What are /r/roguelikes' favorite Products & Services?

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Paying for NetHack is like buying bottled water. Just.. WHY

Also, how does this not go against NetHack's license agreement, particularly this part?

>cause the whole of any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is a derivative of NetHack or any part thereof, to be licensed at no charge to all third parties on terms identical to those contained in this License Agreement (except that you may choose to grant more extensive warranty protection to some or all third parties, at your option)

Definitely Spelunky.

There's the free (Windows only, I'm afraid) original version, and then a massively expanded version from Steam etc.

Procedural generation, nethack-style shops and what have you. I'd recommend it.

Was it Random Adventure Roguelike (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.archison.randomadventureroguelike&hl=en_US&gl=US)? If so I have good news, they made a sequel: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.archison.randomadventureroguelike2&hl=en_US&gl=US

The Emoji Movie is still too fresh in our minds to even consider such a thing.

...that said, I remember seeing some RPG on Android that used emoji. I can see the appeal, but the problem in my eyes would be making the enemies distinct enough. You could do something interesting like have the :no_mouth: one inflict silence, for example.

While you're already touching the sidebar: Could you simplify that and get rid of the quite superfluous separation between links to a roguelike and its subreddit?

How about something like this:

• Brogue (subreddit)

On top of that, using dark/night mode it's really difficult to recognize that Roguelike Development and Roguelites are actually links and not just sidebar headings.

You might consider looking at Brogue. Compared with more complex roguelikes such as TOME, DCSS, and Nethack, its mechanics are straightforward and transparent. All objects in the game have mouseover descriptions that clearly explain what they do, there are no character classes, there are only two stats (strength and max life), and item boosts come from generic 'enchant' scrolls.

This isn't to say that Brogue is easy - full ascensions are challenging and require you to learn sound tactics and to be creative with whatever items the dungeon gives you. What it doesn't force you to do is learn to how to hyper-optimize your stats, to memorize itemization tables so that you can wish for the perfect set of items for your class, to memorize what side effects various items and spells might have on you, and so on.

edit: One other reason to start out with Brogue is that there's also a small but friendly and active community over on r/brogueforum/ that is happy to give advice to new players. A few people on there are willing to watch your recordings and give specific advice.

I recommend Brogue to everyone (can't link right now, as I'm on my phone). It's gorgeous, has a great UI and is very approachable while remaining complex and awesome.

EDIT: Came back to provide link. https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/

Yep, you have - they made spellbooks much less present in the game. When you pick one up, instead of getting the book, its contents get added to your spell library to learn whenever you want.

http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/trunk-updates-and-0-22-release-and-tournament-info

> Trog no longer has a Burn Spellbook ability. It’s not really viable to make spellbooks as items for one god with this UI and….you know what, I’m going to drop a book bomb here….Trog is strong enough to take a nerf!

Found this cool terminal app that has lots of customizable graphics effects.

https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term

Screenshot is from Brogue

Sad but true. I blame Spelunky.

Most gamers don't actually like real roguelikes, it seems. Being turn-based is a vital part of why I love them so much, though!

Brogue. This is exactly what you're looking for, word for word. I'm not sure about terminals on Apple computers though.

Find it here

You might also like Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. Find it here.

You can certainly play ADOM without wikis. All the info you need is in the manual (accessible through menus) and the game itself.

I read the licensing agreement just now and it looks like you copy and pasted, part of one sentence while removing the rest of the context...the rest of the context which talks about the terms of COMMERCIAL distribution.

Now I'm not a legal expert but before anyone grabs their torches and pitchforks just take a minute to read the WHOLE license agreement, not just a fraction of one sentence.

Also for anyone not aware there are also numerous versions of Nethack available for IOS and Android for sale.

If you read the whole license agreement which is only 4 paragraphs long, paragraph 2 and 3 both talk about the terms of commercial distribution.

>c) You may charge a distribution fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. You may copy and distribute NetHack (or a portion or derivative of it, under Paragraph 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Paragraphs 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: a) accompany it with the complete machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Paragraphs 1 and 2 above; or, b) accompany it with full information as to how to obtain the complete machine-readable source code from an appropriate archive site. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution.)

If you like Vulture but don't want to pay for it, it can still be downloaded for free. If you don't like Vulture, there are numerous other frontends for playing Nethack and if you're a purist...there's always plain ole' Nethack of course.

