Angband was the first software I ever released! I loved the game so much, but it was not OS X native. I set out to "carbonize" Angband to run natively, and later I even rewrote it in Cocoa, with better text rendering and other goodies. The Cocoa rewrite got merged as the Mac front end.
I've been playing Angband off and on since the mid 80's when it's ancestor, Moria, hit the DECUS tapes and we'd run it on our VAX.
I can't speak historically as to what it may or may not have pioneered in roguelikes, but it's varies dramatically philosophically from the likes of Nethack and its bottomless trivia and tricks. Angband is more straightforward.
Angband, with its Tolkien theme, has large maps, hordes of monsters, frightening uniques, a large amount of ancient artifacts and has its gameplay centered around a town that you routinely travel to in order to refresh and reload.
There are lots of variants from "Vanilla" as its called. Different themes, different mechanics, different character classes. I don't follow the space to know if there are a lot of Nethack variants the like that Angband has spawned.
In a game that favors cautious advance (it's not uncommon to fully recover after an encounter), the recent edition introduced a new Blackguard class that's more momentum based in that once in combat, you'd like to sustain combat to get more powerful, and stronger. It's a nice change of pace from the classic characters and play styles.
It's actively maintained and has a passionate community.
There's tons of variants, probably the most out of any of the roguelikes. ZAngband "Zelazny Angband" took the tolkien elements and added elements from Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber series. SAngband "skills angband" added weapon skills and probably tons more. OAngband "opinion angband" scratched the itch of its developers about how Angband should work. MAngband was (wait, IS! it had a release in 2020) a mind-blowing multiplayer Angband variant.
Tales of Maj'Eyal https://store.steampowered.com/app/259680/Tales_of_MajEyal/ is the continuation of an angband variant called Tales of Middle-Earth / T.o.M.E., which name change I gather was necessary because DarkGod wanted to go commercial.
I wanted to link to [0] for a complete list but it's having struggles today. [1] and [2] have lists but I would guess that roguebasin's list would be more authoritative.
I got started with moria/umoria on the Amiga, which had beautiful graphical tiles. Then I played quite a lot of moria/angband in the terminal on Linux (occasionally dabbling with the tileset/gui versions).
It's an interesting game.
> MAngband was (wait, IS! it had a release in 2020) a mind-blowing multiplayer Angband variant.
I still remember how delightfully different the game became with multi-player - mostly because it wasn't lock-step turns (a la Civilisation), but tick-based. I still think there's room for a multi-player rouge-like - but Mangband is not it for me.
But it remains an illuminating lesson in game design ("Completely change the feel of your game, with this one wierd t(r)ick!" :)
ZAngband is, sadly, very dead -- the last release was in 2003. I miss it.
Another wacky, fun (and, sadly, also dead) variant was Steamband, a steampunk-themed variant with completely new classes, races, and monsters: http://angband.oook.cz/steamband/steamband.html
TOME is such a great game. I've played Nethack since early 90's, thereafter Angband and Zangband and finally TOME. TOME is very polished, slick, beautiful, full of depth, different challenges and styles. Also actively maintained. Sunken so many hours while listening to talk radio.
It's notable that a big reason that Angband has a large number of variants is because a lot of its data is in easily readable, editable flat text files. For instance:
This allowed people to start work on variants without having to write C or even recompile. Also, Angband's source code has a reputation for being pretty clean and easy to understand and modify.
My favorite version on the PC was called I think something like "ultimate" angband... it had code to procedurally generate vaults - larger open rooms that were oval, round, or other non rectangular shapes (within character set limits) with various geometric side chambers - on random levels that were stuffed with both out of depth monsters and out of depth treasure.
Deciding how and when to approach those was an exercise in itself, and the rewards were worth it.
It also had monsters that would breed explosively, as in between your moves. In the time it took you to take three steps toward a pile of louses (lice), they would multiply from 5 to 12 total. Fun stuff.
> It also had monsters that would breed explosively, as in between your moves. In the time it took you to take three steps toward a pile of louses (lice), they would multiply from 5 to 12 total. Fun stuff.
That has always been a feature of mainline Angband. "Breeding explosively" is the exact term used in the monster memory.
There are lots of Nethack variants! There's a Nethack tournament called Junethack going on right now where competitors can play like at least 10 different variants or something.
We're in a new golden age of traditional roguelikes right now. Here are a few of my other favorites:
Brogue: Community Edition - A modern spiritual sequel to the original Rogue. Very tightly wound; every item and monster has their own niche. Excellent UI, and a striking ASCII-style with light and shadows.
Golden Krone Hotel - The best roguelike for folks to to the genre, imho. A good interface and lots of intelligent streamlining of the genre. Transform between human and vampire repeatedly as you manage blood and seek (or avoid) sunlight.
