What other roguelikes do you play?

[Piroco]

What says on the tin. What other RL experiences do you have and how do they compare with DCSS?

One of my firsts and favorites is Elona, which admittedly is more of a RPG Sim than a roguelike . I've played it for years now and switched to Elona+ when the original's development stopped. The community is pretty active though. I really recommend it, but it does have the downside of being grindy as hell; still pretty challenging. Has a ton of varant mods but almost all exclusively in japanese. Also has a pretty wicked/dirty sense of humor.

Cardinal Quest II I've played up to clearing Act 3 in Suicide mode. With a Ranger. Which is kind of the equivalent of winning a 3-rune game with MiBe I suppose. It's a "coffee-break" RL so it's pretty short and pretty fun. It also has very interesting and varied map layouts, and nice graphics. The original CQ is pretty bland in comparison, and doesn't even have a final boss battle...

Red Rogue is a platformer RL (think Spelunky). Its very to-the-point, no shops, little dialogue, no hunger system, and skills are based on weaponry and *drumroll* wearing your enemies' skin. I loved its oppressive atmosphere, and it has a 'turn' mode and 'real-time' mode.

DoomRL is exactly as it sounds, and stays faithful to the classical Doom atmosphere. It's pretty short, but gets brutal quickly with the difficulty, especially in the special floor branches.

The Enchanted Cave I and II, I found them to be pretty charming and the second has cool art and music, but it is very easy for a roguelike, especially since it has a few easily-executed cheese strategies to it.

I recently started IVAN. It's brutal as hell. Can't even start the second half without literally dying at the first step due to a mine going off. Still has a charming quality. Development of the original stopped long ago, but the community has picked it up since then. It also has variant mods.

That's all I can remember for now... Currently trying CastlevaniaRL and Brogue while attempting a (legal) 3-5 rune victory at DSCC.

I don't play ASCII or console mode partially because of sight defects which hurt my head, partially because I'm nitpicky I do hope to get around that to play the classics someday.

[Shard1697]

Sil is good as hell

So is Caves of Qud, Sproggiwood, and Tangledeep

[emikaela]

not really playing any other roguelike actively right now. i want to get into sil and qud more, and intend to play through the tome4 expansions at some point (there's a lot i like about the game, but it's so long i always seem to lose interest halfway through). hoping the next brogue update is not too many years away.

if we're talking about past experiences i also like doomrl, dungeons of dredmor, dreamquest, desktop dungeons, huh i seem to have a thing for the letter d

[Fingolfin]

Dungeons of Dredmor is absolutely hilarious

[Shard1697]

oh yeah dungeonmans is good

[Leszczynek]

None. After sinking into DCSS no other roguelike seems worthwhile. I did play Sil a bit relatively recently but it's not nearly as fun. In the past I played ADOM and a tiny bit of Rogue, Nethack and Elona.

[Sphara]

ADOM sometimes when I need a reminder that DCSS inventory system is actually pretty good.

Angband on ironman mode sometimes. That's a good way of trying to learn how to drop semi-useful I-may-just-need-this-once-or-twice items forever and never look back.

NetHack SLASHEM to remind me that I just should not play it ever again.

[pedritolo]

dreamquest, desktop dungeons

Yes, exactly this!

[Vajrapani]

I've played a small amount of Sil,Poschengband and vanilla Angband in the past. I got pretty bored with them , then I found crawl which got me hooked once I learnt how to win.

I've recently played a nethack variant called Dynahack, but it's not incredibly fun. Most monsters are complete popcorn, the character builds you can do aren't very varied, and the game plan seems the exact same(e.g. sacrifice at altars for a good weapon, get reflection and magic resistance, do the class quest and win the game.). If I put more effort into I could easily win it but it seem like the type of game where you win it a few times and then you have to resort to conducts to get any fun out of it, so then I just went back to crawl to try and finish off my greatplayer run.

[njvack]

Crypt of the Necrodancer is one of my favorite games of all time. Pretty standard roguelike mechanics, except that there's a soundtrack and you and the monsters move on the beat. It is made with a very large amount of love.