If you want to try a real-deal roguelike for a change, I recommend downloading Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup:

Crawl homepage

This is a proper roguelike, but it's the most gentle introduction to the hobby out there. The Crawl developers have worked really hard to make it accessible. For example, there are many fewer keys to memorize than classics like Nethack and ADOM, and you rarely need to "cheat" by looking things up online - everything can be figured out pretty easily in the game.

It's free, so it's easy to get started. It has both the traditional ASCII mode and several tile sets - pick whichever version you like.

I'm a huuge fan of brogue, cause it's easier to get into but still feels more tactical than most roguelikes I've played, and theres always dungeons of dredmor if you want something newer

Brogue. It's has a tiles version (http://oryxdesignlab.com/brogue-tiles/) but the ASCII version (https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/) is actually the game that got me comfortable with ASCII in the first place.

I'll make a safe suggestion: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (DCSS). Other than overall quality and its fairly frequent updates, I really like the auto-explore feature.

Brogue. It's a great starter game, and it's pretty!! I'm hopelessly hooked. It's a coffee-break roguelike, real beginner friendly and really deep.

EDIT: added a new link with an example.

I like Pathos myself. There are also the ten billion Pixel Dungeons to consider too.

Not sure what options are on iOS but they're there.

As far as monster-dropped recipes, would it be terribly difficult to add in an "(A)nalyze item" option?

• The Orc swings his Axe of Gimli! The Orc hits!
• You hit the Orc. You kill the Orc!
• (c) an Axe of Gimli > A
• Analyze what? (c)
• You analyze the Axe of Gimli (more)
• You discover that it is made of (d) a two-bladed axe (more)
• You discover that it is made of (e) 3 crystals of Gimlifying (more)
• You discover that it is made of (f) a monkey eyeball (more)
• You have finished your deconstruction.

(At which point, you have the ingredients to make an Axe of Gimli, but you will have to take some turns to put it back together.)

I like the idea of experimenting with recipes, too -- if I have leather gloves and Gems of Mightiness, I ought to be able to divine the recipe for Gauntlets of Power -- but there are certainly drawbacks to that.

OP is asking for roguelike favorites only on itch.io, specifically. It's a commercial site that distributes indie games. OP probably has an account there and I guess prefers getting their games from that source? (Similar to how some people occasionally ask for specifically "good roguelikes on Steam.")

NetHack is not the best choice to start with. (I know, because I did.) Hardly anything is explained in-game, so unless you read spoilers, there are lots of things you can't find out until they come up and kill you.

I'd suggest Brogue. Both the tiles and the ASCII look really good and it's easy to understand what's going on (even in ASCII). It doesn't have classes and levels -- all characters start the same, and improve only by the items you find. Some things are similar to NetHack, like the potions and scrolls with unidentified effects or the way different items interact with the dungeon (for instance, triggering a fire trap in the middle of an area of dry moss), but there are a lot less ways to die out of nowhere, and a lot more documentation in-game about how monsters, for instance, behave.

Tales of Maj'Eyal is my absolute favourite at the moment, it's fantastic and has a great expansion up on steam. Brogue is also one I keep going back to, a work of art in terms of game design.

I haven't ever seen a tileset that changes the angle depending on monsters approach.

Here's the best tilesets I've seen:

http://opengameart.org/content/dawnlike-16x16-universal-rogue-like-tileset-v181

http://oryxdesignlab.com/product-sprites/

Seems more like a mobile game to me, I mean that in a good way. That being said it one of the best free games on Android and the perfect retort to the idea that free games on Android suck.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.roguetemple.hyperroid

To quote myself from another recent topic:

My suggestion for post-apocalyptic would be AlphaMan and Caves of Qud.

Caves of Qud is easy to get on the dev team's site and has a lot of depth, plus a distinctive visual style.

AlphaMan is tougher to find. You'll need DOS Box or a similar emulator to play it, but in my opinion it's worth it. Truly unique roguelike, and sadly overlooked. I got it from this site where it comes packaged with an auto-running version of DOS Box in some kind of combined executable file.

SanctuaryRPG is a really cool game that DOES use ASCII in an interesting way. I'm glad you're enjoying it. As people are pointing out though, it's definitely not in the real family of roguelikes. If you want to try a good beginner Roguelike, I really recommend Brogue. It's pretty, it's easy to understand, it doesn't have a lot of keyboard commands, but it's still really challenging to beat. Give that a try.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is pretty much the best rougelike imo. There's a lot of classes and races to mix and match, and the interface is really easy to use.