Cogmind - A robotic crawl through a living mechanical dungeon. Big focuses on trying not to attract too much attention and equipping parts you've blown off enemies.
Caves of Qud - Weaponized sci-fi weirdness. Open world. Reputation and culture systems for every species. Potions that can grant intelligence to anything. There is an achievement for wearing your own severed face.
I would also add Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, a massive survival roguelike set after a zombie apocalypse with a healthy dose of Lovecraft. Actively developed, huge community, and a ton of features, from crafting, farming to implanting bionics on your body and building vehicles from scratch and driving them.
Probably the only game out there that lets you go from escaping a burning building in a bathrobe to running over zombies in your custom Mad Max style electric RV.
I've played most of these, but my favorite remains Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It's actively developed with a dedicated community, and you can even play online, where a peanut gallery will often appear if you make it deep into the dungeon.
I've been impressed by DCSS's dev team's ability and willingness to make unpopular decisions and make radical changes to the game. They seem to be principled in their decision-making.
I read somewhere that, since I stopped playing, they removed the food mechanic! To my own surprise, even though food clocks are a very archetypal roguelike mechanic, I agree with that removal. I haven't really played it since maybe 2012, but at that time dealing with food was mostly a chore, hardly ever a problem, and you were set for life after you went through the hive and picked up scads of royal jelly.
This is not to say that I don't like food clocks; I think Brogue's is an excellent example of a well-tuned food clock. Brogue has item vaults where you have to pick one out of 4-8 items, and you don't know what's going to be lying around on the ground over the next few levels, so you have to take a risk and pick what you think is best. I used to keep careful notes about what else was in each vault so that I could backtrack if I found a duplicate of what I picked up in a vault, until I noticed that I was dying to the food clock a lot. This is not to say that I enjoy my characters starving, but Brogue's design pays particular attention to trying to never make you bored / making nearly every keystroke meaningful (whereas vanilla nethack can be mind-numbing).
You have eaten a Mushroom of Clear Mind. You are no longer confused, and you can build the game from source (either from tag 4.2.2 or the master branch on Github, if you're feeling adventurous).
I realize this is a bit late, but Rephial is no longer updating - http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showpost.php?p=152370&postcount...
Most activity is on the forum at oook.cz or the github releases page, though Rephial was once the official source. A new landing page is probably in the works...
I played this all through class during sophmore year, then dropped it. Picked it up again last year on my bus commute and FINALLY beat Morgoth. Twenty years it took! I don't think I've ever been so satisfied to finish a game as with Angband.
I have played this game for months at a time and then abandon it. I have a backup file of a Level 66 character on one of my backup keys from 2014 . Maybe time to continue the game.
Since a few people are just throwing out roguelikes they like, I figure I'd like to mention a couple that had an impact on me:
Incursion: Halls of the Goblin King
The mechanics, skills, classes, etc are basically ripped from DnD, which I've never had the opportunity to play, so I found it engaging. The author was touting the game as a sort of prequel/sample, just a single 10 floor dungeon, with the intention of using the engine to create a more expansive campaign, but then he moved on to other things, open sourced the project and abandoned it. Someone else forked it, but only to fix some bugs and improve playability, not to continue the grand vision. I think it still stands on its own as a worthwhile game, but its always been a disappointment that the full idea was never realized.
DoomRL
This one was actually a finished game. It did a good job of getting the feel of a fast paced shooter while still being a typical turn based roguelike. Things like being able to decrease the enemy's chance to hit you by moving perpendicular to their line of fire were a nice touch. I think they eventually started to get some pushback from the owners of the Doom IP, and pivoted to a new game called Jupiter Hell, that's supposedly the same feel with a different scenario, but I've never gotten around to checking it out.
Readit News
http://ridiculousfish.com/angband/
https://github.com/angband/angband/pull/64
I can't speak historically as to what it may or may not have pioneered in roguelikes, but it's varies dramatically philosophically from the likes of Nethack and its bottomless trivia and tricks. Angband is more straightforward.
Angband, with its Tolkien theme, has large maps, hordes of monsters, frightening uniques, a large amount of ancient artifacts and has its gameplay centered around a town that you routinely travel to in order to refresh and reload.
There are lots of variants from "Vanilla" as its called. Different themes, different mechanics, different character classes. I don't follow the space to know if there are a lot of Nethack variants the like that Angband has spawned.
In a game that favors cautious advance (it's not uncommon to fully recover after an encounter), the recent edition introduced a new Blackguard class that's more momentum based in that once in combat, you'd like to sustain combat to get more powerful, and stronger. It's a nice change of pace from the classic characters and play styles.
It's actively maintained and has a passionate community.
Sil http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/sil/ is kind of an Angband variant but embraces the middle earth theme a lot more and has removed a lot of stuff.
