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Brogue?
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➔ Brogue website
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100 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
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:
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/
/r/roguelikes would be a good place to start and they may be more helpful.
Personally, I love <strong>Brogue</strong>. It's ASCII, but the engine is beautiful (no, really), the interface is fantastic, it's incredibly accessible.
I would recommend Brogue as a good starting point for old school roguelikes. Its basically a simpler nethack with some modern and polished game design.
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.
Proportionally though its not a good comparison because the 'standard' size of a game back in the day was tiny anyway.
I always find it insane how quickly games have ballooned in size in the last 25 years...Early-mid 90s was a few Mb per game, late 90s to early 2000s was 500Mb-1Gb and now nobody bats an eyelid at 30-50Gb per game, that's like 10,000-20,000x bigger than 25 years ago.
Brogue (Open source Rogue, https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home) has been my go to for a long time as a timewaster, spend an insane amount of time playing that game and its both free and about 1.5Mb as a standalone with the extra unneeded files stripped. (3Mb without)
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.
Brogue and The Ground Gives Way both have nice interfaces and will get you comfortable playing faster than any of the other major roguelikes in my opinion.
Brogue: can be played entirely with the mouse and you see relevant info by mousing over stuff (I play with the Oryx tiles here).
The Ground Gives Way: thorough tutorial and info is presented in distinct boxes.
Unexplored also has a great interface but that is real-time, not turn-based.
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.
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.
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..
Thanks for the shoutout! I agree that Brogue is probably the most welcoming of all the roguelikes (apart from maybe some of the smaller mobile ones). The aim with Brogue Lite is to push that even further, and see if it's possible to create something like a "gateway drug" for roguelikes. I actually haven't heard of any complete newcomers to roguelikes trying Lite yet, it would be super interesting to hear their impressions of it.
I'm also really digging the aesthetics of Rift Wizard. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks very accessible in terms of clear visuals. Although the strategy side of it looks very complex and heavy.
DoomRL/DRL, a fun coffee break roguelike with lots of action - https://drl.chaosforge.org/
Brogue - a beautiful ASCII roguelike with an unique stat system - https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/
Infra Arcana - a quite eerie roguelike similar to DoomRL set in the lovecraftian scenario with a very unique approach to OP magic - https://sites.google.com/site/infraarcana/home
Nethac-oh wait you said fun
Brogue - While I'm not a huge fan, it's one of /r/roguelikes' most recommended game for a lightweight roguelike. You can save with a simple Ctrl-S and it takes seconds to load up, if that. All movement and combat is turn-based, so there will never be a spot where you'll "fuck I just gotta wait thirty more seconds to kill this thing before I can go"
It's relatively in depth, and very difficult to win, requiring you to adapt to what items you find throughout the dungeon similar to Slay the Spire requiring you to adapt to what cards you're provided.
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.
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.
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.
Surprised no one's mentioned <strong>One Way Heroics</strong>, it has a neat JRPG aesthetic with animated character sprites, UI and environments.
There's also <strong>Cogmind</strong>, which has some great animations (UI, actions such as firing on enemies, explosions). Caveat: game is still in development.
<strong>Brogue</strong> (the roguelike that inspired PD, btw) does also have a bit of animation (environments, ranged combat, a bit of UI), so that may appeal to you.
sudo pkg install linux_base-c7 sudo kldload linux64 ./linux-binary
:)
I used it for a game and an SMT solver (the latter I actually built natively once, but that required some fixes). And there are some pre-packaged Linux apps in ports/pkg, e.g. linux-sublime3, linux-doom3, linux-quake4…
You can also unpack a filesystem image of whatever distro (e.g. ubuntu cloud images) somewhere and run something like jail -c path=/where/you/extracted ip4=inherit linux=new command=/bin/bash and you're in a Linux shell :D However some binaries (e.g. everything in Alpine Linux) aren't marked as Linux binaries, you'd have to brandelf them.
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.
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
A real roguelike, not like all of these other rogue-lites?