You can download it here.

There's X@COM by Kyzrati and https://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=82886 On the Roadside by rmcode. Both are somewhat like Armored Commander in that they skirt the edge between roguelikes and turn-based strategies.

Brightness, contrast, and color can all play a role there in terms of eye strain, basically the same issues that can affect programmers. I use f.lux to adjust my monitors and ever since I've done that, no duration of looking at my screen is problematic \o/. Highly recommended.

It wasn't entirely out of nowhere. Have a read: this is his initial post giving the reasons why he was making a roguelike

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.games.roguelike.development/xEICB75s6iE

and a podcast interview with him: http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2011/10/interview-brian-walker-aka-pender.html

I like Pathos: Nethack Codex though it's only compatible with my phone and not my bigger-screened tablet. The interface is all touch-based, either by tapping or holding. There are a number of icons at the bottom of the screen, such as toggling the events history or opening your inventory or opening a small window that describes what items/objects you're standing on. Several races and classes, though you can do a quick-start with any class with the name, gender, race, and pet already set.

There's a second mode where you challenge a handcrafted map with the same combat and exploration system too.

I've recently been playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and even though in a lot of ways it's as complex as many roguelike, it has a couple of reasons for a new player to give it a go,

1) It has a very good tutorial mode which leads you by the hand as you play the game telling you about everything you need to know as a beginner.

2) It has a hints mode which lets you play a normal game but pops up with handy little do's and don'ts as you play. It's like having your more experienced best friend along for the ride.

Both of these options(along with various others) are available in the initial front screen menu when the game first starts. I've used both while learning and apart from learning a great deal, it was a lot more fun than I'd have expected. I'd really recommend giving it a try.

edit: Here's the link to the downloads page on the official Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup website, and to the play store version(unofficial), just in case you want to check them out. You'll notice also that in the sidebar on the right of that website is an option labelled 'Play Webtiles', which enables you to spectate on other players live online. Can be quite useful for a beginner to the game.

You should check out <em>RimWorld</em> if you haven't already. It's not turn-based, but neither is FTL, so I think it fits. You have a party, build a base from an overhead perspective, protect it from raiders, etc. Many people have compared it to Dwarf Fortress (which is one of the most in-depth roguelikes/lites ever made), but it's much easier to learn.

Oh, and FYI, you might have more luck cross-posting this in /r/roguelites; traditional roguelikes are turn-based dungeon crawl games with (usually) a single player-character, and many times also ascii/text-based 'graphics'... Much harder to learn, for someone who only likes FTL (which is not a roguelike by traditional definition, though it does have many roguelike elements).

Pathos Nethack Codex is a pretty touch-focused RL that even has a handbuilt campaign if you don't feel like doing the random dungeon.

A seven days challenge / game jam in which you have to create a roguelike. Similar to Ludum Dare or the Global Game Jam, but without a theme and focused on roguelikes. Here is last year's site https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2019

Maybe POWDER?

Is easy to learn, the tiles are lovely, you can use the mouse and even make shortcuts to spells (almost like in Ultima Online... ahh memories...) There is a wiki but is not an obligation to read it, you can learn a lot of things just by plating the game and paying attention. There is XP leveling, with an unique class/gods system. About stealth... not so much =(

Rogue is still enjoyable! Although Brogue, as DesiQ has mentioned is a very nice alternative. (https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/)

HSSEKEBSH... must mean something. It's obviously an intentional way for the developer to broadcast his feelings of homosexuality, abortion, guns and smoking. If only I knew what it meant..

I like Sproggiwood (Google Play, Apple Store).

The theme and the mechanics are light but it fits the mobile platform well.

WazHack is the major one that attempts this and there's also been a handful of 7drl that do it. WazHack is pretty popular so I would say yea, go for it.

Five years ago I beat DoomRL on nightmare difficulty, killing everything despite the hellspawn continually rising from the dead and completing every special level. This merits elite angelic badge.

Mortem: https://hastebin.com/raw/oqewewuxul

Rogue Legacy is fun, but gets pretty grindy after a while. The majority of the game's randomization comes from permanent equipment that's passed on from heir to heir, monster reskins, and the shifting castle layout. I enjoyed it for a few hours but I found it getting awfully repetitive. If you're into 2D platforming games, give it a shot. You can also fine a demo here.

