With all the recent AAR activity here, I thought it was worth linking to RPS, where Keiron just resurrected his AAR column on playing the roguelike ZangbandTK. Of course with the quick deaths in a roguelike, an AAR is all about starting over:
Just one taste:
Its a wonderful read. And like all good AARs, it makes me want to try the game.
Well, ZangbandTK does have graphics, but they’re not really at all whorey. Slightly more graphic-y is Powder*, which manages to match a Gameboy in graphics. More than that, and things seem to be inching into Diablo’s territory.
Biggest problem I have with rogue-likes is keeping track of what all the ASCII chars represent. I had no problem doing so in my ill-spent youth, back in the days of Infocom, but recent attempts to play them have failed. Printing out and constantly referencing an ASCII chart bogs it down, making it cumbersome to just drop into a 15-minute impulse session before staggering off to bed. But some rogue-likes have simple tile graphics mods that make it easier to distinguish ‘d’ from ‘D’. Nethack and Dwarf Fortress have tile ports.
The only one I can think of off the top of my head is UnReal World, but it still just looks like Nethack with a tileset. There was a graphical Nethack remake, but they used an isometric perspective that I hated. Can’t remember what it was called.
Thanks for the suggestions! I’m going to check those out. It’s like DF for me - I couldn’t figure out what the ASCII chars were, it was so much easier with a tileset.
