One of the first few followers in the footsteps of Rogue. If you like rougelikes and are interested in their history, Nethack is cool and you should try it. The key, as with most rougelikes, is to minimize random chance. This ultimately makes Nethack feel like a long series of logic puzzles, as you rub all the items in your inventory together, seeing how they react, and trying to rule out similar looking items that can kill you when you use them. If this sounds annoying, when you get tired of banging your head against the game trying to figure things out for yourself, you can look up a guide and breeze right through it. There’s a handful of tricks to each stratum of the dungeon and the dungeon itself, and if you keep a window open with a list of these tips, Nethack becomes much, much less intimidating.

The Dev Team Thinks Of Everything.

Except the part where the game is inaccessible, because while the game is predictable enough once you know the outcomes and the fail states... you have a legal binder's worth of rote memorization to conquer if you don't bother with spoilers. So most don't.

For example, did you know that walking into a cockatrice corpse is fine, but when you're not wearing gloves and you're blind, you're feeling around and touching the corpse of a petrifying monster? Add that knowledge together, and you'll see why you're being asked if you wanted your possessions identified.

Nowadays this kind of gameplay is considered highly-inconvenient and such a thing will not find itself in games that is too focused on QoL.

i think i like NetHack conceptually more than i like actually playing it. the system-driven mechanics and unabashed embrace of adventure game "bloat" and "pointless features" is a nice change of pace compared to more gamey and streamlined and arguably soulless roguelikes like Brogue and DCSS, yet actually playing NetHack reminds me why those games are designed the way they are. i'm not sure NetHack is as bad as it's most vicious detractors say it is, but they are at least certainly onto something. lots of mechanics here encourage, intentionally or not, very boring and degenerate forms of play. altar ID, price ID, corpse eating, stashes, statues dropping spellbooks, wishes, etc. all encourage very tedious forms of play, even if they're fun or novel at first. despite all that i still feel like i don't want the game any other way.

i do not think i am actually done with nethack in any way at the moment, but i'm not sure if there'd be a better time to log it. pioneer of all games, not just roguelikes, in many ways:

difficulty.
as an early computer game, nethack is not bound to the tyrannical monetary constraints of a typical arcade cabinet; i.e. dying does not cost the player a quarter. as a result, death (and other failures) are allowed to be fun here. the only pressure on the player is whatever pressure they choose themselves to apply. the vast majority of fun, fulfilling hack runs end in abject failure by death. the game uses this to prop up its many, many systems and non sequitur mechanics by designing the game around being fun while not having a clue as to how the game works. as a result, it takes on the story-generator form that we still see in many PC games today: dwarf fortress, rimworld, rust, minecraft, etc.

controls.
evil-esque keybindings. beautiful. emacs users will burn in hell.

community.
hand-in-hand with the difficulty here, this game centers one of the best-documented media "cults" i've seen. an amazing wiki, age-old chatrooms, forums across the entire web, and rock-solid spoiler.txt files make researching the backend of nethack more than rewarding; the culture of nethack is a valid and legitimate part of the game itself.

there are a million more things i could say about why i love nethack, but i'll try to keep it brief. i love that it's FOSS, i love the often incredibly dated pop culture jokes, i love the blatant aping of tolkien lore, i love the extensibility of the software, i love the multiplayer, i love the opaqueness of the game's world and lore, and i love dying stupid deaths.

(it will always be a tragedy that I can't track my total playtime across all machines)

Yo, they have NetHack on here? Guess I'd better write a review.

NetHack is a roguelike (one of the first, in fact) that has existed in a limbo of on-and-off development since 1987. It has a funny name that means absolutely nothing to a person unaware of its history, being a fairly traditional D&D-inspired dungeon-delver with a few anachronisms and cultural references thrown in for flavor. But even in spite of how very usual it might seem, it's just a front: It's a terrifically unhinged experience with a lot of character (literally; the game is typically displayed through ASCII symbols, though there is a graphical tileset if you prefer not having to consult a spreadsheet to have the vaguest idea of what you're looking at).

You choose from one of thirteen roles, from such recognizable archetypes as Knight and Wizard to the more unusual like Tourist and Caveman. You're tasked by your patron deity with plumbing the depths of the Dungeons of Doom, seeking the Wizard of Yendor. In his grasp lies the legendary Amulet of Yendor, an artifact of untold power, and by bringing it to your god, you can assure their dominance over all other divinities. In exchange, you will be granted demigodhood, with immortality simply being one perk of the package deal. And... That's it. There's a sort of mini-quest unique to your role that you will need to complete before the game can be won, but otherwise, it's as plain of an excuse plot as it gets. Go get the Amulet and try not to die along the way.

But NetHack doesn't really need any more than that, because while many role-playing games will try to lead you through a defined story, in this game, you write your own. The lack of real direction means complete freedom to achieve your goals in any way you choose, and NetHack encourages this by giving you a myriad of means by which you can interact with the game world. Hundreds of items and monsters await you in the depths, all of which react to what you do in surprising and sometimes frankly genius ways. For your part, you can read, engrave, pray, quaff, eat, wear, chat, ride, throw, rub, apply, tip, kick, etc. etc. This results in an experience where experimentation is key; you can surmount your challenges (or make things worse for yourself) by using your knowledge and ever-growing kit of mundane and magical items in creative ways. In that respect, while NetHack does have the typical sword-and-spell gameplay you would expect from your standard dungeon crawler, the game ultimately feels more like a puzzle game. You can say something to it, and very rarely will the game say "no" - and if it does, it will assuredly explain to you why. "The Dev Team Thinks of Everything" is a phrase coined in relation to this game, and it really shows. Everything you can do gets a response, and learning how to manipulate the outcomes in your favor is key to the NetHack experience.