And the Pit just felt really iffy. The presentation was poor and it didn't really stand out for me. Glad I got it in the Humble Roguelike Sale instead of paying for it full price.

It may be a little simplistic, but you might still get a kick out of POWDER. It's usually the one I recommend as an introduction to the genre as a whole, especially due to its four-way movement (many people have trouble thinking about diagonals and optimal movement patterns when just starting out), but it's good enough I often go back to it myself... And I've been playing these games ever since discovering NetHack over a decade ago! :P

It has no races (every player is human), and technically no class either. There is a gods system that sort of acts like a class system (one god favors sneak attacks and other rogue-like conduct, another prefers his worshippers to never back down from a fight and to shun the use of magic, like a barbarian, etc), but you can switch gods in the middle of a run (beware angering them with your 'betrayal' though), or choose to follow no god and be as flexible as you want (at the expense of not getting divine gifts and other help from a god along the way). Your starting items are a bit randomized (you always get a basic armor of some sort, a weapon, a book of spells and one of non-magic knowledge like a guide to basic weapons, but you can never really be sure which ones you'll get), so they do sway how you start your run, but what you'll become by the end of the game depends entirely on what you find along the way...

Drakefire Chasm is pretty quick to beat, especially if you're min-maxing (i.e. ignoring one stat/skill type completely in order to max out the other two). Using a red dragon with a focus on will and stamina, I usually complete the game in about half and hour. It'll take longer if you're NOT min-maxing, especially since the different dragons are not very well balanced and some are WAY weaker than others, but it should still seldom take much more than 2 hours at the worst (if you can survive)...

POWDER is another to look into, but slightly longer. I've heard of people beating it in under an hour, but on average I'd say it takes 2-3 hours to make it to the end. EDIT: FYI, that's judging from videos I've seen; I haven't done it myself. Thanks to /u/justinjustin7 for making me realize my original comment made it sound like I'd done it personally (I was half-asleep at the time of writing, lol)...

No, because it's not grid-based and it's real-time.

For instance: This is a standard roguelike.

As is this though some people only consider ascii based games as "true" roguelikes.

I talked to Kornel (who hosts the site) and he said the host shut down the site because of performance issues. Kornel said he might only be able to upgrade and host the wiki on a different server in January.

In the meantime, you could use the knowledgebots which will have most of the info but in a different format.

It's very basic in its dungeon setup to the point of not qualifying as a roguelike (it has no maps or grid - you just choose 1 of 2 rooms to enter next, most of which contain an enemy to battle), but you could check out Buriedbornes. It has about thirty classes and a pretty intricate skill and item system. No two characters end up the same, though to an extent you're at the mercy of the RNG to see which character options you get.

Pathos.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.x10host.pathos

Its based upon nethack, more simple but still pretty complex. 3 different tilesets, 2 game Modes (nethack-styled and openworld which I havent tried yet). Very well designed interface for mobile devices. Also no ads!!

The only downside I can think of is that the moving animation of characters can cause lag, however my phone isnt very gold so maybe you wohnt encounter any problems.

Around seventeen years for BOSS roguelike. The last known official FAQ comes from December 1992 and it was for BOSS 2.0. The last version of BOSS available from that era is BOSS 2.4, dated May 1992. It can be safely assumed it was being developed or at least maintained in 1993.

Later Moria (which BOSS is a variant of) was reincarnated as UMoria with completely new code base. This left BOSS out in the cold and it did not recover.

Finally for ARRP 2010 the game reappeared. Version 2.4b was a straight port but 2.5 contained multiple save files which counts as a new feature. Total: 17 years. Here, topped the great NetHack wait for you.

Version 2.5 is available publicly here: https://github.com/dungeons-of-moria/boss-beyond-moria

I also have 2.6 somewhere on my hard drive.

That said I wonder how much time stretch could be counted by the Roguelike Restoration Project.

Current download links:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/adom-ancient-domains-of-mystery/downloads

For some less popular OS as well as the pure ASCII versions you'll have to wait for ancardia.com to be updated. Right now it still hosts the doomed R58.

http://www.ancardia.com/download.html

Should be up within a day or so, according to the blog :)

Oh, sweet jesus. Captain's Edition - I don't even know where to start. Imagine if the developer had been given a extra year or two to just go wild with FTL. CE adds events, weapons, trading, drones, enemies, sectors, and more! And not just a few of each. There's 90 new weapons, 40 new drones. You get to fight space stations! Stop reading my words, go get CE! Here's the link to the forum. I downloaded it a long time ago and have no idea what the procedure is anymore. Whatever the steps are, no matter how grueling,they are worth it. If step 2 is 'walk over broken glass,' break some glass and walk on it, it is worth it.

