Exploring Roguelike Games

Since 1980, in-the-know computer gamers have been enthralled by the unpredictable, random, and incredibly deep gameplay of Rogue and those games inspired by it, known to fans as "roguelikes." For decades, this venerable genre was off the radar of most players and developers for a variety of reasons: deceptively simple graphics (often just text characters), high difficulty and their demand that a player bring more of his or herself to the game than your typical AAA title asks. This book covers many of the most prominent titles, and explains in great detail what makes them interesting, ways to get started playing them, the history of the genre, and much more. It includes interviews, playthroughs and hundreds of screenshots. It is a labor of love: if even a fraction of my enthusiasm for these games gets through these pages to you, then I think you will enjoy it a great deal. Key Features: Playing tips and strategy for newcomers to the genre Core roguelikes Rogue, Angband, NetHack, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, ADOM and Brogue The "lost roguelikes" Super Rogue and XRogue, and the early RPG dnd for PLATO systems The Japanese console roguelikes Taloon's Mystery Dungeon and Shiren the Wanderer Lesser-known but extremely interesting games like Larn, DoomRL, HyperRogue, Incursion and Dungeon Hack "Rogue-ish" games that blur the edges of the genre like, Spelunky, HyperRogue, ToeJam & Earl, Defense of the Oasis, Out There and Zelda Randomizer Interviews with developers like Keith Burgun (100 Rogues and Auro), Rodain Joubert (Desktop Dungeons), Josh Ge (Cogmind), Dr. Thomas Biskup (ADOM), Robin Bandy (devnull public NetHack tournament) and an interview regarding Strange Adventures in Infinite Space Design issues of interest to developers and enthusiasts Much, much more