So I've been playing this for the last week, it's been around 20 years so I'm guessing some of you might have played it and already know it's joys and sorrows quite well.
Your task is simple, retrieve the fabled Amulet of Yendor from the Dungeons of Doom, deliver it to your chosen god on the Astral plane and ascend to demigod-hood. Unfortunately thousands of deadly monsters stand between you and your goal.
NetHack is an oldschool Rogue style dungeon crawler, which means it features randomly generated dungeons and permanent death. It's very, very, very difficult. I've so far sent about 30 characters to hilarious/depressing deaths and haven't a gotten a single one past level 10.
One of the fun things about NetHack is how almost everything can be used to help your survive. That seemingly useless potion of paralysis? Bash someone over the head with it and kill them while they can't move. A looking glass? Point it at a monster to scare them with their own reflection. A scroll of destroy armor? Read it to rid yourself of cursed equipment. A large dog is about to rip to to shreds? Feed it some food to tame him and now you've got an ally to fight along side you. A polymorph trap? Push your pet into it and you may end up with a tame black dragon. There are ways out of almost any situation in NetHack, it's up to you to think of them.
The games from the 80's so the graphics are pretty archaic, although nowadays we can use tiles instead of text based graphics:
DOWNLOADS:
You can get NetHack here: http://www.nethack.org/
And a tile set that's game a lot less ugly than the standard one: Here.
To install it, extract to Nethack directory and add to your defaults.nh:
OPTIONS=tile_file:kins32.bmp, tile_width:32, tile_height:32
And an extensive spoilers list which I've found invaluable for not dying terrible deaths as quickly: Here.
Anyways, hopefully someone else enjoys this as much as I have. Prepare to die a lot, the game is brutal. But! It's also so complex that I've found it a lot more fun than many modern rpgs, it's pretty rewarding to realize you were clever enough to get yourself out of a potentially lethal situation using nothing but an apple.
As an example of how much this game wants you dead, the first character I made walked a total of 5 steps before I walked into a trap and a rock fell on my head and I died. Or the time I ate the corpse of a leprachaun, and got infected with teleportitis, which makes you randomly teleport around every so often. So I walked into a shop and picked up a helm to buy, only to teleport out and be accused of theft and have a bunch of Keystone Kops chasing my down blinding me with pies they were throwing and beating the **** out of me with batons. Although if I had an item that let me control teleporting telepotitis would have let me teleport at will.
Your task is simple, retrieve the fabled Amulet of Yendor from the Dungeons of Doom, deliver it to your chosen god on the Astral plane and ascend to demigod-hood. Unfortunately thousands of deadly monsters stand between you and your goal.
NetHack is an oldschool Rogue style dungeon crawler, which means it features randomly generated dungeons and permanent death. It's very, very, very difficult. I've so far sent about 30 characters to hilarious/depressing deaths and haven't a gotten a single one past level 10.
One of the fun things about NetHack is how almost everything can be used to help your survive. That seemingly useless potion of paralysis? Bash someone over the head with it and kill them while they can't move. A looking glass? Point it at a monster to scare them with their own reflection. A scroll of destroy armor? Read it to rid yourself of cursed equipment. A large dog is about to rip to to shreds? Feed it some food to tame him and now you've got an ally to fight along side you. A polymorph trap? Push your pet into it and you may end up with a tame black dragon. There are ways out of almost any situation in NetHack, it's up to you to think of them.
The games from the 80's so the graphics are pretty archaic, although nowadays we can use tiles instead of text based graphics:
DOWNLOADS:
You can get NetHack here: http://www.nethack.org/
And a tile set that's game a lot less ugly than the standard one: Here.
To install it, extract to Nethack directory and add to your defaults.nh:
OPTIONS=tile_file:kins32.bmp, tile_width:32, tile_height:32
And an extensive spoilers list which I've found invaluable for not dying terrible deaths as quickly: Here.
Anyways, hopefully someone else enjoys this as much as I have. Prepare to die a lot, the game is brutal. But! It's also so complex that I've found it a lot more fun than many modern rpgs, it's pretty rewarding to realize you were clever enough to get yourself out of a potentially lethal situation using nothing but an apple.
As an example of how much this game wants you dead, the first character I made walked a total of 5 steps before I walked into a trap and a rock fell on my head and I died. Or the time I ate the corpse of a leprachaun, and got infected with teleportitis, which makes you randomly teleport around every so often. So I walked into a shop and picked up a helm to buy, only to teleport out and be accused of theft and have a bunch of Keystone Kops chasing my down blinding me with pies they were throwing and beating the **** out of me with batons. Although if I had an item that let me control teleporting telepotitis would have let me teleport at will.
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