Help me find roguelikes to play :) (and an overview of what I've tried)

[transcend11]

Yet another one of these?  Indeed it is... but just like the fact you all love to die over and over and over again... topics like these will never get old

I'm new to roguelikes and am looking to add a few great games to my library to bounce between.  I'll tell you a little of what I think I do and don't like so far.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - love it, the game that got me hooked.  Played for many hours.  Great tileset and user interface, numerous class/race combo, many skills, AUTO-EXPLORE... polished, easy to learn, hard to master.  What don't I like about Crawl?  I don't really know... it's extremely tactical, which can get dry after playing it for too many hours in a row - perhaps only because I've never gotten past level 10

Nethack - I don't like this, and this is why: there is so much hidden information.  Nothing helpful is told to you within the game.  No items have descriptions!  This is a big deal to me.  And the part I hate worse is that there are spoilers that are essentially necessary to win, such as weird items with weird effects, that don't make sense.  I don't want to have to look up on a wiki every facet of the game... I want the game to help me out just a little bit.  I don't mind a challenge, but having to do unintuitive things is annoying to me.  Plus it takes a lot of effort to do basic things, the user interface seems old.

Incursion - As much as a dislike the dungeon and dragons character system, this game is amazing!  So much depth, so many options!  Absolutely everything has a very... lengthy... description... There's a number for everything.  While overwhelming to me, I can see myself getting very hooked on this game once I learn the ropes of roguelikes a bit better.

Mage Guild - awesome little game, a puzzle game, really.  Lots of item combinations to play with... I've gotta play this one more, it stands out a lot to me.  I don't mind "simpler" games, I just want my roguelikes to be FUN!  And this seems to fit the bill.

ADoM - haven't given this much of a try.  The age of the game, user interface, and full-ASCII scares me away a little.  I do like that it has a theme and narrative, and I've heard it's very deep, but like Nethack- I've heard spoilers are practically necessary to get very far.

Angband - I just didn't like it... it felt boring to me.  Maybe the levels were too big and empty, or the fact that it seems to reward grinding... I don't want that.

Ok, so there's some of the games I have found and have tried, some I have played much more than others.  So based on my opinions of these, are there other roguelikes you think I'd love?

A Cliffnotes of what I'm looking for:
-A deep game is great, but not one that I have to use a wiki to look everything up in
-Simple games are just fine too, just need to be fun!
-Graphics/tilesets are a plus, but not necessary!
-A good user interface/controls are important

Thanks for helping another roguelike noob out

[corremn]

IVAN is a good little game that has been around for a while. It has no character generation screen and just drops you into the world. It is quite easy to play and has a modernish interface, plus its tile based. It has a limb system which can be a turn off at the start but is quite rewarding once you get into it.  There are unfornuately many tricks needed to win the game but these are only really needed once you get deeper and you wonder why when you wield great equipment you die so easily. Give it a go.

SewerJacks, simple interface, unique combat system, graphical tiles, sometimes chaotic intense gameplay but is quite unbalanced (which is intentional by the way hence the short game time) but can be a tad unfair at times.  Introduces team based combat.  Good for a quick 20 playing session before you do some real work.

[Darren Grey]

ADoM - haven't given this much of a try.  The age of the game, user interface, and full-ASCII scares me away a little.  I do like that it has a theme and narrative, and I've heard it's very deep, but like Nethack- I've heard spoilers are practically necessary to get very far.

Spoilers aren't necessary, but there are certain things that will instantly kill you if you dn't know how to deal with them in advance.  Certain players enjoy discovering these sorts of things for themselves and learning to find ways around them.  It's a great game overall though, and you'd have to play a long time before you ever got good enough to get stuck without spoilers.

