Maybe it is the fancy shaded targeting added in Stone Soup that makes it seem like it is new. It has probably been 6 months since I played it last and it seems like there are several little cool additions even in that brief span of time (as RLs go, that is).
ADOM is the only roguelike that I ever played to completion, though of course I cheated to do that (by copying off the character file in case of death or misfortune). Sword of Fargoal was my first, now that I think of it – never considered it as a roguelike but it really is. Funny! Though I definitely lean toward the ASCII character types, it’s just what I’m used to. But lately I am stuck on Shiren too, and it’s my roguelike of choice these days.
No, there was definitely some change to the targetting interface in Stone Soup that probably made it more user-friendly, but I couldn’t say exactly what it was. I just remember a whole bunch more options for auto-pick-up and a bunch of other minor, but useful, interface tweaks. I’ll probably fire it up again some time this week thanks to this thread.
Oh and I have never completed any of them. I either suck, am too impatient or have not put in the time. Probably all of the above. My mission should be to find one that some of you people have completed (so that I know it can be done by [relatively] normal folks), read all of the help guidance (eschewing spoilers) and then get to killin’.
I know how rogue like interfaces work. I’m not necessarily asking for using a mouse to do everything (though it’s silly not to allow that), but rogue like interfaces could use mprovement. There’s plenty of window room to make use of, and they shouldn’t be living in 1987, whether they are Ascii or not.
Many of them are exceptionally difficult. ADOM and Zangband fall into this category. If you play Zangband with full towns/overworld map you have an insane amount of resources at your finger tips (shops with scrolls!), or promised (each king gives out quests that often give excellent rewards, items that grant key resistances and such). Despite the fact that you cna easily acquire enough scrolls of enchantment, decursing, id, id, blink, teleport, level up/down, and sustance than you can ever hope to use it’s just absurdly difficult. Most of the high level quests are crazy (I don’t recall ever actually killing Cthulhu, even when I cheated, and I may or may not have beaten Eric of Amber but that’s sketchy too). Once you get past stat gain depth the difficult spikes hugely. Zangband just has more incredibly unpleasant monsters to chose from. Most of the high level Cthulhu baddies are insane, the Amber baddies are unpleasant, and that’s on top of the traditional undead, dragons, and wringwraitsh. Oh, it’s got chaos gods from Warhammer too. And all sorts of other wierd stuff. Qs. Freaking Qs.
It does make for an interesting game, but it’s very different than sy Nethack or Crawl. Not better or worse, just different.
I’ve played Dungeoncrawl on and off for years and I’ve never even sniffed completing it. I’ve had a couple characters that were doing well and I thought were almost invincible, but they both got teleported to the Abyss, and I never figured out how to get out. It’s really, really hard and I kinda suck.
I just re-read my post. I meant I wish they would cover them more often, not mention them. I want the bloggers to do all the work finding the nice stuff – it’s the only good reason for them to exist! :)
I am surprised nobody has mentioned SLASH’EM yet. I’ve played about half-dozen different rogue-likes, but SLASH’EM is the only one I’ve beaten.
It is basically a NetHack on steroids. Great game.
Another World is a great game too, but I got a bit bored of it eventually. Still it is very original and refreshing take on the genre - rather than being cliche wizard/warrior/rogue in a canned fantasy world, you are in a Stone Age Scandinavia, alone in a hostile (almost)non-magical world. If you like outdoors/survivial stuff you will fall in love with that game.
I’m trying to recall the name of a roguelike I spent countless hours wasting time playing on various IBM PS/2 machines back in the 1989-1990 timeframe. It was a DOS PC-only game that used the happy face character for your character and full EGA colors.
Ring a bell for anyone else?
I actually remember playing Ragnarok/Valhalla when I was really young. I loved to mix the starting potions and see if I could make a potion that did something good, but 90% of the combinations were either lethal or did something horrible to you.
Ahhh, I remember now… it was Kingdom of Kroz, the game that put Apogee on the map.
Of course it’s only semi-Roguelike in that it had predefined levels rather than randomly-generated levels.
The three I play pretty regularly are Nethack, Dwarf Fortress, and DoomRL. I’ve got my RPG-ish strategic game in Nethack, my city building RTS in Dwarf Fortress, and fast paced action game in DoomRL. The three of them have kept me happily entertained for years, Nethack the longest obviously.
I’m an ADOM kind of guy.
Played most of the ones mentioned here, but finished none.
I have become a fan of Incursion and keep going back to that whenever I try and play any other RL.
I think you mean The Unreal World.
Hanacker: The Abyss is always dangerous, but if you just keep moving, there’s a reasonable chance you’ll eventually stumble on a way out.
I’m an old fan of Dungeon Crawl but somehow missed out on Stone Soup. I just downloaded the latest build and like it a lot, the new interface and gameplay tweaks are really nice improvements. Good to see that Crawl is seeing some development again!
I had a link to Stone Soup sitting around somewhere but I had never tried it. I really like what I am seeing. Sigmund keeps killing all my guys, though, which isn’t very nice.
Jeez David. It is even linked in my original post. Unless you meant this. Doesn’t really look like Finland though. ;)
Oops. Yes, thank you.
“Another World” is another great game but it is entirely different story… :) Tyjenks has kindly posted a screenshot from it.