Any Others?

[snow]

I love Crawl and I've tried similar games but they've all sucked. NetHack for example was bland, had a horrible interface, and was just too complicated to be fun. Rogue did it right by being simple and easy to pick up and Crawl plays the same way but is actually winnable. Plus with all the areas and builds you can play Crawl is just so much fun.

Are any other Roguelikes worth playing or is Crawl the only one?

[Jenx]

Actually, I personally really enjoyed NetHack. I sucked at it, true, but I suck at Crawl as well.

Despite the lack of spiffy tiles and autoexplore and so on, it's still a nice game...until the endgame, of course, at which point basically all melee classes became the same thing, which is annoying since the different roles, their quests and such is one of the few things I liked in NetHack that I didn't find here in Crawl. (here that was mostly replaced by the gods)

[mageykun]

+1 for actually liking Nethack.

There are two big differences a Crawl play would have to get over. The first is that Nethack requires a lot of internal coding- the player has to run some stuff brain side that would be a lot more convenient to run computer side (and that the player has grown used to crawl doing for him or her). Auto explore, auto travel, --more-- warnings, confirmation dialogs around dangerous things, etc, you have to build in your head. The confirmation dialogs especially- you need internal if/then statements to avoid some of the more available forms of suicide. You really also have to break out some scratch paper to replace the % and ctrl o screens, ctrl F, etc. You need to keep track of intrinsics, vaults, stashes, and the like manually (Nethack ascensions may not leave a mouge file, but each of mine produced an envelope back covered in notes). These necessary externalizations alone make the game more work to play, before we even get into the myrid of nasty and creative ways the game tries to kill you.

The second is that, compared to Crawl, Nethack is a low magic setting. There are maybe 20 fixedarts in the world, and most are long swords. No randarts. There are no ego weapons or brands- Flametounge and Icebrand are one of a kind artifacts. Divine influence is far more limited. There are far fewer spells, and they are far less potent- and they actually fade from the users mind with time. Etc. Magic has a very limited effect on the world. Compare with Crawl, a high magic setting to the extreme- the very walls glow with magical radiation. Nearly everything can come with a magical enchantment- and even fighters memorize potent spells. Hell, even berserkers are tempted. This one works both ways- a transitioning player will be surprised at the sudden dearth or plethora of mystic influences in their new environment.

Now that I've done my part to defend good old Nethack to the haters, I will say that nothing out there really does measure up to Crawl right now. It is by far the most polished and refined game of it's scope in the genre. There are a few nice ones of smaller scale, like Desktop Dungeons, if you weren't already aware of that. We've also got a thread here where people have tossed around a few sci fi roguelikes.

[vintermann]

There are some things that are nice in roguelikes, besides the things Crawl aim for. I played DarkGod's ToME 4 for a while, and find that I miss quests and story a little. (Not too much though, and not forever!).

Games that you can actually put down when you've won them, or you've seen as much as you want to, have a different kind of appeal. So do games with shorter playing time. I second the recommendation of Desktop Dungeons.

There's just been the annual seven-day roguelike challenge. They tend to produce many interesting, creative games that won't necessarily eat all your free time.

[joellercoaster]

^^^ everything mageykun said.

I'm reaching a bit here, but without Nethack to simultaneously inspire and make us angry, the current generation of brilliant Roguelikes may not have turned out so brilliant?

[galehar]

I think nethack is a fascinating game to discover. But once you're fully spoiled and have ascended a few times, it gets boring.

[dpeg]

Thankfully the roguelike world is big enough to allow a myriad of styles and approaches. This is genuinely a good thing -- it'd be sad if Crawl was the only (even the only big) one. That said, we were strongly affected by Nethack (I am sure this goes back to Linley) but unfortunately almost exclusively in learning how not to do certain things. You also have to realise that Nethack is very old (Crawl is just as old, but kept changing); it comes from a time when it was completely normal for computer games (whether action, crpg, roguelike) to be very harsh and at the same time demanding on the player, forcing you to draw maps, make notes, replay the same part over and over until you get it etc. It is one of Crawl's tenets to keep the harshness (most modern stuff is too soft on the player, in my opinion) but to reduce the work-like aspect as far as possible.
Regarding others: Everything that Jeff Lait touches turns to gold (at least roguelike-wise , google "zincland" and check it out!
Crawl is deliberately not about plots and quests; if you like that, look into new Tome and Incursion.
One of the founders of DCSS is now addicted to Sangband, so there must be something good in that as well.
I believe that the other roguelike fossils (ADOM and Nethack) just don't hold up to this new generation, although they'll keep being an inspiration, of course.