Brogue, one of the most accessible traditional roguelikes
Colour output, mouse support, small and manageable systems, interesting weapons (eg. spears actually have range and can penetrate beyond tiles), a great stealth system (you can hide in grass or even around corners), lots of fun interconnecting mechanics (e.g. magical flames in water turn the water into steam, which lowers visibility in the area, which allows you to move around stealthily).
You may enjoy traditional roguelikes such as ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery), Tales of Maj'Eyal, Cogmind, Brogue, or Caves of Qud. These games (generally) have you controlling a single character and are quite deep in terms of ways to build a character.
They feature a high amount of randomization and replayability and simply surviving is often a challenge in of itself. Traditional roguelikes range in setting from simply multifloor dungeons to open world maps, and operate on a turn-based system.
The best part is many of them have free versions, like Brogue and ADOM.
Does anyone here play Brogue? I've become a massive fanboy about it. It's one of the best designed games of any genre I've ever played. The mechanics are all fairly simple and easy enough to understand, but they interact in really interesting and fun ways. Also the interface is refreshingly clear for a roguelike. If any of y'all have never played roguelikes and are curious about them, Brogue is a great starting point. I recently introduced it to my girlfriend who never plays roguelikes, and now she's addicted to it too.
Yeah, that's also why I can never get into angband– it feels far too grindy.
Try Brogue, which is in my opinion the roguelike with the best design out there.
Play brogue! It takes the roguelike form to new aesthetic heights, simplifies the controls, and focuses in on the really interesting decisions. Try it out!
The original The Legend of Zelda for NES is my go-to when listening to podcasts and/or YouTube videos; I love its music, but I've heard it a million times, and sound in general isn't necessary for that game. My other favorites for silent+podcast gaming include the Pokemon games (any of them), the older Harvest Moon (Story of Seasons) games, and classic-style (turn-based) roguelikes such as <strong>Cogmind</strong> or <strong>Brogue</strong> on PC and <strong>POWDER</strong> on my soft-hacked Wii/PSP (check out the sidebar over on /r/roguelikes for more of these turn-based roguelikes; they're brutal, but totally addicting).
I've played Brogue 1.7.4 on my ipad 2 for a couple years now, no problems. Not sure what update you're referring to. I do see it's not in the app store anymore....prob'ly can download thru a website though. I'll check....
(clickity clickity clickity)
...yep, found it here: https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home
breaking this out into another post to make sure everyone sees it
if you like pure stealth, try brogue: https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/
you can stack stealth gear and enjoy absurd shenanigans
because you're not required to fight, there's some fantastic tools for stealth
The original roguelikes are good games to check out. They aren't as user friendly in the beginning but well worth the time.
Check out Brogue. It's one of the best games I've played. The craziest things happen.
In one playthrough I died after these events. I entered a room and approached an altar. Bad mistake, it was trapped and the room catches on fire. It spreads fast as the room is covered in dry grass. I run through the blaze in a mad dash and make it to a pond alive but badly burned. I had picked up a potion but it seems like it might be poisonous so I throw it. Bad mistake again as the portion creates a poisonous gas cloud, I run from it and escape it. But then I run into a bloat that explodes into flesh eating gas. I quickly run to a door on the other side of the room going to trap the gas in the other side. But it's locked. I die as the flesh falls off my bones.
Not embellishing, that really happened in one playthrough. The game also has 100% procedural levels so every game is completely different.
Have you tried brogue? How about brogue? or maybe even brogue? This game is fucking excellent. The gimmick is that the creator imagined what roguelikes today were based off of rogue, and not so much nethack. The variety of items isn't super high (only 113 total, compared to over 300 ((maybe more, that's my rough guess)) in nethack.), but the amount of ways things in the environment interact with eachother and all the unique monsters make every game feel like a new experience, unlike netahck. Even with only 40- some enemies, each one has unique behaviors, spells, and weaknesses. You can download it here: https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/
Brogue: the greatest roguelike of all time, and it's free.