Tales of Maj'Eyal https://store.steampowered.com/app/259680/Tales_of_MajEyal/ is the continuation of an angband variant called Tales of Middle-Earth / T.o.M.E., which name change I gather was necessary because DarkGod wanted to go commercial.
I wanted to link to [0] for a complete list but it's having struggles today. [1] and [2] have lists but I would guess that roguebasin's list would be more authoritative.
[0] http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=List_of_Angband_va...
[1] http://angband.oook.cz/variants.php
[2] http://www.thangorodrim.net/variants.html
It's an interesting game.
> MAngband was (wait, IS! it had a release in 2020) a mind-blowing multiplayer Angband variant.
I still remember how delightfully different the game became with multi-player - mostly because it wasn't lock-step turns (a la Civilisation), but tick-based. I still think there's room for a multi-player rouge-like - but Mangband is not it for me.
But it remains an illuminating lesson in game design ("Completely change the feel of your game, with this one wierd t(r)ick!" :)
Another wacky, fun (and, sadly, also dead) variant was Steamband, a steampunk-themed variant with completely new classes, races, and monsters: http://angband.oook.cz/steamband/steamband.html
https://github.com/angband/angband/blob/master/lib/gamedata/...
This allowed people to start work on variants without having to write C or even recompile. Also, Angband's source code has a reputation for being pretty clean and easy to understand and modify.
My favorite version on the PC was called I think something like "ultimate" angband... it had code to procedurally generate vaults - larger open rooms that were oval, round, or other non rectangular shapes (within character set limits) with various geometric side chambers - on random levels that were stuffed with both out of depth monsters and out of depth treasure.
Deciding how and when to approach those was an exercise in itself, and the rewards were worth it.
It also had monsters that would breed explosively, as in between your moves. In the time it took you to take three steps toward a pile of louses (lice), they would multiply from 5 to 12 total. Fun stuff.
That has always been a feature of mainline Angband. "Breeding explosively" is the exact term used in the monster memory.
Brogue: Community Edition - A modern spiritual sequel to the original Rogue. Very tightly wound; every item and monster has their own niche. Excellent UI, and a striking ASCII-style with light and shadows.
Golden Krone Hotel - The best roguelike for folks to to the genre, imho. A good interface and lots of intelligent streamlining of the genre. Transform between human and vampire repeatedly as you manage blood and seek (or avoid) sunlight.
Cogmind - A robotic crawl through a living mechanical dungeon. Big focuses on trying not to attract too much attention and equipping parts you've blown off enemies.
Caves of Qud - Weaponized sci-fi weirdness. Open world. Reputation and culture systems for every species. Potions that can grant intelligence to anything. There is an achievement for wearing your own severed face.
Probably the only game out there that lets you go from escaping a burning building in a bathrobe to running over zombies in your custom Mad Max style electric RV.
I read somewhere that, since I stopped playing, they removed the food mechanic! To my own surprise, even though food clocks are a very archetypal roguelike mechanic, I agree with that removal. I haven't really played it since maybe 2012, but at that time dealing with food was mostly a chore, hardly ever a problem, and you were set for life after you went through the hive and picked up scads of royal jelly.
This is not to say that I don't like food clocks; I think Brogue's is an excellent example of a well-tuned food clock. Brogue has item vaults where you have to pick one out of 4-8 items, and you don't know what's going to be lying around on the ground over the next few levels, so you have to take a risk and pick what you think is best. I used to keep careful notes about what else was in each vault so that I could backtrack if I found a duplicate of what I picked up in a vault, until I noticed that I was dying to the food clock a lot. This is not to say that I enjoy my characters starving, but Brogue's design pays particular attention to trying to never make you bored / making nearly every keystroke meaningful (whereas vanilla nethack can be mind-numbing).
Incursion: Halls of the Goblin King
The mechanics, skills, classes, etc are basically ripped from DnD, which I've never had the opportunity to play, so I found it engaging. The author was touting the game as a sort of prequel/sample, just a single 10 floor dungeon, with the intention of using the engine to create a more expansive campaign, but then he moved on to other things, open sourced the project and abandoned it. Someone else forked it, but only to fix some bugs and improve playability, not to continue the grand vision. I think it still stands on its own as a worthwhile game, but its always been a disappointment that the full idea was never realized.
DoomRL
This one was actually a finished game. It did a good job of getting the feel of a fast paced shooter while still being a typical turn based roguelike. Things like being able to decrease the enemy's chance to hit you by moving perpendicular to their line of fire were a nice touch. I think they eventually started to get some pushback from the owners of the Doom IP, and pivoted to a new game called Jupiter Hell, that's supposedly the same feel with a different scenario, but I've never gotten around to checking it out.
(If you've never played Angband seriously give it a go, it's quite memorable, even if you're a veteran of Moria, Rogue and Nethack)