@Play: Exploring Roguelike Games

by John Harris

For over nine years the column @Play has covered the genre of roguelike computer games, on indie blog GameSetWatch and beyond, discovering and exploring its many fascinating corners. Now for the first time the best articles from its run, along with a collection of new pieces, are brought together in one volume.

Within are articles on:
* 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 like Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, Spelunky, HyperRogue, ToeJam & Earl, Defense of the Oasis, Out There and Zelda Randomizer
* Interviews with developers Keith Burgun (100 Rogues and Auro) and Rodain Joubert (Desktop Dungeons), and Robin Bandy, maintainer of the long-running devnull public NetHack tournament
* Design issues of interest to developers and enthusiasts
* Much much more

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 bring more of his or herself to the game than your typical AAA title asks.

In roguelike games, the game is randomly recreated every time you play. It is scrambled and forces you to discover important information anew with each game. And, if your character dies, you cannot return to a saved game, but must instead start from scratch with a new character for the next game.

Despite a few exceptions (like ToeJam & Earl and Blizzard's Diablo series), these games have been known mostly to a devoted cadre of hardcore fans. But the times are changing! A new breed of roguelike-styled games are becoming popular on Steam and other download stores, and procedural content generation has hit it big even with major game studios looking to decrease development costs.

Yes, the roguelikes have finally hit the big time. This book (at over 700 pages on an ereader) covers many of the most prominent titles, and explains in great detail what makes them interested, ways to get started playing them, the history of the genre, and much more. It includes interviews, playthroughs and hundreds of screenshots. It is a labor of love: if even a fraction of my enthusiasm for these games gets through these pages to you, then I think you will enjoy it a great deal.

Genres: Games, Game Design

815 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 3, 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!