If you've already heard of that: Overgod. This arena-shooter is seriously obscure, very difficult, and pretty difficult to figure out at first You'll need to read the readme and what it says about the upgrade system, then play a few times, then read the readme again, carefully. But, all this patience will be rewarded by one of the deepest and most fluid action-combat games around. Did I mention that it's also free? It's free. I've played hundreds of hours of this game. I think the only reason it isn't more popular is that most people don't get over the initial hurdle of working out what's going on.
I think this is a good subject to bring up and yours is an interesting solution. The shading helps create more contiguous areas.
I prefer ASCII tilesets in many games, but I think that DF's is lacking compared with other ASCII games. A lot of fans immediately take a strong "you aren't uber enough to read ASCII" argument when complaints are brought up about the default tileset, even from people who would just like the ASCII to look nicer.
The default DF ASCII set throws me off a bit because multiple characters are sometimes used to represent the same elements in-game. Also, quite a few more 'special' ASCII characters are used than in most other ASCII games, such as card suits and the smileys used for dwarves (I prefer the classic @ used in most roguelikes to represent special characters). This may of course be because there's so many more elements to represent than a roguelike, but it leads it into the domain of "kinda trying to be artistic and kinda not".
As a side note, I'd recommend checking out Brogue if you want to see ASCII done really beautifully. There's some color animation effects going on so what it couldn't be easily ported into DF, but it's a good example of how it can be done better.
Brogue is awesome. It is simple at first, yet very deep, and very hard. You can play an ASCII version, but their is also a tiled version that is a standalone download. Brogue ASCII: https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/ Brogue Tiles: http://oryxdesignlab.com/brogue-tiles/
I mean, if I'm looking for procedurally generated I would just go straight to roguelikes, they have got those down amazingly. Hell check out Brouge, that has rivers and caverns and lava and all rooms filled with explosve gas plus all the normal monsters hanging out.
A fantastic way to introduce a very dynamic play experience is composable abstractions. Emergent play or mechanics can be defined as the ad-hoc composition of fundamental game mechanics to produce what is effectively a brand new mechanic. Spelunky and FTL both employ composable abstractions quite a lot, but probably the best exemplar is Brogue.
Brogue is a traditional dungeon-diver roguelike without a levelling system. The PC has 2 statistics: Health (displayed as a %) and Strength. These statistics are increased by drinking potions, which are rare and unidentified at the start of each game. The abilities of the PC are determined entirely by their items. The items do a wide variety of things; different types of weapons have different hit-styles (spears pierce to the tile behind the tile attacked, axes hit all adjacent enemies, rapiers attack at double speed and have a lunge attack, etc). There are many different staves which allow spells to be cast, many of which interact with the environment (gases are flammable, walls can be dug through, lightning travels through enemies and friendlies and can bounce of walls, wall-turrets can be dug through with staves to destroy them instantly, etc). There are many potions that do all different kinds of things, again interacting with the environment. These simple rules and their composition with many different situations (environments, enemies, weapons, etc) create a very wide variety of options during play.
The best way to get bang for your buck, so to speak, as a developer is to create a system of composable abstractions that interact in interesting, sometimes unpredicted ways. You can create a huge amount of play potential with very little content. However, that content needs to be finely honed.
Brogue. Quite pretty ASCII graphics, very easy to get into but plenty of depth.
edit: Never mind, reread your post, and it's not on Steam. It is free, though...
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Brogue as well. Check out Roguelikes on Google+...always good suggestions there.
Like everyone else said, yes absolutely approachable, but to Itlpr's point, it doesn't have a lot in common with the "true roguelikes". I am someone who LOVES roguelikes/lites and I have over 150 of them on steam alone. This is definitely a good gateway game in the same way that Dead Cells was for a lot of people.
