Roguelikes
i was low on hit points so I quaff-ID'd a potion, and it was a potion of poison.
29 Games
4 Comments
i don't know what roguelikes you have looked into but presentation shouldn't be too much of an issue if i'm interpreting you correctly -- "major" roguelikes (i.e. began development in the 80s/90s and never ceased) like NetHack have terrible UI of course but any one made or significantly updated in the last two decades should be serviceable even if it's not the prettiest game in the world (though some are pretty). wrt turn-based combat, i have heard complaints about the unique way these games handle their turns before, and i think it comes down to the fact that a lot of them have you doing a lot of superfluous tedium: [auto-]exploring, resting to heal, annihilating trashmobs, etc. good (imo) games in this genre try to be "denser" and minimize that fluff as much as possible, though some embrace it. as for specific recommendations...
Brogue is by far the most common response to this question and for good reason: it is relatively simple, transparent in its mechanics, beautiful, has an excellent UI, has many tropes of the genre (text UI, item ID, generic high fantasy theme, etc.), has exceptional level generation, and is also just one of the best and most elegant roguelikes in general. it is the first one i played and as thus what hooked me.
other ones i would recommend, and are also recommended frequently, are Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (or DCSS, or crawl), Infra Arcana, and Sil/Sil-Q.
crawl is one of the major roguelikes that, for better or worse, went in a vastly different direction in its development and design philosophy relative to its peers, optimizing for accessibility and something closer to the aesthetic goals of e.g. Brogue. in that vein it attempts to be as ergonomic and transparent as possible, though it has a great deal more complexity and content, most notably having ~27 species (races), backgrounds (classes), and gods. it is also infamous for being very... radical... in its commitment to change and experimentation, to the point where i would recommend at least trying some of the earlier versions newer than ~0.20, though you should still probably start with the latest release. it's probably the easiest game listed here, assuming you pick an easy species/background/god combo; Minotaur Berserker of Trog is the canonical choice there, if they haven't removed one of those three entities. it also has graphics, though they are kind of all over the place aesthetically even if they've gotten better over the years.
Infra Arcana is set in the interwar period with a gothic horror/lovecraft theme replacing the standard high fantasy one. i.e. you are firing Colt M1911s at cultists, etc. it's probably a step more complex than Brogue but is still a pretty simple game, and is very "dense" in the sense from earlier: more than most other roguelikes every turn is important and every monster encounter is dangerous. keeping with the horror theme, you are disincentivized from slaughtering every monster you come across; avoidance is encouraged when possible. the only arguable issue is that it is very, very difficult; probably the hardest roguelike. regardless it's still an above-par introduction.
Sil (and its fork, Sil-Q) is a variant (fork) of Angband, though it is little like it. it is [strictly] set in the first age of Middle-earth wherein you descend the halls of Angband (the fortress, not the roguelike) to steal a Silmaril (or two, or three) from Morgoth's crown. the main thing that differentiates it (besides being set in Tolkien's legendarium) is its expansive character creation/progression and monster AI; you have a lot of choices wrt build, perhaps too many, and more intelligent monsters will attempt to run away and flank you.
there are other games that get recommended frequently, but i haven't played them enough. Cogmind (paid), DoomRL (now DRL bc intellectual property lol), Golden Krone Hotel (paid), and The Ground Gives Way (or TGGW) come up a lot.
there are also some i would strongly recommend against playing first (some of them frankly in general lol): any of the major ones besides crawl (so ADOM, Angband, NetHack, and ToME, mostly), and any "omegalike"*, or roguelike with an open world which is usually far longer and far more plot/lore-heavy, so ADOM (again), Caves of Qud, IVAN, Shadow of the Wyrm, Legerdemain, etc. some of these games are still very interesting for their own reasons, i have hundreds of hours in Caves of Qud and have heard good things about the others listed (though ADOM disinterests me), but they either play nothing like other roguelikes (and more like CRPGs) and/or are somehow even less accessible even if they aren't as tactically difficult.