My suggestion for post-apocalyptic would be AlphaMan and Caves of Qud.

Caves of Qud is easy to get on the dev team's site and has a lot of depth, plus a distinctive visual style.

AlphaMan is tougher to find. You'll need DOS Box or a similar emulator to play it, but in my opinion it's worth it. Truly unique roguelike, and sadly overlooked. I got it from this site where it comes packaged with an auto-running version of DOS Box in some kind of combined executable file.

There used to be WarpRogue (story, world overmap) in early, early alpha, moving all the Dark Heresy tabletop rulesets to a roguelike, but the developer died. Interesting project, but there were only like 3 dungeons/quests before he passed away.

https://libregamewiki.org/Warp_Rogue

The scourgeforge page as well as the website are down it seems.

Ooh, I remember playing a pre-release of that a long time ago and wandering around in a hospital gown with a plastic shopping bag full of crap I scavenged off a mutant's corpse.

Also, link for the lazy.

Edit: Oh hey, and Defender's Quest is in this bundle, as well. It's a pretty solid tower defense game, if you're in to those, it's just not worth the $15 they wanted for it.

Public google group: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/incursion

There's a fair amount of discussion on strategy and suchlike there, and questions relating to the current game still tend to get answered within a day or two (Often by me, but hey, heh.).

For the item thing, try turning the item cursor on in the options menu. It's still somewhat cumbersome, but I've found it a lot more bearable than the letter thing.

As for the eternal "When new Incursion coming" question, the dev stated fairly recently that 'Still no dates, still "definitely more than a year by a lot."' -- this was back on the 24th of February. Development does continue, though.

All these comments and no one has mentioned POWDER? A seriously under-rated game. Its 4-directional movement is easier for new players (most people I've introduced to the genre seem to have a lot of trouble with diagonals for some reason), Its player-characters are all human, and its classes are done mid-adventure by choosing to follow a god, so it doesn't overload new players with a complex character creation system; you can really just jump right in. But it still has the common roguelike tropes such as character levels, magic, cursed/blessed gear, unidentified scrolls/potions, etc...

I'm running POWDER on my PSP (original, not vita) and I've logged hundreds of hours on it. It's been my favourite hand-held game for years.

It's available on the POWDER website.

Highly recommend these two: Brogue and The Ground Gives Way

The Ground Gives Way has a very nice tutorial and isn't too complex. Both games are free to play.

Enjoy.

Edit: Why don't we make this thread a sticky on the sidebar?

One of the biggest flaws in a lot of games is having too much stuff. Spelunky keeps a nicely low item count, and FTL manages to make everything inter-related so it all works nicely (plus you only find x things in any given game).

You should try Brogue, it has a good scope to it, and has the right balance of randomness and skill. The randomness is in what you find as you play, and the skill is in making use of those in an effective way. Much like FTL.

I was going to wait until they released a mac version, but whatever. It's not easy if you've never built anything before, as you have some installing to do.

1. Install XCode.
2. Open XCode. Go to the downloads tab in its preferences (in the menu bar XCode>Preferences). Make sure to download/install the command line tools. (If its not here, you can also get it on the right hand side of this page).
3. Download the dcss0.14.0 source tarball from this page. Make sure to get the one with deps (dependencies).

At this point, you should have XCode installed, the XCode command line tools installed, and an archived copy of the dcss source, located at somewhere like ~/Downloads/stone_soup-0.14.0.tar.xz (the tilde means <your home directory>).

Open up Terminal.app and enter the following lines:

cd ~/Downloads tar -xJf stone_soup-0.14.0.tar.xz cd stone_soup-0.14.0/source make APPLE_GCC=y NO_PKGCONFIG=y CONTRIB_SDL=y TILES=y

That's for a tiles build. For a console build, replace the last line with

make APPLE_GCC=y

This will take some time. Ignore any warnings that happen. Hasn't finished yet for me, so I can't say exactly where the .app file will be located but it shouldn't be too hard to find.

Hope that helps!

EDIT: nope this doesn't build a .app, it builds an executable file named crawl. THis will be in the /source/ folder and will run if you double click on it, but can't be moved. That should hold you over for now, at least.