But more than likely, things won't work out the way you planned, and you will die. And being a true roguelike, that means it's all over - Beefsteak the Barbarian is well and truly gone, and somebody else will have to step up and take their place. Upon returning to the dungeon, you will find that nothing looks familiar anymore. The layout is completely changed, and even the objects that were once recognizable to you no longer do what you expect. You will have to rediscover everything, identify the magical artifacts, build your repertoire of skills and items anew, and hope that you learned enough from your previous folly to make it little further this time. It's punishing, but the sense of discovery and adventure that comes as a result of learning how to survive the alien and treacherous world of the Dungeons is something that is rarely found in games, past or present. Indeed, it's those unique-to-you experiences that will be the largest motivator to continue forward, outside of simply being able to overcome the game itself.

Here are, in no particular order, some of my most notable experiences playing NetHack:

- Slipping off my horse and dying within ten turns of starting the game
- Donning a cursed Hawaiian shirt and being unable to remove it until an elf very politely burnt it (and me) to a crisp
- Torturing a gnome by repeatedly blinding it with a camera
- Turning to stone because I bit a cockatrice while polymorphed into a vampire lord
- Casually chucking the legendary sword Excalibur into a dark corner because a djinn gave me a cooler weapon
- Having a wand of invisibility stolen from me by a nymph and having the rest of my gear subsequently stolen by the now-invisible nymph
- Stripping down naked before being beaten mercilessly by a horde of nurses and somehow ending up twice as healthy as before
- Praying to my god to save me and being promptly disintegrated for having the gall to pray in Hell
- Smashing a cream pie into my face before fighting Medusa to ensure I don't accidentally meet her gaze while stabbing her
- And most importantly, ascending for the first time

When I beat the game, I had one of the most authentic pop-offs I've ever done in my entire life. I felt relieved, and frankly proud, because I could say I'd beaten NetHack. It feels like being part of an exclusive club where everybody knows each other and has plenty of stories to share. I wanted to get a t-shirt that said "I Ascended", knowing full damn well most people would have no idea what it meant, but content that one day I might come across somebody who would say "hell yeah, brother" and give me a high-five. It felt like a legitimate accomplishment, which not many games these days can do.

So obviously, I love this game. Do I recommend it?

Well, it really depends. If you're a person with a good sense of humor who loves experimenting, open-ended sandboxy gameplay, creating your own goals and - most importantly - dying, you will probably adore this game. If you're literally anybody else, it's a much harder sell. Going into NetHack blind is like learning to walk for the first time. You will realize quickly that while you can do just about anything in NetHack, learning how is the hard part. Because even once you learn how to move, and how to perform actions, and how to not die from eating rotten food, you will also have to understand that NetHack plays by its own insane rules and it will repeatedly teach you what those are the hard way. You are going to die over and over again to things that will seem completely unfair and unforeseeable. The biggest part of improving at playing this game is to understand that success lies in preparing for every possible little thing that can go wrong, so that even your unluckiest moments can be turned around into triumphs. Almost no game of NetHack is truly unwinnable, and the few that are you probably won't even be aware of because you died long before you could know. You will learn from your mistakes and, with enough time and patience (and you will need to be patient), succeed in your quest.

... But hey, it's 2023, we have busy lives. I do believe that the less you know about NetHack going into it, the more fun you'll have with it. By definition, the NetHack community at large tends to consider any mechanics not outright explained in the game's meagre supplementary materials as "spoilers". But you might eventually get just a smidge exasperated trying to decipher each and every little obscure and obtuse mechanic on offer. So I'll meet you halfway - play the game, get as far as you're willing without looking anything up, and when you find yourself thoroughly perplexed on how to proceed, go check the Wiki. It's very detailed and will help de-mystify some of the more important core concepts of the game. That, or you can ask for advice on the NetHack subreddit or Libera IRC channels (if that sounded like a bunch of hoopla, don't worry about it, you're not wrong for being confused). Your fellow Hackers have a great love for the game and want to see you succeed. Just don't spoil any more than you have to and only use it as a last resort when you're feeling truly lost.

There's something about NetHack that feels remarkably unique. Taken at face value, it's derivative and seems to pride itself on still feeling like a game from 1987, while similar games in its genre have long since made the leap into the 21st century. However, it is a genuine labor of love - the end result of people hunching over a computer, asking themselves "what if" and then providing an answer for the rest of us. No two games of NetHack ever feel the same, which is a thing a lot of other video games boast of, but never really seem to deliver on. It's somehow simultaneously stuck in the past and living far in the future. I think that's worthy of admiration, even if it's ultimately not your cup of tea.

Oh, did I mention it's free? Make sure to get it from the official site. Good luck, and go bravely with Lugh.

Nethack is hell to play but no other roguelike has managed to take it's place in my heart. It's a perfect intersection to me between system driven bullshit and simple dungeon crawling.

The only run I ever "ascended" was as a Valkyrie on the alt.org server. Got all the way to the end, took that shortcut where you flip your alignment last minute to win under a different god, then still gave it to the lawful deity I had betrayed. About 8 years later I managed to get all the way back there and win a run of the game.