The Codex of Roguelikes

[hackncrazy]

Finally due to playing some Sil, I came to try Angband. I'm currently in Dungeon level 26/100 with an humans warrior.

Other games are more about improvisation and survival with limited resources (Brogue, Infra Arcana), and some of them have more depth in the tactical combat layer with skills (TOME4) or creative God abilities (DCSS), or more deep character building (TOME4, DCSS).

But none of those games capture the sense of adventuring that comes from the preparation and planning that Angband needs to proceed in the dungeon (ADOM maybe). It's fantastic the progress you feel getting equipment upgrades for future expeditions, escaping a tight situation to rest and restock in your base, and think about what you need for the new dungeon depth.

Without a lot of resource limitations, you can go all in planning your tactical strikes to get treasure and go deeper in the dungeon against tougher enemies. You are a one army and intelligence agency with all those detection and mapping devices.

It reminds me of classic Wizardry, which is one of my favourite gaming formulas: Conquer the dungeon, win the war recovering from lost battles while you grow stronger and with better tools.

And this would seem far fetched but it reminds me also of Monster Hunter, where preparation, equipment, strategy,knowledge and some grind are paramount to hunt hard monsters.

For that old of a game I feel great and mature design. It's not a mistery is still played to this day and spawned a lot of variants. Fantastic game.

Angband it's an amazing example of a game that's been just getting better and better with each new update, while others are cutting more and more systems and getting simpler as time passes, with DCSS being heavily guilty of it.

It's interesting that you mention Wizardry, because I have similar feelings with Angband and blobbers in general. While there are roguelikes there are sandbox experiences (like Nethack) and others that relies on knowledge on some esoteric systems (Adom), Angband is pretty straightforward: Go to the dungeon, get to level 100, kill Morgoth and that's it. Fighting is the bread and butter of the game, and evolving your character, finding new amazing gear and so on is pretty exciting.

I haven't played any of the variants (maybe a couple of hours of Sil), but I'm very curious if any of them capture this feeling that angband has. I know a lot of them has multiple towns and dungeons, so I'm not sure if it has that atmosphere.

 

[AgentFransis]

I haven't played Angband yet but I recently beat Sil-q and it's a wonderful game. It's also very straightforward and focused - only 20 levels, no shops and mechanics that force you to keep moving forward.

It has an elegant and flexible character building system with many different viable builds ranging from various styles of melee builds, ranged, stealth and many other variations. There's powerful stealth and morale systems that you can use. No classes - you can pick a few varieties of elf, man or dwarf which only affect starting stats and proficiencies. There's an intricate smithing system. The AI is very good - enemies will try to surround you and cut you off from the doorways, archers will kite you etc. and different monsters have different personalities. The game design also offers a lot of replayability since beyond just the build system to tinker with the game has a lot of different artifacts, magic items and special dungeon features many of which will not spawn in any given game given it's length.

The atmosphere is great and very faithful to the source material - enemies and named enemies straight from the Silmarilion, famous artifacts, no magic besides magic items, songs of power and some staves and horns. Weapons that are 'bane against X' glow when the relevant enemies are around. Light is very important as the dungeon gets less lit and more sprawling as you descend, not only adding to the atmosphere but various evil things will directly draw power from the darkness and are weakened by strong light and more powerful entities will generate darkness around them. Finally killing big M himself is very difficult and the intention is that you stick to the story and put everyone to sleep and gtfo with a Silmaril.

I managed to beat it once after many tries using a spear and shield crit build with double attack, blocking and zone of control as the main combat traits and also decent stealth to go with the crit.

 

[hackncrazy]

I always thought Sil-q had the same classes as Angband. Maybe this just happens on Sil? I think that maybe the case, since Sil is a lot older and at some point I remember it was one of the few RLs where a stealth build was viable (not that that ar many of them right now, Cogmind is one that definitely does).

Anyway, since you mention that the dungeon is very short, I'm instantly interested. It's not every day that I have the mental fortitude to tackle on a full DCSS or Nethack dungeon, so something shorter might be good for me.

 

[Fenix]

Try Brogue - it's short too.

 

[AgentFransis]

always thought Sil-q had the same classes as Angband. Maybe this just happens on Sil?

Sil-q is just a rebalancing fork of Sil. It's the same game basically. The manual even simply sends you to read the Sil manual before listing the changes.

 

[Matador]

Angband it's an amazing example of a game that's been just getting better and better with each new update, while others are cutting more and more systems and getting simpler as time passes, with DCSS being heavily guilty of it.