The docs don't say how to build an .app bundle for crawl, so I can only assume it's using the included xcodeproj, but I don't feel like building it again.

Projects like this are a great way to give yourself something to work on.

You might consider refactoring some of your files into more idiomatic javascript, or (even better) convert some to Typescript.

One thing you might do is use modules instead of pinning things to an ambient Main object and introducing temporal coupling paired to the order of the files in index.html.

Typescript can natively bundle things into a single file and spit it out in ES5. Other options are Webpack or Parcel.

Angband for Android, includes Sil-Q and variants including FAangband which is open world with towns. Tiles available (although some variants have incomplete tile sets).

HyperRogue is one of my favorites. You can download it for Android here. It uses hyperbolic geometry instead of your typical Cartesian grid, which makes the game very interesting. It's also very puzzle-like. Because it's a 1-hp roguelike and deterministic, you have to plan out to moves intelligently.

1+ for Sproggiwood, though it isn't exactly like what you described.

When you play through dungeons, you can get money, and using this money you can increase your health, buy items, speed up growth, and do other things that make your character stronger...all of these effects stay with you between games, so even though you start out as a level 1 character each play, you become a more powerful level 1 character the longer you play.

The game is also slightly adorable.

It's also on Google Play and Steam, so that satisfies your Android request.

There are a few flash roguelikes. Mochigames has a pretty good listing, as does Kongregate. I'm pretty sure most of them are available on other flash portals too.

Hack Slash Crawl, FRogue and Necropolis have been pretty decent in my experience.

Hey, I like AlphaMan! It's weird, certainly, but weird can be good.

No problems getting it to run (on Windows) if you get it from here.Use the slightly hidden 'free download' section at the bottom of the page if you don't want to pay subscription.

That version of AlphaMan comes bundled with DOSBox and is rigged in a way that means the emulator runs automatically when you double-click the game. Easy.

• ...Most best roguelikes are free.

But I'm aware that you maybe would like to play BoI-ish game rather than pure roguelikes, so I want to recommend you Witch Blast (still in development, but it's playable already)

Given the kind of games you've played and enjoyed (so called roguelites, like @WinterShine said), you may enjoy Spelunky. The original one is free and as good as the remake : )

I think Powder makes a better roguelike 'tutorial' than most games' actual tutorials. Its cardinal-only movement is good for beginners (I've noticed that many new players have a hard time with diagonals), it's a decent introduction to the most common roguelike tropes (unidentified items, character leveling, permadeath, etc), and it doesn't overcomplicate things by presenting the player with a million races and classes to choose between.

After they learn the basics in Powder, I usually introduce my friends to DCSS as a good middle-ground; it plays similarly to Powder, but with much bigger levels, diagonal movement, and race/class selection.

And finally, after they've learned the ropes of DCSS, I ask them if they prefer the short-term tactical complexity or the long-term character development. If they like the tactics, I give them Brogue, and if they like the character development, they get ADOM.

Powder comes to mind. Cardinals only (but one class can move diagonal), I think the only hotkey I actually use is G for get, and you can use the mouse for just about anything else. You're also allowed to make shortcuts on the outer ring of the screen for things like look/examine or cast spells or pray or so on, so that's immensely helpful.

There's POWDER (http://www.zincland.com/powder/) It doesn't feature most of your requests, but it was originally intended to be played on a GBA, which means you can load it up on an emulator and play it using a few buttons. And once you see the error in your ways and come back to ascii graphics, The ground gives way (http://www.thegroundgivesway.com/) features the simplest control scheme ever seen, and it doesn't have millions of menus for you to navigate.

Have you checked out Powder? I haven't played it in a while, and it doesn't look like its been updated recently, but it is completely playable by mouse and pretty light-hearted. It has a very unique and strange leveling system, however.

Get it here:

http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=about

It's a very fun roguelike in it's own right, but being able to play it on my GBA makes it awesome. It's got a very interesting religion/class system. I highly recommend it.

(Thanks to ceolceol for reminding me post a link to the site.)

Edit: Also the unofficial wiki if you're into that kind of thing.

Honestly? Jump into a roguelike without understanding. The joy of discoveries is absolutely a major core interest in roguelikes.

My recommendation is Brogue, it's an ASCII, turn-based, tile-based roguelike that is both really user-friendly and incredibly deep in its gameplay. It's a good entrypoint to the genre and it's still a great game even when you're deep in roguelike content.