That being said, if you were interested in something closer to a "true roguelike", I think Brogue is probably the most accessible of those. It's really good at stripping the genre down to its essentials without requiring some of the homework like NetHack does. If you are turned off by the turn-based nature of it, you can try something like Spelunky, and if you are fine with turn based, but want something graphics, check out Dungeons of Dredmor.
The good news is that a lot of the more traditional style roguelikes (Brogue, Angband, NetHack, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, etc.) are free, so if you want to download them and give them a go, you should!
Pix the Cat, Dark Years, Brogue, Monolith, Nauticrawl, Paradigm, OlliOlli2, Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines, and the Castle of Shikigami series plus the spiritual successor Sisters Royale.
Oreshika is a PSVita game and CoS is an arcade series that has ports of the first on steam, second on ps2, and third on wii. The rest of the games listed are on steam.
the thing about Bard mode is that it removes the Rhythm half of this game's Rhythm-Roguelite genre. What you're left with is just the basic Roguelite parts.
If you're specifically into the turn-based dungeon crawling, try Brogue. It's as close to the original Rogue (the inception/grandfather of Rogue-likes, and therefore also the Roguelite genre) as you can get AFAIK. It doesn't have any meta progression at all; each death sets you back to a new game, and every run is randomized. This can be off-putting for a lot of people, but you didn't specifically mention it as a feature you want or not so i'll include it
Another comment mentioned Into the Breach, which is awesome, and the studio's prior game FTL is also really good and hits a lot of the same strengths. It's a rogue-lite with some progression elements between runs and good random encounter to make the runs feel unique. It's not technically turn-based, but it's clearly intended to be played with you pausing as frequently as you want to study encounters and delegate tasks to your characters. stepping away without pausing would be pretty disastrous, however, and that might kill this option for you/your use-case for the post.
You may have heard of Slay the Spire, Monster Train, Dicey Dungeons? The deck-builder rogue-lites have really been taking off lately. It's not really my genre so I can't speak to the strengths too much but they seem to fit your use-case; turn-based, little story/cinematics, mostly just challenging encounters and a ton of RNG.
I'd reccommend taking a look at brogue which does this very well in my opinion.
For water the tile color changes dynamically. This is not related to the turns, it changes as well when you're standing still. Not all tiles change at the same time
I wonder if I could sell you on a good ol' rogue*like*.
Brogue is a wonderful roguelike. Each run in Brogue is very different and you really feel like you are developing a build each time because you don't upgrade your character but only the random items you find. Its free and a really wonderful game!
Don't be put off by the ascii graphics, they look gorgeous in full screen and there is full mouse control with tooltips and everything. It's a modern game, just with a retro aesthetic.
My setup might be helpful for you: My Low-Cost Hands-Free Gaming Setup
In particular, if buttons cause you problems, using something like VoiceAttack to press them vocally can really give your fingers a break. It's generally not quick enough for action games, but anything turn-based or just not timing intensive works great.
As for other game ideas, the classic roguelikes tend to very deep and are all turn-based. My favorites are Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and Brogue.
I like procgen games, but you're not wrong... improperly applied procgen is pretty bad.
As I get older I have less time for gaming, and I don't want to play "long arc" games. I like playing games where I sit for a session, and that's that.
Tons of multiplayer games have that mode, like Overwatch or Chess or MtG.
For single-player games though, you have to turn to these run-based games. Which is where procgen shines.
The best procgen game designers deeply understand how to create fragments that will combine into new and novel situations. Similar to how chess positions or bridge hands can present a unique challenge, where strategic themes recur but the specifics dictate the answer, and player mastery can grow over repeated plays. But each new game is a new experience.
You have to get into the turn-based hardcore shit to see this really done at its best, imo. That may just be taste. Brogue is probably more than you can handle, given your hatred for procgen, but that's an example of a designer who deeply understands what he's doing.
AI War: Fleet Command on steam. It has a mode that is supposed to be impossible, but a few people have beaten it (then the dev improved the AI so that it could deal with those strategies). It also has normal modes that you are supposed to beat, but are still way harder than most games.
