I’m writing today about one of my favorite games ever, Dungeon Crawl.
Exhausted and Surrounded by Hopefully Friendly Ogres
As the screenshot suggests, this isn’t your typical game. I tend to enjoy the strategic and tactical complexity of games more than realistic visuals, and Dungeon Crawl, while it isn’t as visually engaging (at least at first) has an almost unlimited depth of gameplay that could keep me playing quite possibly for the rest of my life. Games like this belong to the category of roguelike games.
For those that don’t know, a roguelike game is a game that is like the game Rogue, which is one of the first ascii graphics-based tactical RPGs of its kind (another old school game like this is NetHack). These two are the most well-known originals of the genre, and were an awesome start for many roguelikes that have come after them. So why aren’t these games as popular as WoW?
There are a few very significant barriers to playing which, in my estimation, keep this genre from being more popular (or comprehensible in general). The visuals themselves can be confusing at first, since it’s all top-down ascii graphics (using textual characters along with colors). If you haven’t played a game with graphics like this, it’s can be a very foreign experience! Letters tend to be monsters, with various colors delineating different types of similar monsters, and your character is an ‘@’, which is always in the center of the screen. If you can start to understand (and possibly love) these visuals, the next wall you will hit is the control scheme.
These games tend to use just about every single key on the keyboard. Being originally written to be played in a computer terminal, they are keyboard-oriented, and this tends to mean the memorization of tens of important key commands! However, modern roguelikes will have an excellent in-game help to aid you in learning, and with persistence (I swear it’s worth it), you will soon learn them.
For the ascii-impaired, there’s also a 2d tiles version of Dungeon Crawl in particular that may interest you!
Laying the Smack Down, Tiles Style
Now that we’re past understanding the visuals and the control-scheme, what about the game itself?
The core of the gameplay is turn-based, and consists mainly of wandering around in randomly generated dungeons, finding hundreds of items, spellbooks, and wands, while fighting hundreds of unique monsters, all of which will kill you very quickly if you’re not careful. Oh, and when you die in a roguelike, you’re dead for good, no reloading, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Add to this an extremely deep, RPG-like character development and you get that nearly unlimited replayability I was talking about above.
So, more about Dungeon Crawl in particular. You start by a selecting a combination from 24 species (races) and 30 backgrounds (classes). Each species has set aptitudes in each of the 33 skills, so a high elf can learn Spellcasting quickly, but will have to spend a lot of time to get good with the Axes skill. The background is just your starting set of items and skills (and possibly the deity you worship); it doesn’t lock you into a specific progression, but your species still dictates which skills will be easy for you to learn.
The best part about this game is that it is still under active development as Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup! I have been following this game for years, and the new development is only making the game better, hard as it is to imagine for such a great game. There are a couple of options for playing, you can download it from their website, or you can play it on a persistent server via ssh, and it will actually track your playing stats!
Clearly, I love this game (check out my stats, even though I’m not very good). My favorite species is Draconian, since these creatures change color and develop a random ability at level 7 (ice breathing, fire breathing, poison spitting, etc). I also tend to favor spellcasting over fighting, but a hybrid between the two is definitely interesting as well. One more thing, I have never beaten this game, and I don’t care if I ever do 🙂
I know of course that this game is not for everyone, but since I’d still love for you to experience a roguelike, even if not Dungeon Crawl, let me give you another interesting alternative, also still in development.
It's Time to Sing the Doom Song!
That’s right, Doom. More specifically, Doom, the roguelike. I haven’t played this one much yet, but it may excite you still if Dungeon Crawl does not.
Try these games and let me know what you think! (Be sure also to let me know if you think I’m crazy for liking them.)