Desktop Dungeons is a really fun puzzle game. But it's much more a puzzle/strategy game than a roguelike. I think it is an amazing game, very unique and deep with lots of room for creative strategies. Worth checking out for sure, I've been playing since the alpha/early beta.

Also it seems like you aren't as into the ASCII scene, but Sil is one of the best games I've ever played. Really clear rule set and very balanced. I'd maybe start with Brogue as it is simpler and prettier.

Dungeon Crawl stone soup or DCSS. Personally I like the tiles which is a graphical interface, op was using text based. Here is a great starter website. If you start playing welcome to the addiction :)

http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/howto

yup

http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/howto

On that topic, you might want to look into text fiction. No genre can be as good as making it look like you are accomplishing something when you are not...

RogueShell may be just what you're looking for; it supports ADOM, Brogue, Cataclysm, Nethack, and more.

There are also a number of DC:SS servers listed on the Crawl website that you can play on through your browser; just click on any of the WebTiles links on that page I linked.

Play online, then you don't care how fast your computer is.

Alternatively the main site has it listed here

Here's the blog post about it. TL;DR: Mountain Dwarves are too similar to Minotaurs and Hill Orcs, so one of them had to be removed.

Nah, enhancers are calculated completely differently than skill levels. Each enhancer multiplies your spellpower by 1.5, before the high end is reduced (look up "spell power" on the knowledge bots for the exact formula).

Roughly: archmagi will provide the best spell power boost, +int will provide a smaller spell power boost, but also help spell success and spell hunger, and resistances are usually more important than just about everything else if you're in a branch where those resistances will be useful.

> Similar in Cogmind (I believe): lingering too long on a level becomes a losing proposition as more and harder enemies show up

Yeah, in Cogmind you have an invisible 'presence' meter or something of the sort, so the longer you hang around on a single floor (and the more noise you make), the more enemies start to notice you (and spawn in help to beat you, etc). That's probably my favorite clock system since it doesn't feel so restrictive -- you can always make the choice to linger, with the knowledge that the enemies will slowly become more of a threat if you do. Food, on the other hand, is more restrictive because it doesn't really give you that choice: you either have food and can stay, or you don't and you have to leave to look for it (or die trying to find something to eat, as is often the case with Pixel Dungeon and its kin).

I suppose that, theoretically, a food clock that resets to a 'fully satiated' state every time you get to a new floor would play similarly (though that seems strange conceptually; how would you even go about explaining a mechanic like that? Does your character eat the stairs?)... :P

You may have better luck in /r/gamingsuggestions or /r/roguelites.

Roguelikes by definition are singleplayer and Soul Knight is not a roguelike as far as this sub is concerned.

My recommendation would be Hero Siege but I've only played it solo on PC so I have no idea how the co-op works on android.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon. One of the few games that I return to over and over, even after a couple of years of playing. Easy to learn, hard to master, a rich online presence if you want to cheat, and great (and still very active) development. If you're a fan of roguelikes and aren't familiar with Pixel Dungeon, you're in for a treat.

Note: there are quite a few Pixel Dungeon variations, but Shattered Pixel Dungeon is the only one that has kept my interest past a few games.

EDIT: Oh, and it's free.

Here, it kinda resembles pixel dungeon but thankfully it doesnt have that shitty and unfair as fuck "food cloack and almost NO food" mechanics.

I do not actively differentiate between the two. I treat Umoria as the most recent Moria. Of course that's not simply true, but it is practical.

Many other games' developments have a plurality of branches. Moria has only one significant line, starting at Moria and ending with UMoria. I can't even bring myself to call UMoria a "branch". It is Moria continued. Perhaps I am beligerant in dismissing IMoria tho.

Regardless, I think my main point is that RAK continued development in the lost version, and furthermore wanted development to continue by others, and therefore he would be magnanimous enough to not require you to play his last release of Moria (4.7 or 4.8).

I strongly recommend Cinco Paus. You will be immensely confused for a long time but that's the point. And it has a lot more depth than you see at first.

Also check out entries from the recent 7DBL https://itch.io/jam/broughlike

Caves of Qud, ToME, Brogue, UnReal World, DC:SS, DoomRL, Dwarf Fortress are probably the biggest ones these days. I think these are all under development.

