Status Updates From Dungeon Hacks: How NetHack,...

Last chapter is on Ma and Davis -- creators of FTL! It's one of the first (and still best) rogue*lite* games.

Craddock scores a nice long interview with ADOM creator Biskup, as I knew he would, being familiar with Biskup's enthusiasm from his Twitter feed. It ends with his successful Indiegogo campaign for ADOM2, but I know that Biskup has now gone even further, to Steam. The guy is driven. Roguelikes attract a type.

Never got into Angband, alas. But the 5.0 plan to allow your well-treated pet to resurrect you would have been awesome, and no more game-breaking than a certain amulet in nethack.

Interspersed with Tolkien quotes, Chapter 7 on Moria is one of the best so far.

ZOMG, the tale of how Koeneke (at U Oklahoma) pranked the UT Longhorns who requested his game with a version of Moria featuring a self-reproducing Sooner fan "monster" is classic!

Moria was created by Robert Koeneke in 1981 because his university sysadmins blocked gaming access to Rogue on the PDP-11 mainframe. When life hands you lemons.... As a bonus, Craddock unloads some Tolkien lore to motivate the game's beloved setting. (Alas, Koeneke died in 2022.)

Chap 6: NetHack, finally! To me, this is the ultimate incarnation of Rogue. And now I know that the game's "Izchak's lighting shop" honors the founding Dev Team member and UPenn professor Izchak Miller, who wrote the shopkeeper code and died 58 years young.

The authors lost the original source code to Rogue?! Curses, indeed!