So I finally sat down with Rogue, the game from the early 80s that was the inspiration for many of the Dungeon Crawlers I’ve played over the years. It started with Desktop Dungeons, which I spotted on my TIGSource RSS feed. It’s easy to play, but tricky to master, and it has a surprising amount of depth. Most of the Rogue aficionados would probably scoff at its use of graphics, but it makes it easier for noobs like me.
So I played that for a bit (I’m still working through the different classes, actually), and then I thought “Maybe Rogue is on the iPhone…”. Of course it is! In fact, there’s a free version called simply “Rogue” by Gandreas Software that’s pretty good, and Rogue Touch was $0.99 a few days ago so I picked that up, too. So far I’ve played Rogue Touch more, but I think it’s because I have some “I bought it so I better play it” guilt. The free Rogue has the classic ascii graphics, an interesting glyph-based (you draw commands on a 9×9 grid) interface, and it’s a bit faster to play. Rogue Touch seems a little bit easy compared to the Gandreas version, but maybe it’s just me.
Anyways, now that I’m finally playing it, I can understand why it was so hot when it came out. I’m also starting to understand why some people prefer the ascii version. It’s a lot faster, like vi compared to Word. I’ll probably gravitate in that direction once I get a better feel for it.