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Some that I've enjoyed in the past but are either not well known, older, or mobile would include: IVAN, Castle of the Winds, Hydra Slayer Cardinal Quest, Hoplite.

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Some other ones I haven't played. Cogmind, Cataclysm, Sproggiwood. There are a LOT more. Here are the submissions for this year's 7DRL Challenge

• Devs give high elf a gimmick, and let them stay.

It is not the devs job to implement features that they do not want to implement or that they do not want to design. If you wanted this, you should have participated in discussions on ##crawl-dev or on crd in the numerous discussions on this. Except I didn't see you or others here:

http://s-z.org/crawl-dev/

or

https://sourceforge.net/p/crawl-ref/mailman/crawl-ref-discuss/?viewmonth=201006

And so I don't know what you expect the devs to do when you don't actually offer solutions.

Hmm.. how about There Is Only Power? Seems to be pretty much exactly what you're looking for. :D You play various types of evil wizards out to conquer a kingdom.

I played it a while ago on two different alpha releases, and then just bought it on Steam yesterday for $15.

Haven't tried the steam release, but I loved what I played so far, and I can only imagine it is better now.

You can try the previous alpha builds here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/vagante/downloads

I'm not much for most roguelikes, but this game looks fucking awesome.

Edit: There was a comment asking about gameplay that was deleted. This was my reply:

> Have they actually released any gameplay vids? I mostly see movies.

There's gameplay featured in this trailer as well as their other trailer (a bit less, admittedly) plus they have gifs that help display the gameplay as well. But videos strictly of gameplay? Not yet. Remember, this is a kickstarter project that has only been up for a little more than 24 hours.

Kickstarter page.

Someone else mentioned Brogue, and that's a great example of a more traditional roguelike. I'm going to recommend ToME. ToME plays more like a western turn-based RPG than a traditional roguelike. It's based mostly around activated abilities, and has several unique and unlockable classes and races. There are also several tilesets available, built right in to the standard package. Also, the music is done by the Celestial Aeon Project, and is pretty damn good. The storyline is also pretty interesting. If you're looking for a Roguelike that's close to a standard RPG, check ToME out.

The free version of Desktop Dungeons is very short and distills some RL elements to their essence while discarding others.

100 Rogues might be worth mentioning as well.

Brogue is really great! If anyone is interested this one is free. Here's the website. You'll want to follow the link at the top for the most recent community edition.

Excellent, beautiful game, but the original version (PC / Mac / Linux) is much better than the iPad port. The interface is fantastic with a keyboard with really clever shortcuts that help you be more efficient and precise over time, but all of these are lost with touch.

https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/

Brogue is a good one as well, its simpler, but still has so much depth, no only that but it is a beautiful game.

I think /u/ionfrigate is right, Brogue all the way

It all depends on if you want to go spoiler free or not.

There's the main guidebook

The Nethack Wiki is probably a good place to check out for spoilers

You understand incorrectly a bit.

They could sell a warranty.

The nethack license is here: http://www.nethack.org/common/license.html

It explicitly (and repeatedly this has been the case, too) calls out only allowing payment for PHYSICAL distribution. This has been discussed over and over between 1989 when the license came into play and now. The dev team repeatedly has said that the license covers PHYSICAL distribution and not digital distribution. It doesn't matter if features were added on, or that Steam requires it this way to offer other features, or what not. The license is clear, the terms are clear, and it's almost 20 years old.

There's no excuse for this blatant violation of the terms of the Nethack license, and therefore, unless there is a warranty being sold, the vulture team technically loses the ENTIRE RIGHT to distribute nethack or derivatives.

(Though fortunately, buyers of their product do not.)

I don't mean to be a hardass about this, but the makers were clear. The dev team is clear. Many companies over the years approached the dev team and offered money to make this into a commercial product, and they clearly rebuked them.

We shouldn't ignore the wishes of the dev team AND the licenses of the product just because we want to.

Nethack was released with a viral and noncommercial license. Period. This isn't a secret.

I would also say DCSS is pretty friendly as well, in the grab a walk-through and just experiment. and IMHO will get dull less quickly, after you have played the same area 18 times in tome it kinda gets boring.

Electrocution will do more damage and the minimum delay on a falchion is .6, so you will get an extra attack every 4.2 ticks. Check out this search feature for questions like this. Entering eletrocution, flaming, delay, etc, would answer your question for you.

Also, for future reference, stat weighting for damage is so small you should never really care about your strength or dex when considering damage.