A Cliffnotes of what I'm looking for:
-A deep game is great, but not one that I have to use a wiki to look everything up in
-Simple games are just fine too, just need to be fun!
-Graphics/tilesets are a plus, but not necessary!
-A good user interface/controls are important

For graphics and interface I'd have to suggest TOME4.  It's still in the beta stage, but is playable and winnable and has a lot of great content.  It can be played with mouse and keyboard (can be played solely with either or with whatever mix you like best).  It's very tactical, with combat very focused on activating specific talents which have cooldown times.  There currently aren't a huge number of races and classes, but there is still a lot of variety in the playstyles available.  If you want a fairly brainless game go for a Berserker, if you want a game with lots of options go for Alchemist, if you want a careful tactical game go for ShadowBlade, and so on.  It's a lot of fun and at just the right level of difficulty too.  Plus there's a new version with lots of cool new features every 2 weeks, so keeping up with development is great.

[getter77]

I'd recommend Lost Labyrinth I suppose....Transcendence and/or LambdaRogue for something different yet still.

ToME 4 is certainly one to watch as well.

[transcend11]

Thanks a lot for the recommendations, everyone!  I'll definitely try some of these

Just played TOME4 for about 2 hours... I'm liking it a lot!  Haven't died yet on my ShadowBlade, although it was a close call when I opened up a small building that happened to be packed full with 9 rattlesnakes!  With some maneuvering between the trees and my luck with having a couple of Cure Poisons I cleared them all out and was rewarded with a ton of health, mana, and cure poison potions from their building... fun stuff

[Skeletor]

A Cliffnotes of what I'm looking for:
-A deep game is great, but not one that I have to use a wiki to look everything up in
-Simple games are just fine too, just need to be fun!
-Graphics/tilesets are a plus, but not necessary!
-A good user interface/controls are important

Doom the roguelike
http://doom.chaosforge.org
Ascii only, but soon there will be tiles drawed by Derek Yu (Spelunky developer). Simple, fast and very funny.  Good interface/controls. Easy to learn, hard to master. There's a lot of action. Big community, active developer. Awesome.

A quest too far
http://www.randomstuff.org.uk/~geoffrey/roguelikes/aquesttoofar.html
Ascii only. This is a 7drl, so it's a very short and simple game but still cool and challenging.

Frozen depth
http://skoti.mbnet.fi/frozend
Ascii only. This is a more "classic" roguelike, still simpler than Adom, Nethack, etc but definitively worth a try.

Triangle wizard
http://trianglewizard.webs.com
Action-roguelike. Developer is very active. Not much a roguelike. Somewhat hard to learn, but worth the effort IMO.

Spelunky
www.spelunkyworld.com
Action-roguelike. Very playable ('80s coin up style) and still with many roguelike elements. Neat.

[Z]

I don't believe ADOM needs spoilers. There are some things which are not obvious, like ways to pass some locks in the main dungeon, but if you listen to the songs of Mad Minstrel, read some fortune cookies, ask the ancient dwarf about the locks you have problems with, read the manual, including the list of commands (do you wonder what "wipe face" and "clean ears" commands are used for? just remember them and use them when you get dirty), use a bit of common sense, and pick a powerful character, you should get the normal ending. Probably some of your characters will die on the way because you don't know what is where, and you will go to a harder place before an easier place, or you will go to the right place, but not prepared... well, be always prepared, and be prepared to run, there should not be that many surprises. There are some cryptic hints and more obscure ways to make you more powerful or give you a better ending, but they are not necessary. There are some other problems about ADOM, but it is a good game in general.

[jocke the beast]

Brogue: very similar to the original Rogue but different also. It's beautiful even if it's ascii, cool features and very simple commands. Try it!!!!

A traditional 26-level crawl to the Amulet of Yendor. Development focus was on a smooth learning curve with strategic depth and intuitive/beautiful appearance within the strictures of ASCII/Unicode display

http://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/

Frozen depth: look above. Clean and good.

Powder: Graphics. Really cool hacklite.

http://www.zincland.com/powder/

Try all of them. Personally I play Brogue every day. It's beautiful, simple yet full of cool features and just plain good.

[Skeletor]

Yes, don't forget to give Adom another try; unlike Nethack, it doesn't need spoilers, and it is the favourite roguelike of many.