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[Angel Of Death]

Nethack was what introduced me to Roguelikes. Then, I moved onto SLASH'EM, a version with MUCH more stuff and increased difficulty.

[Niveras]

My first roguelike was probably Castle of Winds, way back in Windows 3.1. It is shareware, you can get it for free, and fairly simple, but I am not able to run it on Win7 (have to boot to WinXP). Haven't tried Dosbox.

The Tiles version of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup may be an okay game to get into. It'll probably be easier to understand what is going on because an imp looks like an imp-ish red thing instead of a 5, but DCSS is very unforgiving about making wrong choices, and its philosophy (that you're not so supposed to engage and kill everything) can take some getting used to. Some mechanics may also be pretty obtuse without delving into the community resources, but luckily it's learndb is pretty encyclopedic.

Could try DoomRL, which I think is a lot more shallow than DCSS. I don't know how its difficulty compares to other choices listed in the thread. It does have sound, something very few roguelikes use, which can help recognize enemies, but I don't think it has a graphic tiles mode. I haven't played it much myself.

That's pretty much the extent of my knowledge of roguelikes.

[magellan]

I would recomend Prospector. Its different, has addictive game mechanics, and is fun and easy to get into, especially after Deons tiles got added. dont know if its for mac though.

DoomRL springs to mind as well.

There are at this moment 2 reports of Prospector working on Mac using winebottler. (If a little resource heavy)
Winebottler doesn't seem to work on my hackintosh, so I can't confirm.

[nenjin]

You could also try Ragnarok. It came before Dungeon Crawl and Angband (I think) but after ROGUE.

It's got a Norse setting, where you have to venture through different levels of Norse Mythology to, I think, eventually challenge Loki and kill him or something.

It's even more difficult and unforgiving than DCSS. DCSS teleport traps don't send you down 5 levels at a time into stuff you couldn't possibly kill.

It's got many of the same features as DCSS, so many so that I'm convinced Ragnarok was basically a template for DCSS. It also varies some things. Like you can play a blacksmith that can forge and repair weapons, rather than just your typical rogue/warrior/wizard. 

[Blackray Jack]

http://www.asciisector.net/

It's not really a roguelike but I would be remiss if this slipped underneath the radar. It's a great game in very active development, I think the website can explain it better than me, so go ahead and take a look if you're interested.

(Also, quick question, what are the size limits for a .gif avatar? I tried uploading one that's below 100x100 and it's not showing up, the host is imageshack. Edit: I have my current one uploaded from another website that for some reason accepted my avatar but I'd like to link from a host site so it can come in sharp and clear, so this is a stopgap measure at best.)

[mwanafalsafa]

Thanks for the input... I'm tryin' a bunch of these games...

I'm currently trying Nethack. I have a stupid question... for the OS X build, does anyone know how to make the background black instead of white? Apparently it's a option but I can't tell how I'm supposed to change it.

Thanks

[Neonivek]

Generally speaking?

Just don't play Roguelikes.

It is pretty much a genre filled with games that advertise flaws as features. Basically 90% of them are "Strategy Guide the game!".

Though if you want somewhere to start... I suggest you actually start with the Roguelikes that arn't there to just punish you for not reading the strategy guide...

Unfortunately the best most recent example of that I can think of is Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series and uhhh... TOME4 (Sorta) I believe.

I don't know... I guess I am just disapointed after I found out how to beat certain games. I used to play IVAN like crazy and eventually got a winning strategy only to find out that the real winning strategy is not only silly but basically your required to read a strategy guide just to know it existed.

Then there is this sort of pointless maliciousness so common in roguelikes. Just things they put in the game to just kill you. Basically imagine a game where once you start playing it flipped a coin and if you got heads you lose... except it doesn't tell you right away. No you have to play that game a few hours until you find out you lost. In otherwords it puts forth possibly the worst aspect of games known as being "Unwinnable" except by pure chance. Then there are "Your doing too well" deaths that are common in roguelikes, the BEST example is IVAN. In IVAN if your doing too well they programmed it so a mage who can snipe you with fireballs just ups and kills you.

Nethack is the game I could never get into because of this random "You lose" chance. I've died because of its use of stupidity induced invisible hallways.

I like there to be a sort of logic to my losing, a flaw in my approach... But the "You just lose" aspects are annoying.

[Bouchart]

My first roguelike was Nethack and I never actually beat it.

I'd recommend DoomRL first, for its relative simplicity.

[3]

Basically 90% of them are "Strategy Guide the game!".

The only one I can think of which that really applies to is Nethack. A lot of Roguelikes are terribly flawed from a design perspective for other reasons but I honestly don't see many falling into that specific trap.

IVAN's a special case because it's not supposed to be beaten in the first place.

[Neonivek]

It is the ones that basically copy almost wholesale Nethack that fall into that problem.

Which are the vast majority of the ones I play. So I guess I have testing bias.