*Omega is a roguelike from the 80s that, among other things, features an open world
Brogue is by far the most common response to this question and for good reason: it is relatively simple, transparent in its mechanics, beautiful, has an excellent UI, has many tropes of the genre (text UI, item ID, generic high fantasy theme, etc.), has exceptional level generation, and is also just one of the best and most elegant roguelikes in general. it is the first one i played and as thus what hooked me.
other ones i would recommend, and are also recommended frequently, are Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (or DCSS, or crawl), Infra Arcana, and Sil/Sil-Q.
crawl is one of the major roguelikes that, for better or worse, went in a vastly different direction in its development and design philosophy relative to its peers, optimizing for accessibility and something closer to the aesthetic goals of e.g. Brogue. in that vein it attempts to be as ergonomic and transparent as possible, though it has a great deal more complexity and content, most notably having ~27 species (races), backgrounds (classes), and gods. it is also infamous for being very... radical... in its commitment to change and experimentation, to the point where i would recommend at least trying some of the earlier versions newer than ~0.20, though you should still probably start with the latest release. it's probably the easiest game listed here, assuming you pick an easy species/background/god combo; Minotaur Berserker of Trog is the canonical choice there, if they haven't removed one of those three entities. it also has graphics, though they are kind of all over the place aesthetically even if they've gotten better over the years.
Infra Arcana is set in the interwar period with a gothic horror/lovecraft theme replacing the standard high fantasy one. i.e. you are firing Colt M1911s at cultists, etc. it's probably a step more complex than Brogue but is still a pretty simple game, and is very "dense" in the sense from earlier: more than most other roguelikes every turn is important and every monster encounter is dangerous. keeping with the horror theme, you are disincentivized from slaughtering every monster you come across; avoidance is encouraged when possible. the only arguable issue is that it is very, very difficult; probably the hardest roguelike. regardless it's still an above-par introduction.
Sil (and its fork, Sil-Q) is a variant (fork) of Angband, though it is little like it. it is [strictly] set in the first age of Middle-earth wherein you descend the halls of Angband (the fortress, not the roguelike) to steal a Silmaril (or two, or three) from Morgoth's crown. the main thing that differentiates it (besides being set in Tolkien's legendarium) is its expansive character creation/progression and monster AI; you have a lot of choices wrt build, perhaps too many, and more intelligent monsters will attempt to run away and flank you.
there are other games that get recommended frequently, but i haven't played them enough. Cogmind (paid), DoomRL (now DRL bc intellectual property lol), Golden Krone Hotel (paid), and The Ground Gives Way (or TGGW) come up a lot.
there are also some i would strongly recommend against playing first (some of them frankly in general lol): any of the major ones besides crawl (so ADOM, Angband, NetHack, and ToME, mostly), and any "omegalike"*, or roguelike with an open world which is usually far longer and far more plot/lore-heavy, so ADOM (again), Caves of Qud, IVAN, Shadow of the Wyrm, Legerdemain, etc. some of these games are still very interesting for their own reasons, i have hundreds of hours in Caves of Qud and have heard good things about the others listed (though ADOM disinterests me), but they either play nothing like other roguelikes (and more like CRPGs) and/or are somehow even less accessible even if they aren't as tactically difficult.
*Omega is a roguelike from the 80s that, among other things, features an open world
awesome, thanks a bunch for your write-up! I have no idea when I'll get around to playing one but it's always something that's on my radar. I've known about DCSS but never paid much attention to Brogue, I'll probably start off with it now though based on your recommendation. big fan of how Infra Arcana sounds conceptually as well.
