@Play: Exploring Roguelike Games

by John Harris

It includes....

Eight new pieces, including articles on HyperRogue, Out There, Zelda Randomizer, and others.
A new playthrough story concerning the adventures of Captain Squeakytoy, overly fearless star captain, through the Purple Void of Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space!
Articles on Rogue, NetHack, Dungeon Crawl, ADOM, Larn, SuperRogue, XRogue and Shiren the Wanderer, including the entire epic playthrough of the Super Famicom Shiren, one of the most popular columns.
498 pages (according to Word) of roguelike introductions, reviews, interviews, essays, trivia and more.

Genres: Games, Game Design

498 pages, ebook

Published January 1, 2016

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

John[2 spaces]Harris : Historical Fiction
John[3 spaces]Harris : Non Fiction
John[4 spaces]Harris : Treehouse
John[5 spaces]Harris : Music
John[6 spaces]Harris : Management
John[7 spaces]Harris : Child Psychology
John[8 spaces]Harris : Children's
John[9 spaces]Harris : Drama
John[10 spaces]Harris : John Harris of Bolenowe, poet and preacher
John[11 spaces]Harris : -
John[12 spaces]Harris : History, Architecture
John[13 spaces]Harris : born 1942
John[14 spaces]Harris : Reverend John Harris (1802 - 1856)
John[15 spaces]Harris : -
John[16 spaces]Harris : History
John[17 spaces]Harris : born 1937
John[18 spaces]Harris : -
John[19 spaces]Harris : Backpacker
John[20 spaces]Harris : Erotic, LGBT
John[21 spaces]Harris : born 1667
John[22 spaces]Harris : GR Author
John[25 spaces]Harris : GR Author

Reviews

[Kalin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was impressed by the combination of expert knowledge and lively language in this formidable tome. (I was also impressed by myself: it turned out the first roguelike I tried, SLASH'EM, is also the hardest. Now I feel less of a loser. ;)

John Harris's thoughts on emergent narratives made me reconsider some of my own beliefs and predilections. But I'll still go for a good story over good gaming mechanics any day.

Which reminds me: guys, did I tell you about this story-game we just released in the wild? Care to join our adventure? :)))

[Bob Anderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Harris really could have used an editor, but it may have defeated the purpose. He’s packaged up selections from years of blog posts, some with relevant updates from 2016, as an ebook. There’s a good 200 page book hiding in this 1000 page pdf as many of those are skippable, but it would be a task to whittle it down. I read this when I wanted to take a “break” from my Seven-Day Roguelike Challenge so it passed the time well, but could’ve passed it better. Just OK.

[Demian Katz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Roguelike games, and I enjoyed reading this very long collection of essays on the subject. Admittedly, though, I can see why the author suggested that some readers might prefer to skip around rather than read the whole book in order -- even for a hard-core fan, some things get a bit repetitive after a while, and the heavy emphasis on NetHack allows some topics to be worn a bit thin by the end. In spite of a few moments of tedium, though, there are quite a few interesting essays and a great deal of ground covered. Worth a look for fans of the genre!

[Colin Maclaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look back at a gaming genre with deep roots in university computer labs, where I was exposed to Larn and Nethack back in the day, so I'm right in the target audience for this. I liked both the history of the classics and the introduction to many modern games with a roguelike influence. I was less into the playthroughs, but I've never been into watching others game and don't like Twitch etc. so YMMV. And some parts were a bit repetitive, probably from the origins of the chapters as a blog where not all readers could be assumed to know the background information. Overall it forms a good overview of a category of games, written by someone who loves them and knows exactly what makes them special, and it inspired me to reinstall Nethack and also check out some new games like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a pretty amazing set of insights into the how these games create an outsize impression on players' imagination using largely counterintuitive rule sets and limited resources. This changed how I think about game design, and I can't think of any other book that has done that.

[Justin Weiss · Rating 3 out of 5]

A compilation of extensive, detailed blog posts on Roguelike games. It could have used a lot of trimming down, but it did make me want to play a lot more NetHack, so I guess it did its job!

[Szymon Szott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the book was uneven and would benefit from some editing, but overall I enjoyed reading about my favorite genre of computer games. There were a lot of outstanding chapters!