarf Fortress.
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The original Rogue of course.
Other than that I find Angband very enjoyable. I always listen to some Tolkien-inspired metal like Summoning or Burzum while playing it. Just chilling out and grinding away :)
Summoning - Angbands Schmieden (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Horph8VcVdM)
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I've tried alot of roguelikes but a very few of them are games I conisder playing again and again. DCSS is one example of a game that I think I'll never stop playing.
But besides the ones you've already tried out I think you should take a look at ToME, IVAN and perhaps some of the "smaller" ones: Brogue, Legerdemain, DoomRL, Elona, Powder and Infra Arcana (the above poster NON's masterpiece).
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Also, a lot of people (myself included) will say ADOM. Nethack is another usual suspect (although I never really fell for that myself).
As always,
Minotauros
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Isn't ADOM a bit too terrifying for newbies, though? :-\
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That wasn't the question. There's a huge gulf between what's good for newbies and what's representative of the genre.
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That wasn't the question. There's a huge gulf between what's good for newbies and what's representative of the genre.
Yeah, now that I think of it... :-[
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Obviously Adom, Nethack, Crawl, DoomRL, and of course anything by me LOL. Then you can start playing the more obscure ones, like Rogue for instance :)
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When recruiting new roguelike followers from other gaming genres, I would recommend them to first play an appropriate semi-roguelike. If you like platformers, play Spelunky (which also currently has the highest average rating on IRLDb (http://roguetemple.com/irldb/index.php?i=5451b8&s=7.7.21.22.21.) and I think everyone who does not hate platformers should play). If you like adventure games, play Legerdemain. If you like action RPGs, play Diablo. If you like puzzles games, play Desktop Dungeons or Deadly Rooms of Death (only marginally roguelike, but a very good game).
This works not only for semi-roguelikes. I think ADOM might be good for newbies coming from the RPG world and who don't mind ASCII or reading big manuals. If you like Chess and similar games, play ChessRogue. Recently (non-traditional) board games seem to have gained a big popularity, I am not sure what to recommend to their fans, any ideas?
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The ones you mention are the ones I play. Nethack is WACKY thematically and you cannot beat it without spoilers...at least not for many years of trying. But it is the quintessential roguelike historically. I prefer some of the older Hack builds myself, before it became Nethack.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup with graphical tiles is the one I play the most.
I also highly recommend Brogue especially for new guys. DoomRL is great too but for some reason I like AliensRL better. By the same author and a similar game, but with the Aliens theme (and sounds!).
Have you actually tried to play Dwarf Fortess yet? My god is it difficult to get into.
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Seconding IVAN. It is by-far one of the best roguelikes I've played. It seems so simple at first, but then your scroll of teleport rips in half, moving you across the map next to a hedgehog that just happened to step on a landmine, which destroys both your legs and sets your scroll of door creation on fire, successfully surrounding you with doors while you bleed out. Absolutely brutal, but so much fun.
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Have you actually tried to play Dwarf Fortess yet? My god is it difficult to get into.
I actually didn't find it that hard to figure out. Watch some LPs on youtube and always have the magmawiki open during playing and you'll have it figured out pretty fast. That does not mean that I don't think it's hard, but it's not quite as hard as people say it is. (Maybe I'm just a nerd. :()
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Have you actually tried to play Dwarf Fortess yet? My god is it difficult to get into.
I actually didn't find it that hard to figure out. Watch some LPs on youtube and always have the magmawiki open during playing and you'll have it figured out pretty fast. That does not mean that I don't think it's hard, but it's not quite as hard as people say it is. (Maybe I'm just a nerd. :()
I think if you found DF easy to get into then you are most definitely a nerd. :-)
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Sorry Xlambda, you are most deffo a nerd.
But i use that word as a term of pride, rather than of denigration.
You need to get yourself a tshirt that says...
"DF isn't unfathomable to me"
...on it and wear it in all it's glory. And yours :)
That game is like the @~&%ing matrix to me, even with swanky tiles.
Back to topic, Lycus, i enjoy the odd game of ToME as well as the obvious ones that you have mentioned and if you want a RL to punish you and let you know how easy Angband is, play Aliens RL.
That'll get ya :D
Crunch
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I was just wondering what you guys think are the roguelikes that all fans must try to get a proper feel for the genre and the mechanics found in roguelike games.
- Adom
- Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup
- Doom the roguelike
Those three are must-play.
After them, I'd suggest other great games such as IVAN, A quest too far, Infra Arcana, Triangle Wizard, Nethack, Lost Labyrinth, UnAngband, Spelunky, Madness, Frozen depths, TOME, Unreal World..
Summoning - Angbands Schmieden (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Horph8VcVdM)
Good stuff!
Isn't ADOM a bit too terrifying for newbies, though? :-\
No.. it was my first experience ever with a roguelike and every friend I told about it has been enthusiastic.
Have you actually tried to play Dwarf Fortess yet? My god is it difficult to get into.
if you want a RL to punish you and let you know how easy Angband is, play Aliens RL. That'll get ya :D
I agree!