[galehar]

You also have to realise that Nethack is very old (Crawl is just as old, but kept changing)

Nethack was released in 1987, Dungeon Crawl in 1997, so not really "just as old".

[dpeg]

galehar: Of course. But I believe that Angband, ADOM, Nethack and Crawl are considered as the four old roguelikes. 14 years of history is very long in computer gaming, so I'd rather chalk up Crawl "as old as Nethack" than put it into "new games"

[Stormfox]

Crawl has a very well documented design philosophy.

Nethack's design philosophy isn't officially written down anywhere, but one observation from this longtime Nethacker is that it deliberately awards abuse of the rules, akin to the Obfuscated C Code Contest. Things that were not actual crash bugs tended to coalesce as features to be discovered.

For example, the mummy potion curse exploit in Crawl that got removed between 0.7 and 0.8? If it had been discovered in Nethack, it not only would have been left in, but there would be a correspondence between the initial potion and the final product, also probably depending on B/U/C status.

[KoboldLord]

If you liked Nethack and would be interested in a more actively-developed branch of the game, you might try Sporkhack or Unnethack. Neither is developed as aggressively as Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, but the changes they contain are major ones.

Sporkhack has modified Gehennom to get rid of almost all of the obnoxious mazes. Monster generation in the later parts of the game has been tweaked, so the late game is actually fun and challenging. A good number of important balance changes have improved gameplay, including an Elbereth nerf and a two-weapon fighting nerf.

Unnethack has added the same modification to Gehennom layout, because the new Gehennom is just that good. It stays closer to the play experience of vanilla Nethack, but it scales back on guaranteed loot so that it is no longer possible to decide on your ascension kit on the first floor of the dungeon and be sure to have exactly that kit by the time you hit the late game.

Slash'EM also exist and has been mentioned, but I cannot recommend it as anything but a textbook example of what not to do with roguelike design. Slash'EM takes every crappy content patch anyone submits without any meaningful oversight, and the result is a relentlessly unfair early game followed by a trivially easy mid- and late-game. Which if you've played Nethack before you may recognize as the exact opposite of what the change should be.

[galehar]

the result is a relentlessly unfair early game followed by a trivially easy mid- and late-game.

I've barely played slash'em, but that's the first time I'm seeing it described like that. I've always heard that it was really hard even for experienced nethackers. Do you talk from experience?

[KoboldLord]

I've barely played slash'em, but that's the first time I'm seeing it described like that. I've always heard that it was really hard even for experienced nethackers. Do you talk from experience?

Yes. I've ascended Slash'EM several times. The people who say it is really hard are presumably talking about the early game, which is actively unfair. For instance, common golems have their hit points tripled in Slash'EM but still spawn just as early as ever. Were-creatures, already a dangerous and annoying enemy, can heal themselves fully by shifting shape and will automatically shift shape and be at full health if you 'kill' them in animal form, at which point their first action will almost always be to shift back to animal form. They spawn as early as ever. Statue gargoyles and wraiths are flat-out invulnerable to some starting classes' equipment, and there's very little you can do to identify magic weapons before they start showing up. Slash'EM-specific monsters universally have inflated hit points and damage compared to vanilla monsters with the same monster difficulty.

Ultimately, though, player equipment is more important than anything else, just like in vanilla Nethack. All those Slash'EM-specific monsters are just as vulnerable to Elbereth as the vanilla monsters, which is to say a single charge from a wand of fire makes you 100% invincible against 95% of everything in the game. Dual-wielding still one- or two-shots everything, and fully enchanted armor still nullifies almost all sources of damage. And Slash'EM has a whole lot more side branches than vanilla. Imagine if Stone Soup had a guaranteed non-timed Wizlab on all 8 levels of Vaults, and a non-timed Labyrinth, Volcano, or Ice Cave on all 8 levels of Lair, and you have an idea of the quantity of guaranteed loot to be had. There are actually two sets of guaranteed grey dragon scale in the game! Want multiple wands of polymorph? There's a branch for that. Wand a guaranteed wand of death? Spider's Nest has one, and all of the natives respect Elbereth and can't use the wand against you. How about an artifact with Half Physical Damage, Hungerless Regeneration, and Cold Resistance? Guaranteed, and also slotless. Want an early wish? Guaranteed magic lamp for you!

I struggle to think of a single positive thing to say about Slash'EM compared to the other two. The few things from Slash'EM that were salvageable are already in Unnethack, and they work better there because they aren't accompanied by a torrent of crap.

