Rogue likes usually run on a toaster. What’re people’s favorites?
I have a huge soft spot for Crawl: Stone Soup. Runs in a browser, or probably even lower requirements if you download it. The game’s design goals want to minimize tedium and gotchas, so it’s pretty respectful of your time. Auto-explore and auto-travel are real nice. So is the global search for when you’re like “is there anything in this run with resist poison?”
I’ve played a little nethack, adom, and angband, but I always go back to crawl.
Good old Angband was my go-to for quite a long time years ago. Honestly it would be refreshing to try something a little different but essentially the same concept.
Wha I would really like most would be for Android maybe a port of Torchlight!
Tales of Maj’Eyal rules pretty hard. Wide variety of classes with a wide variety of skills. Definitely less randomized compared to older roguelikes, but randomized equipment and especially monsters still provide plenty of challenge and surprises. Plus, Steam Workshop has several very nice QoL mods including auto-explore and -rest.
Oh I should look into mods then. I played some Tales but the quality of life stuff kept me from getting super deep into it.
Zomnibus covers a wide variety of minor QoL mods from what I remember. Configurable auto-rest and -explore is a godsend; you can set them to request 1 FPS when in action which drastically speeds the game up while also demanding less of your system.
Not sure if it can be considered old timey, But I enjoyed Caves of Qud-
It’s not quite ye-olde-tyme, but Delver is one I’ve put a hundred or so hours in. I played it a bunch because it was one of a handful of games in my library that would run on a chroot on my old second-hand student chromebook back when that was all I had for a year or so. It’s real time and 3d but low-spec pixel with an appreciable art style, and plays as you would expect from a true roguelike. Good sound and music direction. Difficulty is pretty well balanced, in my opinion, erring on the side of a bit too easy especially with as much time in it as I have. Shame the game didn’t get as much attention as the studio was apparently hoping for, as they’ve basically abandoned the property. There’s some small activity on the workshop, but I rarely mess with mods.
Stone Soup in a good one. Haven’t played it in a while but when I did I got good enough where I could play in the terminal. Could never get past the mid game, though.
I got big into NetHack for awhile. I enjoyed how getting and identifying items, and devising clever uses for their myriad functions, was a hundred times more important than leveling up
Angband
I like The Binding of issac for the gameplay because the story is dark. Issac runs smoothly on the low-end machines I have, but ive been told there are worse machines out there.
I think Isaac is a great game but it’s also right around the time when one of my greatest gaming pet peeves began - merging the concept of a roguelite and a roguelike to call them all the latter.
Roguelite was such a linguistic stroke of genius as it both differentiated them from the classic genre - turnbased top-down movement, no-knowledge procedural levels, permadeath, craft fight plunder core loop - while still being self-describing as something which keeps some of those elements though being more light to digest.
…and then we just discarded the term and chose to call them all roguelike with, for me, no discernible advantage.
Isaac is a great game, but it’s also one of the most iconic examples of the subgenre with metagame progression.
Most rogue likes, each game is independent. Isaac went hard on the “unlocks for future runs” thing. That’s a fine mechanic, if a bit overused afterwards.
These aren’t as old as the games in the other replies, but I love Dungeonmans.
Approaching Infinity is also great if you would like to play a RL that is basically old school Star Trek.
And both games will run on anything.
I mean, you didn’t mention it, have you tried the original Rogue? Just as an historical experience.
I actually haven’t! My first was NetHack, which I did terribly at. And then there was a little one called Incursion based on D&D that I loved (I think it’s dead, but it was based on DND 3e and had an incredible diplomacy system).
I might check out Rogue one day for historical satisfaction, though.
DoomRL Or rather “DRL” since the threats to take it down. I’ve put probably 1000 hours into it. Especially the infinite mode. Never got tired shooting for level 666+.
It doesn’t need the tiles and sounds, you can just play in ASCII
I played the heck out of this one when it was new! Good times. I vaguely remember there was a nuke item that blew up the whole level, including you. There was a secret ending if you used the nuke on the final boss while invulnerable
The nuke is nice if you get an invulnerability drop or just want the level nuked after you’ve left. But mostly it’s a pain in the ass if you want to search for loot but won’t have time. It’s pretty rare though. There’s so many other cursed items to watch out for that I usually die from something like a pair of lava boots that pin you to the ground or armour that can’t be repaired.
My favourite old timey roguelike was:
The Dungeon of Doom shareware version, 1987.
https://archive.org/details/DungeonOfDoomRevealed
Mainly because it was the one available at the time.
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Favourite current roguelike is Shattered PD with 5 challenges added.
Vulture is good. I really like Mordor, too. Those are very old.
