Dwarf Fortress

[KaoTiK]

I've not played the Doom RL, but they're basically light RPGs with a focus on dungeon crawling (versus story telling). The upside to the primitive graphics is their flexibility -- hundreds of monsters, dozens of characters races and classes, near limitless amount of items, locations, etc. There's just an insane amount of variety when compare to a traditional RPG.

To get a better idea, click here for a pretty detailed account of one player's game of Nethack

Ah, I understand. I had no idea these games existed until this thread, then again, the first games I got into were dosshell games. I loved that one where the monkeys throw bananas at eachother, Scorched Earth style.

I might have been into these 'roguelikes' many a year ago, but I moved out of that phase years ago.

[Timman_24]

So how does a game immerse you when the "huge dungeon lord" is represented as the letter A? I'll stick to games with graphics.

[monroeski]

So how does a game immerse you when the "huge dungeon lord" is represented as the letter A? I'll stick to games with graphics.

You young whipper snappers and your polygons and your AAs and your AFs... In my day, we were just happy when we could represent a huge dungeon lord with a capital A instead of lowercase.

[remo]

So how does a game immerse you when the "huge dungeon lord" is represented as the letter A? I'll stick to games with graphics.

Then try Vulture's Eye, it's an isometric graphical front end.

I'm not saying that these games are intended to replace the latest 3D graphics fests -- but if games like Nethack are still being played and still in active development today (it was released in 1987), then just maybe there's something to it. We'll see who's still playing Oblivion in 2026.

[coop_2000]

Save the green dots with your fantastic flying red square!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenatron

[Kamakazie]

Then try Vulture's Eye, it's an isometric graphical front end.

I'm not saying that these games are intended to replace the latest 3D graphics fests -- but if games like Nethack are still being played and still in active development today (it was released in 1987), then just maybe there's something to it. We'll see who's still playing Oblivion in 2026.

I'm weird, I actually don't like the way it looks with any graphical frontend.

[Timman_24]

Then try Vulture's Eye, it's an isometric graphical front end.

I'm not saying that these games are intended to replace the latest 3D graphics fests -- but if games like Nethack are still being played and still in active development today (it was released in 1987), then just maybe there's something to it. We'll see who's still playing Oblivion in 2026.

A couple hundred nerds playing a game from 1987 doesn't mean it stood the test of time

[remo]

A couple hundred nerds playing a game from 1987 doesn't mean it stood the test of time

That's a couple hundred more than will be playing GoW in 20 years.

[KaoTiK]

That's a couple hundred more than will be playing GoW in 20 years.

Yeah, and a few million less than will be playing games like GoW in 20 years.

[Timman_24]

That's a couple hundred more than will be playing GoW in 20 years.

I don't care what GoW will be like 20 years from now, I live in the present. Hell, 360 will be a collector's item by that time. Global Warming would have killed us all by then!

[taggart6]

Been getting into DF more and more. Just went though 17 you tube videos and I think I only understand 10% of the game. Talk about massive. Have 3 different fortress going across 2 computers. Looking for some awesome layouts for rooms, indutry, and food handling.

I thought this pic I found was apt:

[Timman_24]

Lol, I guess the game did not make a good initial impression on me in 2006 . I've just matured

[commanderkeen]

That game takes forever to get decent at it. I was decent, I could fend off some attacks, trade proficiently, and built some big fortresses. Still couldn't keep from dying in the end from a raid or master the game in any way. I doubt I could pick it up any faster now that I haven't played it for 3 years.

[Kung_Fu_Fighter]

A couple of the guys here and myself got into Crawl for a couple of weeks but it was the same thing. Everything was great about the game but the learning curve. You could spend hours with a character and then be killed straight away with no chance to save yourself. With ASCII graphics there has to be a reason to come back and keep playing. Definitely a niche type of game.

To be fair the developers say that there is always usually a way to get out of any situation but I could not find the energy to keep playing to find out if that was true or not.