[eith]

adom is a great roguelike, its almost an rpg though and required reading a huge amount of spoilers to win, but has a great theme and story, and is well worth investigating. it can be a bit buggy though, so its wise to make save backups some times

[galehar]

DoomRL is better than it sounds. While simple, there's quite a bit of tactical depth. It's also easy to learn and makes its mechanics nice and transparent.

I had a shot (!) at it and had great fun. Then I read about the upcoming tiles version. So will try again when it's out

[7hm]

DoomRL is better than it sounds. While simple, there's quite a bit of tactical depth. It's also easy to learn and makes its mechanics nice and transparent.

I just picked up DoomRL a couple days ago, and I have to agree. It's an extremely fun roguelike, and it doesn't take hours to figure out the various commands and features.

It also makes great use of sound and music, something that's lacking in Crawl.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Lemme throw something out of the left field, one that had me doubting and saying "...seriously?" when it was recommended to me. But, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series is pretty-rougelike in its design (at least the first one, haven't played the others). Sort of like throwing the Pokeverse into a Rougelike. It's plot driven rather than "go to the bottom of this dungeon and come back alive" (not to mention, despite first impressions, a lot darker and edgier than the main series) and you go to multiple dungeons rather than spending the whole game in one. The first half, the main story, of the game is mostly fairly easy and straight forward with shallow dungeons that don't throw tons of "Oh crap!" moments at you, though it starts picking up. There's a ton of dungeons after the plot and the difficulty starts to ramp up from there with much deeper dungeons and throwing in more threatening mechanics. The game's "ultimate dungeon" forces you to go at it alone and restarting from scratch and is nearly as difficult as Crawl is.

That one is a commercial game though, so you can't just go and legally download it from somewhere. Still worth a look though, as that game got me into Roguelikes before I even knew what Rougelikes were.


Outside of video games, I've heard the board game Dungeon Quest is rather similar to a Roguelike. Go into a dungeon, try to steal a dragon's treasure, and escape alive. The dungeon is randomly generated as you move through it and, while it can be small, you only get so many turns before the sun sets and you die (explained in game by the monsters becoming ridiculously strong at night). However, it's my understanding this one has been out of print for ages, so finding a complete copy would probably be a pain and expensive. I have a box and two expansions to it that my Dad used to own, but most of the pieces got lost and playing the game where the "room card deck" is almost entirely made up of "Empties" and only has two monsters isn't exactly fun or challenging.


I also know of a couple of flash rogue-likes. The Enchant Cave is about trying to reach the bottom floor of the dungeon and defeat a boss. However, you can't do it on your first try and you have to make multiple attempts by escaping. Pretty fun, but becomes a bit easy.

Hack Slash Crawl is another. It's not as good as Enchanted Cave and I'm not sure what the overall goal is (I haven't beaten it). It's more like DCSS in that you can't escape the dungeon and you only have one life, so you die or quit, it's a complete restart.

[mageykun]

Ooh! Commercial games! That reminds me of one.

Probably the first rougelike I ever played, years before I found Nethack, was the ancient dungeon in Lufia II. The game itself is a pretty awesome snes jrpg, but it also included one 100 floor, randomly generated sidequest dungeon completely without savepoints, and when you enter you're dropped back to level 1 and stripped. The rougelike is actually simple- it's all chests, doors, rooms, and monsters generated at level gen, no going back up. The challenge is that all the chests contents are completely random, and there's no resting. All hp / mp regeneration has to be done with meticulous use of your scant resources. Then there's the fact that by floor 70 or so, the game has run out of monsters, and starts making up things that make the final boss look like a chump.

Again though, commerical, and for an obsolete platform, so you can't download it legally anywhere. Definitely recommended though. Add it to the list of snes games I wish would show up as wii ware. :p

^I did give the mystery dungeon games a play at one point, but I couldn't stay with it. They are painfully slow, and you spend so much time fighting popcorn. I've already paid my pokemon grind dues for one lifetime. >_<

[Jenx]

I played DoomRL a lot last year, and I gotta say it was fun. I never won, but I did manage to get the Cyberdemon halfway to death before I ran out of ammo for the BFG and was out of medkits because i needed the space for the BFG ammo i did get. Fun times.

Tried ADOM several times and I gotta say that while I do like the more classical RPG approach with quests and towns and stuff, the game just couldn't grab me. Also, it might sound amazingly lame to some people, but I really don't think ASCII graphics are good for anything. Even the most simple of tiles like the ones NetHack has are better than ASCII. I never found an ADOM tiles set, so I stopped bothering with it.

As for "not quite roguelike, but" games - I triple or whatever the vote for Desktop Dungeons. Really fun game, when it decides not to fuck with you. Also, Spelunky. Spelunky is awesome. You should be playing it right now.

