Get me to play: Nethack!

October 3, 2008 11:50 AM

I am looking for a varient of Rogue/Nethack/Slash'em/Angband/Whatever with a GUI. I don't want the fancy 3d Falcon's eye. I would prefer tiled, but its not necessary. I have been playing Powder on my DS and PC over the last few days (after coming across it via the latest "What can I do with my DS thread"), and its exactly what I want, but I feel its lacking in depth.

So what I would like, in order of importance:
- GUI! I can't remember all the commands and variations, I want buttons and menus, Powder was quite close to this.
- Awesome Nethacky-ness!
- Runs on windows, and hopefully with a small easy to hide window.
- Tiled is nice. Top down, not isometric please.
- Has a DS/PSP/Palm port, totally not a deal breaker, but would be cool
- Could potentially not be a roguelike if it was suffeciently awesome and met the other factors.

That's all I can think of.
Thanks!

posted by Jonsnews to computers & internet (13 comments total)

Can't you just use the default tile-based GUI for Nethack?
posted by jozxyqk at 11:53 AM on October 3, 2008

(It looks like this)
posted by jozxyqk at 11:56 AM on October 3, 2008

Have you looked into japanese roguelikes that are made for consoles? There's a lot of them, and they are very nethack like.

GSW has a regular column on roguelikes that covers a lot of them:
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/column_at_play/

I played a ton of Shiren The Wanderer (DS) and it's an excellent roguelike. Ignore the reviews, most of the critics just don't know how to parse the genre.
posted by malphigian at 11:57 AM on October 3, 2008

I second the Shiren the Wanderer love. It's just plain awesome.
posted by aspo at 12:02 PM on October 3, 2008

I haven't used the default nethack gui in years, do you still have to memorize all the commands or has it added stuff like a gui inventory with menus telling you what interactions you can take with items?
posted by Jonsnews at 12:04 PM on October 3, 2008

Ragnarok was an old DOS game which was Rogue-like, but with Norse mythology. You can download it as freeware here. Here is a screenshot of the GUI.
posted by Wavelet at 12:34 PM on October 3, 2008

I don't usually play with the GUI.. but it does have dropdown menus with clickable shortcuts to all the commands.
I do NOT think it has "context-sensitive clicking" in the inventory though. You'll have to go to the "Apparel.. Remove non-armor" menu option to take off a ring, for example.
posted by jozxyqk at 1:13 PM on October 3, 2008

Elona is a Japanese semi-roguelike which is: A) Very Hard (but you can die with no/a little penalty), and B) Has a Weird Sense of Humor (one of the classes is Pianist, and carries a piano around.)
posted by Comrade_robot at 1:41 PM on October 3, 2008

Althought it might fall under the "Could potentially not be a roguelike if it was suffeciently awesome and met the other factors" I really can't recommend Dwarf Fortress enough. The learning curve is very steep, but when combined with user graphics sets it doesn't have to look like a rougelike.
posted by ktrey at 3:35 PM on October 3, 2008 [2 favorites]

I love Dwarf fortress.
Unfortunately, my short attention span forbids me from playing it for too long because I cannot remember all the keyboard commands, same problem with nethack.
Hence the need for a GUI.
posted by Jonsnews at 5:11 PM on October 3, 2008

Dungeon Crawl is a roguelike that's as content-rich as Nethack, Angband, and ADOM, and though it seems to be the least popular among the major ones it's actually my personal favorite example of the genre. It is both one of the easiest to learn- it has a fairly light learning curve for a roguelike- and one of the hardest to master, from my experience with all the major roguelikes.

Both an ASCII version and a graphical one are available, and the latter might be just the thing you're looking for- it has a very nice set of tiles and something of a GUI interface, with inventory items displayed on screen and clickable to use/view. There's a screenshot here, to give you an idea- I haven't used the GUI aspect much since I'm used to the keyboard when playing roguelikes, so I can't say a great deal about it off-hand, but it is there.
posted by a louis wain cat at 10:19 PM on October 3, 2008

Oh so long ago, I fell in love with a little Windows-based game called Exile: Escape from the Pit. The demo was excellent; very absorbing, the plot was deep and, as I recall, game play and strategy were somewhat-more-than-trivial.

The full-length original is free now (thanks for asking your question; I'd forgotten about it completely!), as are the two sequels, and the site has lots of other (similar?) games that I've never tried.

Old games, but if you like NetHack, that's hardly a barrier, right?
posted by Gr0wl at 11:01 PM on October 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

IVAN is great.
posted by Herschel at 2:20 PM on October 4, 2008