It's interesting that you mention Wizardry, because I have similar feelings with Angband and blobbers in general. While there are roguelikes there are sandbox experiences (like Nethack) and others that relies on knowledge on some esoteric systems (Adom), Angband is pretty straightforward: Go to the dungeon, get to level 100, kill Morgoth and that's it. Fighting is the bread and butter of the game, and evolving your character, finding new amazing gear and so on is pretty exciting.

I haven't played any of the variants (maybe a couple of hours of Sil), but I'm very curious if any of them capture this feeling that angband has. I know a lot of them has multiple towns and dungeons, so I'm not sure if it has that atmosphere.

I played this variant that is and it's pretty good. New races and cool classes, good ingame help. There is wilderness and several towns,dungeons and quests, but you can cut all of that and play coffee break mode, which is just the typical angband dungeon crawl but with "only" 50 floors, or also play without wilderness or additional dungeons: the standard 100 flor dungeon. Pretty customizable experience.

It's also currently in active development. Very recommended:

https://github.com/sulkasormi/frogcomposband/releases

 

[Fenix]

Yeah, heard frogcomposbang is good.

 

[Polyphemus]

Been finally putting time into Tales of Maj'Eyal and it scratches that itch that no other other modern roguelike has been able to for me. I wish it was a bit more randomized and less quest based, but the dungeon crawling and sense of adventure give me the same feel as classic Nethack. All I want is to traverse dungeons, kill monsters, and die a lot. Unfortunately the normal difficulty is faceroll easy but I should have expected that.

 

[Catacombs]

Been finally putting time into Tales of Maj'Eyal and it scratches that itch that no other other modern roguelike has been able to for me. I wish it was a bit more randomized and less quest based, but the dungeon crawling and sense of adventure give me the same feel as classic Nethack. All I want is to traverse dungeons, kill monsters, and die a lot. Unfortunately the normal difficulty is faceroll easy but I should have expected that.

Have you played Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup?

 

[Polyphemus]

Have you played Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup?

A long time ago. I wasn't including it as a modern roguelike, since I played it as a young teen, but I guess it technically is one. As far as being a straightforward, solid dungeon crawler that makes you think on your feet, it's exactly what I like in this kind of game. TOME has amazing character building but I think it lacks a bit in the "think on your feet" part. I should revisit DCSS after I get bored of TOME.

 

[lukaszek]

Unfortunately the normal difficulty is faceroll easy but I should have expected that.

until it isnt, when you face single enemy that puts half of available disables on you and got higher regen than your damage.

 

[Polyphemus]

Unfortunately the normal difficulty is faceroll easy but I should have expected that.

until it isnt, when you face single enemy that puts half of available disables on you and got higher regen than your damage.

The thing that trips me up there is primarily the difficulty spike. As in, I'm in faceroll mode and hardly paying attention then suddenly one random enemy is vastly stronger than anything else in the dungeon. I have died in those cases but if I'm paying attention I'll usually be able to activate my shatter afflictions rune and movement infusion (which I'll always get, since everything drops so often) or something similar and reset. I'm hoping the higher difficulties are more balanced to keep me on my toes consistently.

 

[lukaszek]

I'm hoping the higher difficulties are more balanced to keep me on my toes consistently.

in my experience higher difficulties mainly elevate further gap between regular monsters and random boss

 

[Infinitum]

All non-rare enemies in ToME are trivial on any difficulty, with very few exceptions. Nightmare does up the Rare count by a lot, Insane makes them more likely to cripple you from across the screen.

 

[infidel]

I haven't played any of the variants (maybe a couple of hours of Sil), but I'm very curious if any of them capture this feeling that angband has. I know a lot of them has multiple towns and dungeons, so I'm not sure if it has that atmosphere.

Back in the day I've tried a lot, the ones that stand out (that's a memory from early 2000s, could be that they're all dead now) are:

• ZAngband - Zelazny Amber cycle-themed, all of dungeons were the shadows and all of the princes were in, IIRC
• CthAngband - Call of Cthulhu-themed, sanity and whole Lovecraft pantheon
• SAngband - the D&D-based class system was replaced with skills in this one. Seemed to die in early stages after a few releases
• Cyberband (?) - cyberpunk-themed, gets points for changing the setting to cyberpunk but I don't remember much, was already dead when I tried it
• ToME - never liked it, even when it was Middle-Earth or Pern before that, but arguably it's the most successful one

I'd say the best thing about Angband variants is that a lot of knowledge transfers between them so no matter which one you try, it's all familiar enough to start playing without many retries. Also most of the ones I mentioned have the open world and it was a big deal back then, after doing "the dungeon" from the base game over and over. In fact, I learned to code from reading the original Angband source code and I can trace some elements of my coding style to exactly that. It's organized well, it's interesting to read for a game developer and you just can't refrain from changing stuff around :D. In my case it was trying to make a single mage spellbook that comes empty from the beginning but you can copy spells from other books into it. Unfortunately, after implementing it, I've found out that it doesn't work with the default save game system, so that fizzled out. But it did work in the game.