[szanth]

DoomRL is better than it sounds. While simple, there's quite a bit of tactical depth. It's also easy to learn and makes its mechanics nice and transparent.

I had a shot (!) at it and had great fun. Then I read about the upcoming tiles version. So will try again when it's out

Likewise! I didn't even know there -was- a tiles version, but now I'm kinda psyched!

[Megabass]

DoomRL is better than it sounds. While simple, there's quite a bit of tactical depth. It's also easy to learn and makes its mechanics nice and transparent.

I had a shot (!) at it and had great fun. Then I read about the upcoming tiles version. So will try again when it's out

Likewise! I didn't even know there -was- a tiles version, but now I'm kinda psyched!

Even better Derek Yu is doing the art for it.

[seth]

Brogue is good, pretty, and simple. A while ago I was really into Incursion, though it tends to get bogged down at deeper levels. But the stealth options of that game are unparalleled in other roguelikes, as far as I know (and IIRC). When I first started playing Crawl I was incredibly disappointed, because I was playing the Assassin background and it didn't really compare (of course Crawl does tons of other things better). I remember actually finding the dungeon fun to explore, despite being randomized ASCII--there's a good focus on local and "rooms". I don't remember it being focused on plot, as dpeg mentioned, but it's been a while.

Prospector is neat, though still very early in development. Dwarf Fortress's Adventure mode has a melee battle system that is great fun, though they're not much in terms of direction yet. And Tarn Adams seems to be focused on "behind the scenes" stuff at the moment, which, while impressive and interesting on its own right, means there aren't a whole ton of regular advances in terms of gameplay.

I hear good things about POWDER but I find it hard to get into, despite being graphical. Or maybe BECAUSE it's graphical--I always forget what each icon means and half the time I don't know what each monster is supposed to be.

IMO ADOM is too focused on plot--it's annoying to go to the town to get your quests every damn game.

But, yeah, I know the feeling--it's a shame that Crawl is the only RL that has a high level of polish (and a very solid design philosophy). I mean, I love Crawl, but sometimes I want a change of pace.

also: http://www.roguetemple.com/2011/03/16/t ... e-is-over/ (that says 2010 but it's really 2011)

[galehar]

A while ago I was really into Incursion, though it tends to get bogged down at deeper levels. But the stealth options of that game are unparalleled in other roguelikes, as far as I know (and IIRC).

I haven't played it. Can you describe (or link to) the stealth system? What makes it so good?

[FlyingPants]

Ya incursion is fairly nice, but i like playing characters with minions and crawl has much better minion dynamics. Incursion is unfinished anyways.

Though i wish crawl was improved too, ridiculously awkward telling my orcs or skeletal warriors/ghouls to pick up the items i want!
And it's v. tedious moving them from level to level. But i have just figured out that you can tell them to wait and then go back for the others.

[seth]

A while ago I was really into Incursion, though it tends to get bogged down at deeper levels. But the stealth options of that game are unparalleled in other roguelikes, as far as I know (and IIRC).

I haven't played it. Can you describe (or link to) the stealth system? What makes it so good?

It's been a few years, but if I remember correctly: The dungeon is lit so that you have to stay in dark tiles so you are not seen--it's possible to lure monsters into dark areas where you can ambush them. You can also run away to the darkness to reenter hiding. I think there are ways to interact with the lighting, putting out the torches or something. You get XP from picking locks, which opens doors silently instead of making tons of noise like it does when you kick them, and avoids setting off traps when you open a chest. There are a lot of neutral guys around, which you can interact with in a lot of ways, including picking their pockets for stuff. This is also a bad point of the game: monsters carry so much gear it can get to be a chore if you're looking for something interesting after the slaughter, but it can be fun to pick some healing potions out of a guy's backpack before you ambush him. It also supports a completely stealth based gameplay, even if it's not implemented in the best way: if you manage to sneak around and handle every magic item in the level or room (I forget which) without being detected--and this includes items in monster's inventories--you get the full XP amount as if you had killed all the monsters. That seems impossible on some of the levels, when there are just tons of monsters running around and killing each other.

There's also a disguise system, so you can put on an Orc mask or whatever so the Orcs won't attack you, but I never played around with it as much. I think you can place traps as well. There may be some other stuff I'm forgetting, but when I downloaded the game to refresh my memory, it kept crashing after I created a character (man, I had forgotten how bloated the character creation process is!).

Anyway, it's not so much that it's all implemented in the best way, it's just a lot of options. I've always had a soft spot for stealth based games, so I enjoyed it.