I don't know... Maybe I am waiting for more Roguelikes to come along and say "Hey, maybe crippling difficulty, the lack of the ability to save, and unfair ways to die arn't nessisarily benefits and maybe we should try making roguelikes fun in different ways". I guess it is because it is easier then... I don't know... developing a game better.

Like those people who make those insanely difficult platformers. YEAH the game is horrible and likely made in about a week... but it is difficult.

So actually yeah... A good place to start for Roguelikes is playing those really tough platforming games. It gets you in the right moodset.

[Toaster]

The Tiles version of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup may be an okay game to get into. It'll probably be easier to understand what is going on because an imp looks like an imp-ish red thing instead of a 5, but DCSS is very unforgiving about making wrong choices, and its philosophy (that you're not so supposed to engage and kill everything) can take some getting used to. Some mechanics may also be pretty obtuse without delving into the community resources, but luckily it's learndb is pretty encyclopedic.

I second the recommendation of DCSS, but I'd like to point out that the idea of not killing everything is actually original to Rogue.  It's an idea of the genre (well, many of the games, at least) instead of just DCSS.  DCSS is just one of the better examples.

I started* (before knowing what roguelikes were) with Castle of the Winds, which has a departure from one norm of the genre by having no permadeath in the same sense (it allows saving and loading as most games do.)  If you call Diablo II a roguelike, it was my next one.  I tried ADOM at some point and was hooked.  I've tried all the major ones and many of the smaller ones, and enjoyed CotW, DCSS, ADOM, DoomRL, and many others.

*Actually, that's not true.  In another arguable case, I played Kingdom of Kroz well before Castle of the Winds.  I remember playing it on my dad's 386 many long years ago.  It's freeware now, so give it a crack!

[Virex]

Generally speaking?

Just don't play Roguelikes.

It is pretty much a genre filled with games that advertise flaws as features. Basically 90% of them are "Strategy Guide the game!".

Though if you want somewhere to start... I suggest you actually start with the Roguelikes that arn't there to just punish you for not reading the strategy guide...

Unfortunately the best most recent example of that I can think of is Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series and uhhh... TOME4 (Sorta) I believe.

I don't know... I guess I am just disapointed after I found out how to beat certain games. I used to play IVAN like crazy and eventually got a winning strategy only to find out that the real winning strategy is not only silly but basically your required to read a strategy guide just to know it existed.

Then there is this sort of pointless maliciousness so common in roguelikes. Just things they put in the game to just kill you. Basically imagine a game where once you start playing it flipped a coin and if you got heads you lose... except it doesn't tell you right away. No you have to play that game a few hours until you find out you lost. In otherwords it puts forth possibly the worst aspect of games known as being "Unwinnable" except by pure chance. Then there are "Your doing too well" deaths that are common in roguelikes, the BEST example is IVAN. In IVAN if your doing too well they programmed it so a mage who can snipe you with fireballs just ups and kills you.

Nethack is the game I could never get into because of this random "You lose" chance. I've died because of its use of stupidity induced invisible hallways.

I like there to be a sort of logic to my losing, a flaw in my approach... But the "You just lose" aspects are annoying.

You make it sound as if those things are bad?

[3]

Unless you have some profound interpretation of such things, I think you'll find that they're generally considered to be bad. Games with light random elements are still fundamentally grounded in player skill (for lots of reasons), and situations wherein the player loses due to no fault of their own are therefore undesirable.

Of course, this is a different case if you're looking at an "interactive story generator" or whatever (besides the cruical issue of none of said games actually existing to my knowledge).

[Virex]

In my opinion games that don't randomly gank the player are worse then games that do. Because in those games the player is always in control. From the beginning you can see exactly what you need to do to get to the end, you never need to think on your feet because everything depends on how well you play and you have exact control over that. Taking that control away is the only real way to make the player improvise and think on his feet. Sure, randomly losing may be frustrating but I've found that it's compensated by those cases in which the RNG ganks you and you still find a way to fight all odds. Those situations don't appear in games that hold the players hand because they can't take it that they might lose most of their characters.

[3]

So the only solution to conservative and/or bad design is nigh-random chance? I disagree entirely. The player must think on his feet as soon as new mechanics are introduced. The player must think on his feet as soon as new interpretations of existing mechanics are introduced. Roguelikes are terrible at doing both of these things. They're good at giving a character randomly effective tools and equipment and creating a random level of difficulty.

It doesn't help that - as in most matters concerning the genre - Roguelikes haven't exactly got this idea of making the player think on his/her feet down to a fine art. It's almost as if people are only just getting the right idea (DoomRL) after hanging onto ancient genre conventions (set by Nethack/ADOM/*band and the like) that the rest of the gaming community advanced from years ago. My personal view is that the Roguelike community is less innovative than the "mainstream" industry, even in light of the latter's current dry stretch.