[Kiel97]

I also Nethack (Vulture too), ADOM and Tales of Maj'Eyal

[Sprucery]

Started with (the one and only) Nethack in early 1990s. Crawl in 1998 and ADoM a year or so later IIRC. For a while I played all three. After winning all classes in Nethack I got bored with trying different conducts and stopped playing it. For some years I played ADoM (about 15 ultra endings) and Crawl. I had a few years' break from roguelikes and then started Crawl again. I realized how good it was and couldn't bring myself to playing ADoM again. So for many years now it has been only Crawl.

I've also played some DoomRL long long ago (I think I won once), lots of Nethack+ in the 1990s, some Slash'em and some Alphaman. That's mostly it (of course I've tried some other roguelikes as well).

[VictorG]

For a quicker game than Crawl, I love Brogue. Incredibly focused design, truly inspiring. It cuts away everything that you thought was essential for RPGs but turns out not to be.

I (kind of obviously) have a soft spot for my own roguelike as well, though it's not in active development at the moment: Kerkerkruip, the interactive fiction roguelike.

[Piroco]

Noob uestion: What is Sil?

Also, ohboy, Crypt of the Necrodancer. I've LOVED that game since the announcement trailer. I got to play it once at a friend's house and it was pretty much what I expected it to be and it was AMAZING. Sadly haven't been able to buy it since I'm poor, but hopefully one day I will.

One day I may try ADOM and Angband, been curious since the original dev of Elona claimed they were his direct inspirations (along with Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode).

Speaking of DF, I have to try it someday, just for the sheer insanity in either Fortress or Adventure Mode.

[bel]

Noob uestion: What is Sil?

Sil is a heavily-modified Angband variant. Here is the website. The latest version is 1.3. I quite like it, but after playing roguelikes with Crawl's interface, one is spoiled and it can be sometimes hard to play other roguelikes. Mostly I miss Tab and autoexplore.

You can also try MPA-Sil, which is a fork of Sil made by MarvinPA, who is also a Crawl dev. It contains some interface and gameplay improvements. I don't think it has been updated for 1.3, but I'm not sure.

[TeshiAlair]

DCSS is literally the only old-school roguelike I've ever enjoyed.

As far as newer ones, Crypt of the Necrodancer is fun, Caves of Qud is nice if tiring, and Tangledeep is possibly my favorite game currently, it's so damn good.

[Cheibrodos]

Infra Arcana is fun if you hate yourself

[njvack]

If you're willing to stray a bit farther afield into "roguelike-like" territory, FTL is pretty great. Randomly-generated space systems with semi-realtime combat. If you have a choice, I'd get it on iOS, the UI there is really good.

Also in the modern realm, there are some very small roguelikes that are very, very well-balanced. 868-HACK and Hoplite are two I've played (and liked) enough to get non-terrible at, the same people who told me about those also liked Arcane Tower though I never managed to get into it.

If you want to dip into something that's a ridiculous sim with "roguelike flavor notes," you should give Dwarf Fortress a few hours of your time. Even if it's not your jam, it is a work of art.

...you'd probably get more out of DF from Youtube than by playing it, actually.

[ZipZipskins]

If you're willing to stray a bit farther afield into "roguelike-like" territory, FTL is pretty great. Randomly-generated space systems with semi-realtime combat. If you have a choice, I'd get it on iOS, the UI there is really good.

I've been playing FTL again recently pretty non stop on my iPad. The game is just exceptionally fun. It's really rewarding, and your process of gitting gud is downright tangible.

[Piroco]

If you're willing to stray a bit farther afield into "roguelike-like" territory, FTL is pretty great. Randomly-generated space systems with semi-realtime combat. If you have a choice, I'd get it on iOS, the UI there is really good.

Also in the modern realm, there are some very small roguelikes that are very, very well-balanced. 868-HACK and Hoplite are two I've played (and liked) enough to get non-terrible at, the same people who told me about those also liked Arcane Tower though I never managed to get into it.

