Exploring Roguelike Games from Focal Press provides insight into Rogue and Roguelike gamers. 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 brings more of themselves 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, the ways to get started playing them, the history of the genre, and more. It includes interviews, playthroughs, and hundreds of screenshots. It is a labor of love: if even a fraction of the author's enthusiasm for these games gets through these pages to you, then you will enjoy it a great deal.
- 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, including Spelunky, HyperRogue, ToeJam & Earl, Defense of the Oasis, Out There, and Zelda Randomizer
- Interviews with such developers as Keith Burgun (100 Rogues and Auro), Rodain Joubert (Desktop Dungeons), Josh Ge (Cogmind), Dr. Thomas Biskup (ADOM), and Robin Bandy (devnull public NetHack tournament)
- An interview regarding Strange Adventures in Infinite Space
- Design issues of interest to developers and enthusiasts
Section I Basics
2. What the Hell Does Q Do Again?
3. A View of the Field
4. Tips for Travel in Gridland
5. Brought to You Today by the Letter “Q”
6. Check and Mate
Section II Theory
7. The Berlin Interpretation
8. Roguelikes and OD&D
9. Storytelling, Bah!
10. Pushing the Silver Boulder
11. I Never Meta Rogue I Didn’t Like
Section III NetHack
12. Giant Eel Stories, Volume 1
13. Giant Eel Stories, Volume 2
14. Thou Art Early, but We’ll Admit Thee
15. I Believe It Not!
16. How to Win at NetHack
17. Spoiled for Options
18. Hack Hacks
19. A Quick Look at the NetHack Sources
20. Balancing a Game That Looks Balanceless
21. SLASH’EM: NetHack Intensified
22. Ten Years of the dev/null NetHack Tournament, Part 1
23. Ten Years of the dev/null NetHack Tournament, Part 2
Section IV Dungeon Crawl
25. Crawl: Skills and Advancement
26. Crawl: Skill Overview
27. Crawl: Interesting Class and Race Pairs
28. Crawl: Travel Functions and Play Aids
29. Crawl: Dungeon Sprint
Section V ADOM
30. ADOM, NetHack with a Goatee
31. Things to Do While Visiting Ancardia
32. Interview: Thomas Biskup on ADOM
Section VI Mystery Dungeon
33. The Delights of Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer
34. Architecture of the Mystery Dungeon
35. Fei’s Problems
36. Taloon’s Mystery Dungeon, in Great Detail
37. A Journey to Table Mountain, Part 1
38. A Journey to Table Mountain, Part 2
39. A Journey to Table Mountain, Part 3
40. A Journey to Table Mountain, Part 4
Section VII Various Roguelikes
41. Angband: At Last!
42. Cause for Incursion
43. Brogue and the Abandoning of Experience Points
44. HyperRogue
45. Super-Rogue, Banished to the Deeper Dungeons
46. XRogue Has Not Yet Ceased to Be
47. Larn, or, I Hocked the Car to Buy a Lance of Death
48. Hack’s Lost Brother
49. Interview: Keith Burgun on 100 Rogues
50. Interview: Josh Ge on Cogmind
Section VIII Roguelites and Related Games
51. Pixel Journeys: dnd for PLATO
52. ToeJam & Earl, the Roguelike That’s Not an RPG
53. Interview: Digital Eel on Infinite Space
54. Interview: Rodain Joubert on Desktop Dungeons
55. Spelunky
56. Exploring the Oasis
57. The Rescue of Meta-Zelda
58. Space Peeing Out There
59. Doom, Doom, Doom, Doom
60. DreamForge’s Dungeon Hack
Section VIV Design
61. The Eight Rules of Roguelike Design
62. Mapping the Infinite Cavern
63. Purposes for Randomization in Game Design
64. Interface Aids and the Strategy Window
65. Modeling Motion on a Dungeon Grid
66. Rogue’s Item ID in Too Much Detail
67. Item Design: Potions and Scrolls
68. Towards Building a Better Dungeon
Section VV Miscellaneous
69. A Coward Dies a Thousand Deaths, but My Computer, Several Thousand
70. Running Atari ST Rogue in 2016
71. Rogue and Its Inspiration
72. The Rights to Rogue
73. Some Recent Information