Fun on Your Laptop: Rougelike Games

March 2009
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Monday, March 30th, 2009 @ 3:23 pm | Laptop, Software

Today I’ll talk about one of my favorite genres of games! I’m sure if you’ve spent enough time looking for free games on the web you’ve run into a few of these games. I mean, being free is one of the hallmarks of the genre. But mainly I’ll be trying to speak to the people who maybe haven’t run into these kinds of games.

So what general info is there? Overall, they involve creating a character, which then marches down into a deep, dark dungeon to recover some legendary artifact. It’s a classic form of role-playing game, and most of the basics of the game are simple to learn (especially if you play as a melee class like a fighter). Most commands are done via keyboard shortcuts – which can be a little intimidating to learn, but really most of them aren’t used very regularly. So if it’s so simple, what’s the appeal? Well, in most games you have a set of characters that move through a world. In this game though, the game world is procedurally generated – that is, the dungeon is different every time you play. The challenge then is less learning about the characters themselves, and more about learning a system. It’s very challenging – there are almost an infinite number of ways for your player to die. All of these are designed to inform the player, so that if you learn from your mistakes your character might last a little longer next time. This learning from game to game combined with a new dungeon every time you play creates a very interesting game experience.

Another system in place to make it even more interesting is the class and race system. The combination of the two of these determines your character’s initial strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies. In many of these games there are so many different combinations that there are a huge number of strategies – several different ones associated with each combination. There are also a huge number of items in the game – some which will help you immensely, and others which harm you or even swiftly kill you. And even the harmful items often can be used in a beneficial way!

So now I’ll recommend my two favorite rougelikes – Dungeon Crawl and Nethack. Nethack is great for beginners – a simple interface, several race and class options, and a great intro to the genre. Dungeon Crawl is more complex, with a huge number of racial and class options. It can be intimidating to new players, but overall will give a more fulfilling experience. Be sure to look for tiled versions of these games, since the native interface can be very confusing (it consists of text characters representing various classes of items). But if you really want the retro feel, go for the classic, non- tiled versions!