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In my opinion, Rogue, and/or MAG (Mike's Adventure Game) are definite must-plays. MAG follows very closely in Rogue's footstep, but adds just enough extra spice to differentiate itself, but not go so far on it's own to become a complete entity of it's own. It's kinda like Rogue's slightly older brother. I suggest Donnie Russell's very good windows ports.
Nethack is a classic.
Frozen Depths is awesome.
Infra Arcana is a brilliant newer roguelike that sets itself apart from the rest very well. My personal favorite of the newer breed. I play it more than the rest on the list besides Rogue.
Hydra Slayer is an extremely fun and somewhat abstract roguelike. When I first heard about it, it really didn't interest me. But I eventually tried it and loved it. Quite addictive.
Dungeon Crawl: Stone soup is practically a no-brainer these days.
Incursion is great too.
I'm a bit on the fence about DoomRL myself. It can be very fun and the achievements and unlockables are a nice feature, but I feel it has gotten a bit convoluted in it's evolution. Having many of the play modes locked at the beginning until you attain a specific amount of achievements is kinda a downer. It seems to be geared more towards the veteran players these days and a lot of the medals are not that easy for the average or beginning player to get. It is also getting close to nethack status in my opinion in that it needs quite a few spoilers in order to get that good at the game. Still a great game, just more of a maybe-play instead of a must-play in my opinion.
And if you have a Sega Genesis, I suggest Fatal Labyrinth. The menu navigation can be a little fiddly, but not much. The monsters are kinda cool looking too. My favorite feature is that, the more gold you attain, the fancier your grave is when you die. A feature I wish more roguelikes had.
If you're into board games, DungeonQuest and Chainsaw warrior to a certain extent.
If I had to pick a top 3 (in no specific order):
Rogue
Infra Arcana
Frozen Depths
Top 5, add:
Hydra Slayer
Nethack
I could never really get into Angband, Adom, or Dwarf Fortress. Omega was pretty cool.
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Been playing Shiren the Wanderer on the bus for the past two weeks now.
The pace of play, the persistence of items and characters beyond permadeath, the trickle of hints from NPCs, the casual controls but fuck-you encounters deep in - I think all developers could learn a lot from this.
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If I had to pick a top 3 (in no specific order):
Rogue
Infra Arcana
Frozen Depths
Top 5, add:
Hydra Slayer
Nethack
For me, among ascii roguelikes those would be DoomRL, DemonHunt & Frozen Depths - to a large extent because most of the others I tried have such a cumbersome interface I couldn't really be bothered playing them for long.
DemonHunt in particular I've been playing quite a bit in the past week.
I would also put crawl pretty high up there, I can sometimes muster enough will power to play it but haven't in a long time.
I tried playing angband, nethack & adom many times (as well as rogue and larn) but never managed to get into them - the curve is just too steep & life's too short.
I also think that having sounds (and to a much lesser extent music) makes a huge impact, even if they are just blippy 8-bit/PC speaker type sounds- it just feels so dry and unengaging to not have any auditory feedback (funnily enough this bothers me a lot more than ascii graphics).
In the past little while I've been playing around with coding c to the bare metal on dos (thanks to dosbox, open watcom 16-bit c compiler & raw access to CGA memory space).
Other than the obvious challenge, I was really surprised how little hindrance targeting the original IBM PC with CGA's default text mode (640x200 pixels, 80x25 chars, 16 colors) was and how much the traditional roguelike interface (as seen in nethack, rogue, angband, et al) is not the result of shitty old hardware (well, maybe it is but it's not the result of shitty PC hardware).
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Been playing Shiren the Wanderer on the bus for the past two weeks now.
The pace of play, the persistence of items and characters beyond permadeath, the trickle of hints from NPCs, the casual controls but fuck-you encounters deep in - I think all developers could learn a lot from this.
Yes, Shiren is a really great RL. Everybody get their emulators out!
As always,
Minotauros
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Really, any of the Fushigi Dungeon games are very solid points of play reference from Torneko to Shiren and beyond. Well, maybe less so the Pokemon ones, but pretty much all else is a lock to some degree.
A shame so few of them have managed to either get English commercial releases, PC releases, or english fan translations. Shiren in particular has gained many games of late beyond the last Shiren Wii game, I think at this point having it far and away usurp the mantle in full from Torneko which dominated the PSX/GBA'ish era in terms of volume.
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Really, any of the Fushigi Dungeon games are very solid points of play reference from Torneko to Shiren and beyond. Well, maybe less so the Pokemon ones, but pretty much all else is a lock to some degree.
They're gateway drugs in a way. Even the Pokemon ones are pretty good at that. The good thing about those is that they appeal to a huge group of fans, some of which have picked up roguelikes after that. A friend of mine played them a lot, and one day we suddenly found ourselves talking about nethack. :o
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-ADOM
-NETHACK
-ANGBANDS
-UNREAL WORLD
-DCSS
-TOMENET
I am surprised that nobody made mention of TomeNET. It's really exciting, entertaining, thrilling and challenging.