If you want to dip into something that's a ridiculous sim with "roguelike flavor notes," you should give Dwarf Fortress a few hours of your time. Even if it's not your jam, it is a work of art.

...you'd probably get more out of DF from Youtube than by playing it, actually.

FTL looks like a really cool game, regardless of it being a "roguelike-like" or not. Checked some gameplays on youtube after a friend recommended it to me, and loved what I saw. Though it is a bit complicated to understand at first, but well, what RL isn't like that?

Hoplite kinda reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFXYSb5lq54
direct linking cuz I fail at adding links to text

The first time I checked DF was through the 1d4chan wiki article and that insane Boatmurdered LP. That alone drew me in, but I admit I'm still somewhat intimidated lol

Gotta have to make a list, all the recs in this thread look pretty interesting and worth checking out

[Shard1697]

FTL is the best Star Trek game despite not actually being Star Trek

[mattlistener]

Anyone playing Unexplored?

I downloaded it recently but haven't launched yet. Will comment about it if no-one else does.

[Kate]

Anyone playing Unexplored?

I beat it fairly easily (after watching someone stream it for a while, so I'd picked up how a bunch of things worked already) and then kinda lost interest but it's definitely neat and seems to be updated quite regularly. It takes a ton of good inspiration from Brogue specifically.

You can also try MPA-Sil, which is a fork of Sil made by MarvinPA, who is also a Crawl dev. It contains some interface and gameplay improvements. I don't think it has been updated for 1.3, but I'm not sure.

It is updated to 1.3 (with pretty much all of the work for that done by elliptic), you just have to switch branches since I didn't get around to changing the master branch. Sil's definitely my first recommendation in terms of just being a mostly-traditional roguelike but with an excellent focused design, more so than Brogue it really hits that for me.

[nago]

I beat it fairly easily (after watching someone stream it for a while, so I'd picked up how a bunch of things worked already) and then kinda lost interest but it's definitely neat and seems to be updated quite regularly. It takes a ton of good inspiration from Brogue specifically.

Which one? I played I think like 10-20 hours but I am still very bad at it - can't get past mid-deep often skipping a lot of areas except a insanely lucky run where I haven't died yet.

Anyone playing Unexplored?

I downloaded it recently but haven't launched yet. Will comment about it if no-one else does.

As said above, I spent for now about 10/20 hours on it.
I think it's the best roguelite ever since the original Binding of Isaac. It can't be defined a traditional roguelike "only" because it has real-time combat, whose mechanics unfortunately I don't like too much (otherwise I think it could be #1 roguelite ever).

In any case, it is heavily inspirated by Brogue and has one of the best procedural level generator I've ever, plus a lot of nicely differentiated and interesting monsters, items and so on. Overall it's one of the most polished procedural games I've played.
And as MarvinPa said, the devs are very active - they've pushed a lot of (free!) updates since the first release and the game has changed a lot since then, because content was added (e.g. new level layout), or modified (e.g. combat overhaul).

[mattlistener]

I beat Unexplored over the weekend, taking a slow'n'steady approach. I only skipped a small number of enemies, many tough ones I was able to deal with by retreating and coming back with bow&arrow, stealth, or a suitable immunity. There's a lot of achievements and other classes to unlock and play with, so I think it still has a fair amount of replay.

My one-prior run, in which I managed to equip two cursed daggers of Shrieking, turned out to be an excellent training regimen. I made it about 2/3 of the way on that character, never got uncursed but learned a ton about sneak attacks and noise.

The game has lots of systems that just work without a lot of fuss -- noise/light/detection, weapon swinging, flight, momentum, diffusion and other behaviors of gasses(!).

[cerealjynx]

I'm getting pretty keen on The Ground Gives Way lately. Really tight interface, great ascii, lots of tactics and gear-swapping to consider.

[Shard1697]

does the ground gives way still have the thing where for a while it's good to use your bare fists to punch things unconscious and then throw a rock at them while they're down to kill them, because fists let you do more 'damage' than weapons for a while because you have two of them but it's non-lethal damage(but you can just kill with thrown rocks immediately afterwards anyways)