Dustforce is a solid platformer on everything that also has a set of levels that only 12 people in the world have ever done an SS clear on. People have had won speedrun world records before they could even beat these levels at an SS rank. There is no bull either, it is 100% execution based.
Some good genres would be shmups and roguelikes. You could probably take any game from these and have a hard time doing a full ascent or a 1CC in the shmups case.
A good roguelike is Brogue, not the hardest, but you should probably try to beat that before you actually go into the deep end since these games take a while to get into. If you do want to go into the deep end play nethack, but you will have a wiki open just for the controls for the first 100 hours since it was designed by people who really liked hotkeys and nothing else. Both these games are free and open source.
A good shmup is castle of shikigami on steam (or 2 on PS2, or 3 on Wii/xbox 360 (these versions force you to only 5 credits as well)) It has a new harder difficulty, but it took me months of play time to 1CC this back at my arcade pre hard mode. I've also never actually seen someone do a no hit no bomb run either.
If I were you I would start with Brogue. Mechanics are simple and intuitive, teaches you about item identification and cursed items in RLs, original ASCII design, vibrant color pallet (unlike Nethack), atmospheric descriptions fill the mind with detailed imagery. Unlike most rpgs however, you don't gain XP or level up from killing monsters. You advance in power based purely off of your weapons and armor, and potions of Life (increase max HP) and potions of Strength (increase damage & maximum lvl of weapon & armor you can use). Because all potions and scrolls start off unidentified, you are forced to experiment to learn what items do what before you can advance in power. It also really encourages stealthy and cautious play.
Free download here
I recommend finding a playlist on spotify or youtube to play in the background as the game has no sound.
Let me know if you need any help with the game! have fun!
yes, for example indeed; or FTL, Kingdom, or my favorite dungeon crawler: Brogue (if you happened to get to the last level, please let me know how you did it)
Depends what you mean by skill. From the sound of it you mean things that rely on twitch reflexes?
Disclaimer: The games I'll recommend below are hard in other ways, but require all the coordination and reflexes of a potato. If that's not what you're looking for, I apologize.
If that's the case, something like Tales of Maj'Eyal might do you. Adjustable difficulty from cakewalk to <knocks you over a teabags you> but it's all turn-based so you're given plenty of time to think about your next move. Note that there's a free download version and the paid version on steam is just an extra player class, some cosmetics, and the expansion packs.
Again, I don't know if this is actually what you're looking for, but if it is, also check out Brogue and DCSS.
Figured I would run things this week and give our usual host a welcome break. (Also I'm ready to play after a week off!)
This is Sunday Seed number 102.
Here's how to participate:
Download Brogue 1.7.4
Ctrl-click on New Game in and enter this week's seed, generated by an ancient and arcane ritual: 446441480
Play the seed once and come back here to post your score, cause of death, GOLD amount and share your experiences and observations to become a better player.
We're all on the honor system - no save scumming, replaying or reading this thread before your run is complete.
good luck!
Opening screen should look like this
http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Berlin_Interpretation
This short article sums it up well.
Although I enjoyed all of the games you listed, I don't consider BoI, RL, or FTL to be roguelikes. This is a contentious topic on this sub. You will hear the term used to describe almost any indie game these days.
My favorite games in the genre are Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and Brogue. Both are modern, free, and extremely replayable. I've spent several hundred hours on them. Here are some links for you.
http://crawl.develz.org/ https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/
And I replied to a 2 day old post. Oops.
Hey, I'm not Evan, but a lot of the mechanics from the original Pixel Dungeon that carried over into Shattered PD are actually inspired by Brogue: you'll recognize the single stat (strength), enchanting lowering strength requirements and increasing power, and some of the traps, wands, and rings. It's a very different game (no classes, an 'ally' mechanic that significantly changes the game, very different terrain...) but it might interest you.