 

[Fenix]

ZAngband - Zelazny Amber cycle-themed, all of dungeons were the shadows and all of the princes were in, IIRC

For a ears I heard about it here and there but it's first time I hear someove explained what ZAngband mean.

 

[Serus]

Started playing Jupiter Hell, got my first win - on medium. It's not hard... especially if you played DoomRL a lot a few years ago. Marine onslaught build, i haven't found a single good rotary weapon. I was mostly using av1 chaingun (autoloader, very important). Still, slaughtered everything in sight easily. Also plasma grenades rock.

Overall i like it. It is a great "fast" classical rogulike centered on gunplay which is relatively rarely done.
However it isn't better than DoomRL that JH is a remake/sequel of sorts. And it isn't free, unlike DRL. It has the potential to be better though if the dev (a supreme potato) will deliver on his promises with more development.
The problems i had with the game was that the ("fancy", lol) graphics are less readable compared to tiles/ascii from DoomRL. Also there are some simplification or abstractions that go too far. I know it is not meant to be a realistic game in any way but guns that are causing you to be frenzied and to make more damage after kill... with bullets, are silly. DoomRL had some silly stuff like that but, iirc, less so. There are a lot of good stuff too, graphics other than the mentioned problem are well done. In general the game is very climatic (although i miss the beholders). There are some nice QoL improvements like not having to come back for health orbs, etc... Also the terminals with emails (and sort of "missions") give it a more RPG-y feel.
Overall not better but not worse than DoomRL. Since DRL was one of my favourites rogulikes it means JH is good imo.

Verdict: with potential for
Definitely worth a try.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I love that crunchy sound in Zorbus.

 

[PapaPetro]

ZAngband - Zelazny Amber cycle-themed, all of dungeons were the shadows and all of the princes were in, IIRC

For a ears I heard about it here and there but it's first time I hear someove explained what ZAngband mean.

They even have a Pattern Walking innate ability for Amberites that allows them to Alter Reality the dungeon/shadow into a new level. Pretty cool and faithful to Zelazny's work.

 

[buffalo bill]

just got diamond daredevil and diamond berserker in doomrl (angel of overconfidence and angel of berserk, 100% kills & nightmare difficulty). Played marine, melee line (obviously), going brute > brute > berserker > brute > badass > vampyre > badass > tough as nails > tough as nails > finesse. Tried lots of times, and was able to do it when I got a good first level of hell (the most rng dependent thing on this run) and kill everything (I think it was a cacodemon/demon cave with an invulnerability globe, and some sort of armor), then the scythe from the cathedral. After the cathedral, was careful till I got vampyre, and then the run was a cakewalk. killed the mastermind in like three hits. pretty much only playing nightmare recently. might try for an angelic badge soon

 

[buffalo bill]

got my first angelic badge in doomrl!! (sorry for spamming, but I wasn't sure I'd ever get one, so I gotta brag)

thinking I might try to do archangel of 666 on nightmare next
nightmare is getting easier for me somehow

 

[Fedora Master]

Been finally putting time into Tales of Maj'Eyal and it scratches that itch that no other other modern roguelike has been able to for me. I wish it was a bit more randomized and less quest based, but the dungeon crawling and sense of adventure give me the same feel as classic Nethack. All I want is to traverse dungeons, kill monsters, and die a lot. Unfortunately the normal difficulty is faceroll easy but I should have expected that.

Have you played Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup?

Have they removed the Dungeon and the Crawl parts yet?

 

[Jigby]

BrogueCE now has an Android port (I know, decline, mobile gaming wtf) and it is surprisingly really nice to play even on a cell phone. Nice controls, super chill to play. Finally have something else other than lichess. https://github.com/bilgincoskun/brogue-android-port

 

[Serus]

got my first angelic badge in doomrl!! (sorry for spamming, but I wasn't sure I'd ever get one, so I gotta brag)

thinking I might try to do archangel of 666 on nightmare next
nightmare is getting easier for me somehow

I was never able to beat it on anything above "hurt me plenty" (that was name of the difficulty, right?).

 

[buffalo bill]

I was never able to beat it on anything above "hurt me plenty" (that was name of the difficulty, right?).

I'm not sure what's happened to my brain, but now pretty much only nightmare difficulty is hard for me. I think I've internalized some of the dodging and corner shooting mechanics better than I had before, and know when to gift drop and how far to stay from the door and when to wait or run, etc. Also have been thinking that lots of master builds a sort of traps—usually better to skip them for more damage/speed etc.