Exploring classic roguelike games

The original Rogue video game came out around 1980 to 1985. (Rogue is a "Dungeons & Dragons" style dungeon crawling game.) Shortly after that, a lot of similar "roguelike" games followed. Not really being much of a video gamer, I had no awareness of these games at the time. Many decades later, I've developed a curiosity about roguelikes, so I recently went poking into the topic.

The Wikipedia entry for Rogue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game)

The best source for learning about roguelikes is probably the RogueBasin site:
https://roguebasin.com/index.php/Main_Page
https://roguebasin.com/index.php/Rogue
https://roguebasin.com/index.php/Tree_of_roguelike_evolution
https://roguebasin.com/index.php/Major_roguelikes

The CRPG Addict played Rogue in 2010:
https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2010/02/rogue-most-difficult-crpg-ive-played.html
https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2010/02/rogue-story-and-gameplay.html
(He's also reviewed Hack, Moria, Omega, and several versions of NetHack.)

For anyone expecting YouTube videos, here's a couple that I thought were interesting:

Sprite Castle LIVE FROM BOATFEST 2026! Join Rob "Flack" OHara as he dives DEEP into C64 Rogue-likes!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ9jTay2oI0

Epyx Rogue Amiga Game: How to Play
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_RZ4CmfKPg

I hope I don't end up wasting too much time on these games. Due to the obligatory "permadeath" feature, they're almost impossible to beat, and I hear they can be very addictive. (To increase your chance of winning, you can employ a method called "save scumming", but that's considered to be cheating by the roguelike community.)

Most roguelikes were made for either DOS or Windows, but there are still a decent number of them that will run natively (that is, without WINE) in Linux, my daily-driver OS. My Linux package manager has easily installable versions of Linley's Dungeon Crawl, Shattered Pixel Dungeon, Angband, Zangband, Brogue CE, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Moria, NetHack, Omega, SLASH'EM, ToME2, Dwarf Fortress, and the BSD (Unix) version of the original Rogue. I'd kind of like to start with the Epyx version of Rogue, but I don't think that the Epyx version was released for Linux. (That would mean having to boot into Windows/DOSBox to play the game.) However, an Epyx Rogue version was ported to Amiga (and Atari ST), so maybe I can play the Amiga version of Rogue via the FS-UAE emulator in Linux.

If anyone here has spent any time with any of these games, I'd like to hear your stories.

Shame on me! How could I have forgotten the Digital Antiquarian's (Jimmy Maher's) article on the history of roguelikes? It's a long one, but it's a fascinating read:

https://www.filfre.net/2023/07/going-rogue/

Is Rogue worth it? Maybe I could try again.

@m011235 said ^

Is Rogue worth it? Maybe I could try again.

That's a tough question. I guess you'd have to enjoy dying repeatedly! :-)

I highly recommend Angband: https://rephial.org/

I discovered this game 2 years ago from a YouTube video where the dev started his talk by saying his proudest accomplishment in life, above his children, was that he beat Angband. I was like wait what is this game.

I played it and have contributed to the open source code on GitHub. It has been around for decades and is still going! If you have any questions about it I’m happy to answer.

I got into roguelike games years back after playing Hardcore World of Warcraft using the addon before official servers were announced.

Permadeath adds real stakes and fun and you treat plays as “runs”.

@ThreeSadPandas said ^

I highly recommend Angband:

I'll keep that in mind. However, my Linux package manager only has the version 3.5.1 available. Maybe that's good enough, idk...

EDIT - Oh, wow, I'm shocked (in a good way). I don't know much about compiling source code. If it's a very simple compile, I can sometimes do it, but my attempts at compiling usually fail. However, I decided to try compiling ver 4.2.6 for Linux. The first two attempts failed, but I was successful on the third attempt. I didn't try setting any compile options, but I might go back and see if I want to add some compile options before compiling.

So, it looks like I might have the latest version that I can use in Linux! (happy happy)

@NeuralGnat said ^

I highly recommend Angband:

I'll keep that in mind. However, my Linux package manager only has the version 3.5.1 available. Maybe that's good enough, idk...

I only have experience on 4.2+. If 3.5.1 is what you have access to I think that’s good enough. From what I know the jump to 4 was largely an under the hood code refactor for future maintainability and the game itself doesn’t behave or look much different.

@ThreeSadPandas said ^

I highly recommend Angband:

I'll keep that in mind. However, my Linux package manager only has the version 3.5.1 available. Maybe that's good enough, idk...

I only have experience on 4.2+. If 3.5.1 is what you have access to I think that’s good enough. From what I know the jump to 4 was largely an under the hood code refactor for future...

Read my edit in my previous post! :-))))

@NeuralGnat nice! Glad you could compile it. Makes me happy you’ll try it and that my little code contributions are running on your machine.

One funny mentality I picked up from hardcore wow scene after death is: we go AGANE.

God speed brave adventurer. Pick a warrior and prepare for one of the hardest games you’ve ever played :)

https://angband.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guide.html

I've only been able to compile the curses version of Angband 4.2.6 in Linux; I was hoping to get some graphics capability, but I guess ASCII is good enough. I don't think I'm going to resort to running Angband in Windows just to get graphics. :-)

(Just for grins, I did install the Linux package for ver 3.5.1, and it does have graphics capability. So I guess I can have one or the other, but not both.)