Brogue, by quite a large margin. It's beautiful, for a start, but the line-of-sight mechanism means the world makes so much sense. It's tough as nails but has been the game I've been happiest going back to over the years
Brogue has a pretty simple interface as roguelikes go. Rather than having different 'use' commands for each item type (wear, wield, zap, aim, etc etc etc) it has one 'apply' command which works for most items.
If you like the Shiren-esque interface, you might want to try Voyage to Farland. It's on PC but very much inspired by Shiren and its ilk, including a two-button interface for commands.
How about a roguelike? Brogue is a very simple one so you can very quickly dive in and great for playing for 20 minutes at a time. (A successfull play though will take you more than one session but you can save on exit).
Playing Brogue and DCSS taught me persistence and improved my critical thinking. Roguelikes are essentially boiled down versions of gaming - they are potent incarnations of gaming's most fundamental elements, so playing them brings you in close contact with game mechanics and forces you to consider the trappings closely. I would argue playing roguelikes has improved my decision making in real life, too.
I think you're looking for Brogue. Combat is definitely part of the game, but there's no XP system at all - progression is entirely via finding Scrolls of Enchantment, and choosing which gear to "level up". The only reward for killing is getting past the monsters unmolested, and there are definitely viable stealth builds.
This is a non-Android note, but if you liked Pixel Dungeon, you might enjoy the free and open source PC/Mac/Linux game that inspired it, Brogue.
I can talk roguelikes all day and every day...
For an excellent introduction to the old-school roguelike tradition, you can't do better than Brogue. It retains the challenge and resource management aspects of roguelikes, while eliminating the tedium that often comes with them. It's more like an 'Interesting Roguelike Situation Generator' than a tradition roguelike, and that's awesome.
Brogue is the best game to start with in my opinion.
A lot of Roguelikes can be a bit overwhelming for beginners; They often have complex systems and not very user-friendly UI's. Brogue is not only a very good game, but it's also extremely well polished with simple mechanics, a good UI and a finely tuned experience.
You can either get the original here or the community edition here. I recommend the community edition, it has some nice bugfixes (most notably the save files).
Brogue. It's a old-school style roguelike where almost everything that defines your character is an item. You do have some stats that increase, but the items are far more important and provide all the abilities. For example in order to cast spells you have to pick up a staff that casts a specific spell, but you have a limited number of item slots.
Angband is popular no doubt, but runs are rather long for my taste. I think one of the best ways for the uninitiated to get a taste of old school Rogue mechanics these days is probably Brogue CE. It's a "spiritual successor" to Rogue, with modern design sensibilities and extremely pretty colored text graphics. Everything about it feels very tightly wound, from the play time, to the mechanical interactions. Everything in the game has a specific purpose, and nothing is really superfluous or useless.
For more strategic gameplay I'd say the next step is to get into some traditional roguelikes. My go-to recommendation is Brogue.
These games are great because they meld dungeon crawling with turn-based strategy. You know how in FTL, you can pause the game but still input commands? It's like that feeling but more integrated. You can play as slow or as fast as you want and the game matches your pace.
Seconding this, every roguelike fan should try Brogue. It's amazing how they made the dungeon feel so alive despite the simplistic ASCII graphics (it's more accessible than it sounds). It is similar to Spelunky in its exploratory, learn-as-you-play feel. It's available free here.
Start at the beginning, work your way up. https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/ looks nicer than the original which was current content for me back in the day, but hey, you do you. Hit google for some research if you want to actually have a chance at completing the game.
r/patientgamers may have more for you.
Hey, if you want to ping me a message with your compile errors I'll do my best to resolve them.
Other than that it looks like Brogue has a precompiled Linux binary, I've been playing quite a lot of it lately (on Windows) and can very much recommend it: https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/.
Brogue is a great roguelike for noobs to the genre. It doesn't inundate the player with too much and has a great level generator. I've had it perma-installed for the past six years.
Have you tried Brogue? For a text mode rogue-like, I found it far more engaging for casual gaming than most other text based rogue-likes and I'm also a fan of Shattered PD.
