Everyone thinks of Rogue for Roguelikes as a genre and while Rogue is the father of the genre, Angband is its more successful but also somewhat neglected son that lingers on in undeserved obscurity but thrives nevertheless in the knowledge that its obscurity grants it safety.
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...
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...