danr wrote:I have to say, I do see DCSS as the standard-bearer of the modern roguelike. I haven't played many others, and I did not play the original rogue until after trying several others.
However, I did play "Hack" before it became "Nethack". I eventually gave up on Nethack because it just got too gimmicky, too arbritrary, too easy to die - you should not be able to die as a result of eating an egg.
I confess, I'm still very much a Nethack player. I've played it to death, and ascended every class in the game. With seven years since the last version, it was time to find something new, or start doing ridiculous conducts.
I've dabbled with pretty much any RL you can name, though Nethack is the only one I ever 'won'. Of what's out there now, I'm a fan of Dwarf Fortress, though miserable at actually playing it... ToME 4.0 looks interesting, though the interface reminds me of World of Warcraft of all things, Quests, hotbars, Situational background music, and so on. I'm not sure if it's a good thing, but it's certainly a brave direction to go in.
DCSS is definitely the heir to the throne in my mind, currently. And I also think it's since Stone Soup that this has come about. I played Linley's version back in the day, and while it certainly was a fun game, it only really got the most casual kind of play from myself. It's the changes since then that make all the difference; the auto-explore, the searching, the attention to detail and balance. My hat goes off to them all, and it's nice to switch from a game last updated in 2003 to one with an hugely active community and almost daily builds