I don't think I've ever played one for more than an hour lol, out of what I've tried off the top of my head - Tangledeep, Dungeonmans (refunded), Rogue Fable III (should've refunded..), Zorbus, and Rift Wizard - none of them really hooked me enough to want to keep playing except maybe Rift Wizard, which makes me interested in Path of Achra. ASCII doesn't really do it for me personally, thus the holdup over presentation with many of them, but it's definitely something I could get used to. I've had a passing interest in others mentioned too, namely CoQ and ToME, but yeah starting off with an open world wouldn't be the brightest idea.
overall I trust your input, I don't like the tedium either which is a big reason why some of these games seem tough to get into, and just as an example we both seem to prefer Dark Souls 3 for the same reasons too. thanks again for the recommendations, I'll keep them in mind! one last thing, what about ADOM disinterests you and what are the roguelikes you'd advise to not play at all?
I don't think I've ever played one for more than an hour lol, out of what I've tried off the top of my head - Tangledeep, Dungeonmans (refunded), Rogue Fable III (should've refunded..), Zorbus, and Rift Wizard - none of them really hooked me enough to want to keep playing except maybe Rift Wizard, which makes me interested in Path of Achra. ASCII doesn't really do it for me personally, thus the holdup over presentation with many of them, but it's definitely something I could get used to. I've had a passing interest in others mentioned too, namely CoQ and ToME, but yeah starting off with an open world wouldn't be the brightest idea.
overall I trust your input, I don't like the tedium either which is a big reason why some of these games seem tough to get into, and just as an example we both seem to prefer Dark Souls 3 for the same reasons too. thanks again for the recommendations, I'll keep them in mind! one last thing, what about ADOM disinterests you and what are the roguelikes you'd advise to not play at all?
fair warning wrt DCSS: as i sort of alluded to in my other comment, it is one of those games which -- due to its fundamental mechanics -- has tedium that can't really be removed without modification of those mechanics (i.e. a massive overhaul that would produce something unrecognizable). so instead it opts to reduce the friction of it as much as possible. infamously you will spend a lot of your keystrokes auto-exploring, auto-fighting, and resting to full heal, even if those aren't spending a lot of your time. i've probably invested the most time into DCSS but it's hardly the best designed out of the ones i recommended. in fact it's probably the worst.
> Tangledeep, Dungeonmans, Rogue Fable III, Zorbus, Rift Wizard
yeah none of these are ones i'd consider good introductions to the genre and they're hardly the peak of it (though i see Rift Wizard discussed positively quite frequently). Path of Achra is good but is also a pretty terrible introduction if only because it's entire gimmick is that it's exclusively strategy with close to zero tactics.
> CoQ
one thing about CoQ specifically: if you have experience with CRPGs (Fallout 1-2, Baldur's Gate, etc.) or WRPGs (Cyberpunk, Elder Scrolls, etc.) it will actually probably be a pretty intuitive experience specifically on the non-permadeath mode (which you should probably play on because CoQ does not feel designed around permadeath). CoQ nowadays has a very good UI and absent permadeath it plays less like a roguelike and more like an RPG which just so happens to be grid-based and turn-based.
> what about ADOM disinterests you
i attempted it a while back and just couldn't get into it, and i think a large reason for why that happened is the fact that games taking heavy influence from it like CoQ and Shadow of the Wyrm/SotW exist.
CoQ was something close to, and still is to a lesser extent, an adaptation of Gamma World, a post-apocalyptic sci-fantasy ttrpg (a few decades/centuries after the nukes go off there are now psychic mutants with rayguns etc.), which is already a much more interesting setting than generic high fantasy, but CoQ has since subtly retconned itself into a much more original setting that, while still accurately selling itself as sci-fantasy, feels hard to describe and do justice to. it also has excellent prose in things like creature and item descriptions.
SotW, which i have barely played but heard much talk about, is similar to Tolkein's legendarium in that it is attempting to create a fantasy setting ex nihilo with reinterpretations of preexisting folklore and myth, in SotW's case Germanic folklore -- also complete with good prose.
perhaps i'm being too presumptuous, but ADOM appears to have neither an interesting setting nor good prose, or if it does people never bring it up. that combined with the game not being any more or less mechanically gripping relative to the others and i really see no reason to play it.
