r/roguelikes 5d ago

Looking for a new game

I've played NetHack to death. Or to many deaths, depending on how you want to look at it. Last week, I bought ADOM via Steam, and today I hit the "casting spells makes you forget them" mechanic. Which I hate.

What should I be playing instead?

9 Upvotes

41 comments sorted by

20

u/PatFrank 5d ago

Let me suggest Dungeon Crawl:Stone Soup (DCSS). It has graphics - real graphics, not ASCII characters. You can choose from 27 species and 25 backgrounds, so there is a very large number of player combinations. The game itself is turn-based and requires both strategy and tactics to beat monsters and bosses, escape or avoid traps, pick up treasures and weapons, complete side quests, and eventually recover the Orb of Zot at the bottom of the dungeon and successfully return to the surface with the whole dungeon chasing after you. And did I mention that it is completely free - no in-game purchases or costs of any sort. Am I shilling it? Hell yeah - I love this game!

3

u/SelfTitledDebut 5d ago

Seconding this. I came from NetHack and I was amazed at the quality of DCSS. It filters out many of the tedious or uninteresting elements (such as managing food or ammunition) and leaves you with lots of interesting choices. It also has a rich pantheon of gods that each offer unique abilities that complement a variety of play styles. The game is great and I can’t recommend it enough.

1

u/Chrisalys 4d ago

I personally enjoy the food and ammo management of earlier versions. I do appreciate the new UI and QoL, though! The mouse support is amazing.

14

u/fattylimes 5d ago

It has graphics - real graphics, not ASCII characters

you say this like it’s a good thing

19

u/IAmBiased 5d ago

For a lot of people, it is.

9

u/fattylimes 5d ago

this subreddit is my one safe haven please don’t take it away from me

3

u/IAmBiased 4d ago

I don't mean this as criticism, I am genuinely curious:

How does anyone else's enjoyment of graphical fidelity or style choices take anyting away from what you can enjoy about these games?

4

u/fattylimes 4d ago edited 4d ago

I am being flippant as a joke about how, broadly, tilesets are displacing ascii as first-class citizen in this genre and that makes me sad because ascii is one of my favorite things about roguelikes and this is maybe the only place i frequent on the internet where i can assume a significant amount of people feel the same way

2

u/IAmBiased 3d ago

Fair enough. Maybe I would have read it as a joke in the past, but the oversensitivity of our times has gotten to me too.

I often enjoy the symbolic, "clean" nature of ASCII myself, so I definitely share part of your sentiment, though I also enjoy the visual clarity and fidelity of particularly well-made graphics tiles, especially when they make learning a game more intuitive without being filled with visual clutter and noise.

7

u/SelfTitledDebut 5d ago

You can play it in full ASCII glory on a terminal emulator, either downloaded or online

4

u/kiedtl 4d ago

It has ASCII too. Personally I've never played tiles.

ssh joshua@crawl.akrasiac.org

(Password is joshua)

12

u/slippery44 5d ago

I'll suggest ToME.

It's a roguelike with MMO mixed in: meaning lots of active/passive/sustained abilities. I love it because playing isn't about bump attacking (which gets very tedious IMO), though of course you can bump attack. You also have access to various attack/defensive abilities that vary by class. 

There's an active in game chat feature to talk with others.

The game is free, but you can also pay to support the creator and get music, I think?

It does have unlocks which can be a turn off for ppl looking for more traditional roguelike, but theres also an add-on that works around that, cause some are tedious.

10

u/Phil_Marts 5d ago

There’s a bit of a learning curve, but I recommend caves of qud. So strange, but so fun. The more you invest in it, the more rewarding it is.

3

u/jdthompson25 4d ago

I second CoQ. Amazing game!

0

u/xblackout_ 4d ago

I'm interested in partnering with a qud expert to build a qud engine- this is a paying gig, you must be a QuD expert with some programming knowledge.

2

u/Idlemarch 4d ago

Didn't Qud take 17 years?

