Angband
Angband is an open-source roguelike, the goal of which is to survive 100 floor levels of the fortress Angband in order to defeat Morgoth. The player begins in a town where they can buy equipment before beginning the descent. Once in the maze-like fortress, the player encounters traps, monsters, equipment, and hidden doors. With the help of found objects and enchantments, the player's attack and defense power increases, and can even neutralize specific attacks. Angband gameplay emphasises combat and careful resource management. The player has finite health points, and death is final. Although Angband records the player's progress to a save file, it does not allow one to resume a saved game in which the player character has already died. If the player overcomes Morgoth on the 100th floor, the game continues, and the player may continue descending to further floors. The levels are procedurally generated, allowing for a unique game in every play.
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Angband, particularly its modernized evolutions that most people play today, really does a lot of work to demystify the actual act of playing and leave the mysteries where they belong, in the actual act of playing the game itself. While the genre of Roguelikes has done much to polish all of its edges and friction away into a smooth orb that is magnetically attracted to your player and dispenses health boosts, Angband retains much of the unrestrained systemic interactions that make a dungeon crawler good. The exploits remain present as both a method to rapidly advance and as a way to endow you with unbridled hubris and blow yourself up fighting a chaos drake that you thought was a baby dragon.
The joy of roguelikes ultimately comes from how much they allow the random generations to run wild, and Angband really is the penultimate form of that unbridled randomness coupled with the haphazard pastiche Tolkeinsian mythology of 90s rpgs to really immerse you in its simple but deep world. Every time you die and see your high score climbing a little bit higher you are overcome with an urge to immediately start another 14 hour run but this time you won't fall for that infinitely spawning Hummerhorn shit...
the tactical combat and loot table aspects of roguelikes polished to a sheen, and absolutely nothing else. dont expect to like it if you are primarily into hack or qud. rumour has it beating frogcomposband gets you guaranteed entry to greybeard valhalla