This is probably roughly the nerdiest thing I've ever talked about on this forum ever.

I haven't seen anybody talking about Roguelikes here on Vizzed (and a search reveals nobody here ever EVER uses the word) and I'm wondering if anybody else here is interested.

The genre started in the '70s with a little game called Rogue. Rogue was envisioned as a more "graphical" version of the text adventure Colossal Cave Adventure! (aka Adventure!, the game that the "Adventure" genre was named after)

Roguelikes typically take the form of turn-based dungeon crawlers that use ASCII characters to represent objects on a little dungeon map. Some may opt to use graphical tiles, and some have the option of using either. They're simple in concept but often very complex in design. I'm including a screenshot of my current NetHack character on the telnet server nethack.alt.org (aka NAO) to show how such a simple concept leads to very interesting designs.


Because a Roguelike is easy to make when compared to larger, more complex games, a creator can focus on the fantasy elements and gameplay instead of worrying about presentation. Often the most popular Roguelikes are the ones that don't fall within a previously-defined subgenre.

One of the more complex Roguelikes released recently, Dwarf Fortress, has gained a monumental amount of attention and has even lead to job offers for the developers. It breaks outside the traditional dungeon crawl storyline of Roguelikes as a game genre (although it is an option, that's not its main focus) in favor of a little city-building simulator. This is a case where overambition made instead of breaking a project.

If you want to learn more about the genre, I would suggest going to RogueBasin, a little wiki devoted to these simple games.

In the meantime, I'd like to see if anybody else checks this stuff out. I know it's reasonably obscure, but I can't be the only one on a forum this large that plays these games. What are your favorites? Why are you interested? What do you generally look for in these kinds of games? How do you compare them to more modernized RPGs and adventure games?