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Soy muy malo jugando Nethack, ahora le estoy dando al Brogue que es un poco más simple pero a la vez hay que ser muy estratégico porque no tiene sistema de XP o niveles, es todo basado en items y encantamientos.
I don't know about PosChenBand but most of the roguelikes you mentioned — NetHack, CDDA, Brogue — should be pretty easy to run. NetHack is in the repositories so it's basically sudo apt install nethack. The rest i.e. CDDA and Brogue are essentially download, extract and double click to play. Go to the website (cataclysmdda.org for CDDA, the old website isn't maintained anymore; sites.google.com/site/broguegame for Brogue) and download the latest Linux versions.
Brogue, Castle of Shikigami (steam), Space Moth DX (steam), Pix the Cat (steam), Cho Ren Sha 68k, and just fighting games online are all strong picks.
You don't even need to spend money to have loads of fun gaming on Linux!
Have you ever played roguelikes?
I highly, highly recommend Brogue. I've introduced friends to it, who had never played roguelikes before, and thought it looked "stupid". One week later, they're raving about how they got to depth 21 with an enchanted greatsword of reaping, with two Naga allies, before getting swarmed by a pack of wraiths and tentacle horrors.
Fucking great game. If you give it a go, come join us on /r/brogueforum !
Try Brogue. It's a traditional roguelike that is much more accessible than others in the genre, with a focus on every enemy and item being unique rather than having 100 variants of the same thing. Since it is turn-based you can just alt-tab whenever you need to. It is ASCII but the tiles version is great. It's free so it's worth a shot, it's one of my favorite games ever!
brogue is a really excellent roguelike that's simple to pick up and start playing, but incredibly deep and challenging as you dig deeper. Definitely rewards experimentation and leveling up your personal skills.
Brogue is probably my new favorite roguelike, and it's been absolutely destroying me. Everything about it is so well-designed, including the ASCII graphics which look surprisingly good. Incredibly hard, but fair and rewarding.
Also Dwarf Fortress, but everyone already knows that.
Brogue simulates gas in a 2D grid (eg discrete cell-based space) environment in a way that feels good as a player, at least to me.
Brogue is free and comes with the code, so you can look at the implementation. I just did a grep on the source, and it looks like the relevant part is in the Time.c file, in the updateVolumetricMedia function.
There are some special cases here but it seems like the basic underlying principle is to go over each cell and set its gas amount to the average of itself and all its neighbors, accounting for walls etc, then it includes some time-based decay which is good in Brogue but you may or may not want. But I merely glanced at the code so read it more carefully for yourself!
Brogue is available here: https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/
And here is a talk from the developer, in the second half he spends some time explaining why gas is awesome, if I recall he touches extremely briefly on his algorithm but is much more focused on gameplay purpose of gas simulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdCQ56UxVVE
Obviously your requirements are more complex, with pressure and vacuums, but his algo is probably a good starting place anyway.
Because gas is so awesome at creating unique crisis situations in Brogue, I totally ripped this gameplay element off in my 2016 7-day roguelike Billiard Dungeon, but my implementation of gas diffusion is much crappier: it's just x blobs of gas are released, and they push away from each other, then disappear after y +/- 1 turns. It's a super-rough approximation, and a non-discrete space, so take your cue from Brogue not me.
Hope that helps some.
Brogue is incredibly well designed and has an enormous amount of replayability. It's also free.
https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home
Divinity: Original Sin EE has an unfortunate and very slow start, with too many dialogues to wade through before the game really begins. But the combat system is fantastic, best RPG combat I've ever played, and it's full of funny ideas, stories, and characters. Brilliant game.
Spelunky is my favourite action game of all time. It's difficult without being unfair and the way it gradually gives you more and more stuff to play with, the way all those things work and interact together is unique and hugely compelling. Looks like "just a platformer" but has as much depth and replayability as a 4X.
Hmm, hard to find a date for it, but those were added in patch 1.2, way on the bottom of the main page at https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/
You probably played more recently than that, though - before that patch, it was just a Mac game! How much of a peek did you take at the game? Did you make it far enough to meet an ogre or two?