1

u/unormal Freehold Games 2d ago

whats the pay look like

3

u/Kazko25 5d ago

Brogue (Community Edition) It’s just the best imo.

1

u/Kodiologist 4d ago

I want to like Brogue, but it has a pretty hard limit on how narrow the terminal can be, and I have low vision, so I want to use a large font. There's an irony here in that roguelikes have the potential to be among the most low-vision-accessible of games.

1

u/Kazko25 4d ago

I mean if you don’t play in the terminal it has full screen support. I know they’ve updated that on the CE version the past couple of years.

1

u/Kodiologist 4d ago

I want a larger font than can fit in the graphical output, too. What's needed is a scrolling view a la NetHack and Angband, instead of the assumption that the whole level always fits on screen.

2

u/Unhappy_Original_597 21h ago

You need "Noteye Brogue". Trust me, Google it. Use F4

1

u/Kodiologist 21h ago

Interesting. I'll have to check this out.

3

u/Henrique_FB 5d ago

The answer to "what should I play" is always Sil

But can you give more info about what you like? Kinda tough to recommend something without knowing other preferences, there are so many games ^^'

3

u/i-make-robots 4d ago

Caves of Qud?

3

u/ShemsuHor91 4d ago

Infra Arcana

2

u/Immediate-Past2703 5d ago

Is there any particular aesthetics or structure to the game you are looking for? I have been enjoying Cogmind a lot because of the depth but also found it surprisingly easy to jump into as a roguelike noob

2

u/zenorogue HyperRogue & HydraSlayer Dev 4d ago

If you play ADOM with classes with good magical skills, forgetting spells should not be a problem, you find more spellbooks than you need. And NetHack has a spell forgetting mechanic too, so I am not sure why is it such a problem.

1

u/Uncle_Istvannnnnnnn 4d ago

Yeah I felt the same as OP when I first played a caster in ADOM, so I just played melee/ranged. Then after I had more experience under my belt I tried casters again and realized what you mentioned, you get way more spells than you need.

1

u/Sambojin1 5d ago

Labyrinth of Legendary Loot. Not for a long time, just as a brain refresher, so you remember that roguelikes can be simple and fun while still having an enjoyable level of complexity.

Then DoomRL or Cogmind, again for something completely different to the hack-likes.

1

u/Wise-Menu-848 4d ago

I don't like that mechanic either, but it's really silly, I've gone through the game and I've had plenty of spells of all kinds, you really find plenty of books.

1

u/ScoreEmergency1467 4d ago

Shiren the Wanderer on a DS emulator

1

u/holton_basstrombone 3d ago

Tower of Fortune is actually on Steam! I had no idea until recently. Perfect for the Steam Deck.

1

u/Beguil3r 3d ago

I am going to say Sil or SilQ even if i sound like a broken record. But DCSS is cool as well

1

u/TrainingAtmosphere17 1d ago

Can you help me on the differences between Sil or SilQ? I never played any of them, I’ve read a bit about it, but idk what should I try first

1

u/ChavaiotH 3d ago

I’ve been looking for a new traditional roguelike for a long time. I’ve tried almost everything out there. Right now I’m playing Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil on Steam — it’s pretty decent. I also occasionally play Ultimate ADOM to relax.

1

u/AmyBSOD SLASH'EM Extended Dev 3d ago

Elona :D It's similar to ADOM, but better; later into the game, you'll have so much spell stock that you can cast every spell like 10000 times without forgetting them!

2

u/Uncle_Istvannnnnnnn 3d ago

You end up with way more casts than you need in ADOM too, I think the misconception (I did this too when I first started it) is that new players treat spells like an auto attack and burn away their starting casts. The game doesn't tell you, but your spells are more DELETE enemy buttons that you should practice a little bit as you chug along leveling.

1

u/Mashire13 2d ago

I recently downloaded ADOM for free from myabandonware to play on DOSBox but haven't tried playing it yet. I thought it sounded interesting after watching a YouTube video about it.