Roguelikes
I love Roguelikes. I admit that I maybe love them more in theory than I actually love to play them, but I’ve played enough Nethack to genuinely feel a deep affection for the actual gameplay itself and not just its spiky, spartan, elitist, and techno-mythic aura. Roguelikes are awesome, insanely deep, demonstrations of the power of combinatory systems, a kind of state-space pr0n, and because of their ridiculous and wonderful ascii surface, they are also sort of like the computer game equivalent of brilliant radio drama.
It turns out that Game Set Watch has somebody writing a column about Roguelikes, his two most recent articles are about ADOM, and I think they nicely capture the quality that makes these things so beautiful –
Things to do While Visiting Ancardia
ADOM, Nethack with a Goatee
So, I’m still unclear about this: Are roguelikes just self-generating RPGs with ascii graphics? There’s something really compelling about that, especially because it’s something that other RPGs have tried and failed at making interesting. It would be great if it was a mechanic that would only really work when you stripped away all the flashy graphics that those types of games usually feature.
Not self-generating, but containing randomly (or algorithmically) generated levels. The ascii graphics are not a requirement, but a convenience, and a tradition. Most Roguelikes can be played with graphic tilesets, but there is definitely something tight and sweet about the ascii versions.