| Title | Nethack: adventures in futility |
| Author | Tony Carnevale |
| Posted in | Game diaries |
| When | May 19, 2011 |
Video games are mainstream now. Everyone and his girlfriend has a Wii. You'd almost think games were socially acceptable. That's why I only play old games..
Read the full articleNetHack, eh? Let the games begin!
Adventures in Nethack? This is going to be incredible.
"And no game has uglier graphics or a more byzantine interface than Nethack."
Uh, Dwarf Fortress and Dwarf Fortress respectively.
And yes, I have played both. Nethack never asked me to simultaneously manage multiple characters across multiple altitude slices.
I'm very amped to see some articles about roguelikes on this site, your description of how they're one of the last bastions of utter nerdiness in gaming is spot-on.
However, the genre has been moving forward, albeit at a glacial pace, towards accessibility and transparent (i.e. non-spoiler reliant) gameplay mechanics. The best and most recent example of this is Brogue.
http://roguebasin.roguelikedev...
Which was developed natively for MacOS (though there is Windows and Linux support), features very pleasant ASCII graphics, (with colored lighting! real talk!) can absolutely be beaten without ever consulting a single guide, yet doesn't lose the gameplay depth and ball-crushing difficulty native to the genre.