> what are the roguelikes you'd advise to not play at all?
probably ADOM, Angband, and NetHack, the last one with several asterisks (see below). they all have their dedicated fans of course but i just don't think they're very good games. ADOM seems like its mechanics aren't very well thought-out and as noted previously doesn't seem to have any good writing to compensate. Angband is probably better gameplay-wise but is infamously the nadir of grind and tedium in this genre, so much so that it is/was a "huge influence" on Diablo.
NetHack is at least interesting. it, objectively, has several mechanics which encourage or necessitate degenerate and tedious forms of play, and far more infamously is a game that is extremely difficult "unspoiled" but is practically a solved game "spoiled" (i.e. with knowledge about the game obtained through looking things up on, say, its very good wiki). i can't really shake my periodic interest in it, however. even with some things spoiled it comes across as a unique, puzzle-like experience. i just wish it played to its strengths more.
> Tangledeep, Dungeonmans, Rogue Fable III, Zorbus, Rift Wizard
yeah none of these are ones i'd consider good introductions to the genre and they're hardly the peak of it (though i see Rift Wizard discussed positively quite frequently). Path of Achra is good but is also a pretty terrible introduction if only because it's entire gimmick is that it's exclusively strategy with close to zero tactics.
> CoQ
one thing about CoQ specifically: if you have experience with CRPGs (Fallout 1-2, Baldur's Gate, etc.) or WRPGs (Cyberpunk, Elder Scrolls, etc.) it will actually probably be a pretty intuitive experience specifically on the non-permadeath mode (which you should probably play on because CoQ does not feel designed around permadeath). CoQ nowadays has a very good UI and absent permadeath it plays less like a roguelike and more like an RPG which just so happens to be grid-based and turn-based.
> what about ADOM disinterests you
i attempted it a while back and just couldn't get into it, and i think a large reason for why that happened is the fact that games taking heavy influence from it like CoQ and Shadow of the Wyrm/SotW exist.
CoQ was something close to, and still is to a lesser extent, an adaptation of Gamma World, a post-apocalyptic sci-fantasy ttrpg (a few decades/centuries after the nukes go off there are now psychic mutants with rayguns etc.), which is already a much more interesting setting than generic high fantasy, but CoQ has since subtly retconned itself into a much more original setting that, while still accurately selling itself as sci-fantasy, feels hard to describe and do justice to. it also has excellent prose in things like creature and item descriptions.
SotW, which i have barely played but heard much talk about, is similar to Tolkein's legendarium in that it is attempting to create a fantasy setting ex nihilo with reinterpretations of preexisting folklore and myth, in SotW's case Germanic folklore -- also complete with good prose.
perhaps i'm being too presumptuous, but ADOM appears to have neither an interesting setting nor good prose, or if it does people never bring it up. that combined with the game not being any more or less mechanically gripping relative to the others and i really see no reason to play it.
> what are the roguelikes you'd advise to not play at all?
probably ADOM, Angband, and NetHack, the last one with several asterisks (see below). they all have their dedicated fans of course but i just don't think they're very good games. ADOM seems like its mechanics aren't very well thought-out and as noted previously doesn't seem to have any good writing to compensate. Angband is probably better gameplay-wise but is infamously the nadir of grind and tedium in this genre, so much so that it is/was a "huge influence" on Diablo.
NetHack is at least interesting. it, objectively, has several mechanics which encourage or necessitate degenerate and tedious forms of play, and far more infamously is a game that is extremely difficult "unspoiled" but is practically a solved game "spoiled" (i.e. with knowledge about the game obtained through looking things up on, say, its very good wiki). i can't really shake my periodic interest in it, however. even with some things spoiled it comes across as a unique, puzzle-like experience. i just wish it played to its strengths more.
trinity
2 months ago