You might need to download the linux source code from https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/ and patch '174scum051.patch' over it. Let me know if that works!
If you get it working, I can host a linux binary so other people don't have to repeat the process.
Brogue is a classic rogue-like that is easier to get into that Dwarf Fortress or others.
Personally I found ToME and stopped my search for rpgs there.
But all of these are roguelikes, they lack story (except for ToME, which is kinda the golden middleground), they are easy on the computers (tile-based graphics), but might be difficult to get into.
I'm a big fan of roguelikes (been playing a lot of Brogue lately). Read up on it and it looks like a pretty good game, and I'm dying for something new. That's it, no sob story, I just like roguelikes.
Perfect new laptop game would be [Brogue]!Thoughtfully colored ASCII graphics give it a nice visual appeal, along with classic adventures of retrieving the amulet of Yendor. Very active community with seed competitions multiple times per week! (https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/)
I'd recommend checking out Brogue, my attention to everything I'm doing is way higher in that game than in other roguelikes because it feels like I'm making interesting decisions sooner and more often. Here's the link, I use the Oryx Tiles.
I'll strongly reccomend Brogue. It's a roguelike dungeon crawler, with nice colored ASCII graphics that is a joy to play, and has a TON of play value. Also, for more light, check out Desktop Dungeons
I know you want lesser known games, but if you're looking for exceptions in actual mechanics, look at something like Dark Souls II. It's not perfect by any means, but it's combat system is incredibly refined. Lots of games can learn from it, in my opinion.
Might also look at State of Decay. Once again, by no means a perfect game, but it gets a lot more right than it gets wrong when it comes to it's mechanics.
If you're looking for exceptional storytelling and general 'flow' and pacing of a game, look at something like The Last of Us or the original Bioshock. Look at games like the first Mass Effect and Dragon Age games. None of those are perfect, but there's no such thing as a perfect game.
Even something as simple as Geometry Wars, Super Meat Boy, or VVVVVV can teach you a lot. Minecraft is also a notable example in how a game's mechanics can really stand out.
If you're looking for lesser known games, look at Brogue. It's an incredibly simple roguelike that attempts to emulate the style of the original Rogue. It's completely free on both PC and iPad and is seriously worth playing if you enjoy those types of games.
In my eyes, Dead State does a lot right. Reminds me a lot of the older Fallout titles.
Heavy Bullets is another roguelike set in the first person. I feel like it's mechanics are incredibly solid, even if it does lack depth.
Hell, look at older games that still hold up today. Look at Doom, Duke Nukem 3d, Shadow Warrior, and Quake. I really miss the open-ended level design that existed in that day and age of FPS.
Something like Dragon's Dogma should be looked at as well. It's somewhat similar to the Souls games, but it does so much right that it pains me to see that other games don't take note. That being said it's a little too open-ended in my eyes, and I haven't gotten very far into it.
Well... it's not anything like Dark Souls except in spirit, but I can recommend my favorite roguelike, Brogue. It's got very streamlined gameplay and mechanics, your weapon choices actually affect how combat works, and there's some careful persistent resource management involved. It's also got very charming graphics for a traditional roguelike.
Brogue is the game you imagine a roguelike to be when you've never played one before. It's very accessible (don't expect to beat the game on your first few tries though), has ASCII graphics+ effects, doesn't hide information from you and can be completed in <1 hour.
I'll see your Papers, Please and raise you a Brogue! The mechanics of Brogue are so simple and yet the choices are so complex. Nearly every aspect of Brogue's design fits together to form a cohesive whole. This leads to a combinatorial explosion of interesting choices to make.
I'm not BipBopBoop, but I couldn't help jumping in.
Have you tried any Roguelikes? I've recently fallen in love with Brogue. It's easily the most focused and fun dungeon crawl I've ever played.
I've also been having some fun with Ultima VII recently. It's refreshingly different.