Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

I call this game Crawl. It's a true roguelike game.

A Roguelike Game

Crawl is a pure roguelike game, of the same style as Rogue and Nethack. Roguelike can mean different things to different people. To me these are the key features of a roguelike:

• Exploration: A pure roguelike will explore a procedurally generated dungeon. 
• Character Development: Traditionally, you would gain levels and acquire powerful items.
• Turn-based: You can take as long as you want to think about your next move, but in a full game you will make many moves (thousands).
• Permadeath: One mistake and you must start over from scratch. When you load a game your save is erased. There are no checkpoints. There might be in-game ways to cheat death, but when it says "game over!" you are done.

Other less important features of a roguelike are:

• Fantasy theme where you fight monsters, usually by walking into them. You have hit points, scrolls, potions, weapons, and armor. You probably have a variety of races and classes to choose from.
• Playable in ASCII, where your character is symbolized by "@"
• Keyboard movement, preferably in eight directions using the vi keys "hjkl;unyb"
• Emergent gameplay where there are many ways to solve a problem depending on your resources. For example, to get past a locked door you might pick the lock, kick down the door, tunnel around the door, teleport to the other side, or just ignore that door and come back later.
• Find the MacGuffin on the final level, then return to the first level and escape.

Is Crawl For Newbs?

Yes. Play a Troll Berserker. If you are a true newb, you might die before level 3. If you have some clue you might make it to level 8. After a few games with a Troll, you will attempt a mage and won't get past level 3 no matter how hard you try. Eventually you will figure some things out and get farther and farther.

Is Crawl For Pros?

Yes. I was a Nethack expert when I picked up Crawl and it took me hundreds of attempts before beating it. Even with easy races, I only win about 20% of the time and I have a lot of difficulty playing spellcasters. The best of the best win 95% of their games.

What Makes Crawl So Good?

There are a ton of viable play styles. Each style will make some aspects of the game easier or harder. The game generation is largely random, but there are many small pre-constructed areas and encounters to give stability to the chaos of RNG. There are a few boss fights that are always the same, and many random mini bosses that can be encountered. Nearly every death could have been avoided by better play, so the game is a constant learning experience. 

Examples of Variety

The three important features of your character are race, religion, and background. 

Race has the most impact on the game and there are about 20 to choose from. Some have fairly defined roles. For example, a troll fights very well but has trouble with spells. A dark elf is excellent with spells and perhaps bows, but should stay out of melee. However, most of the races are pretty flexible. Ogres are a fantastic race for fighting, but they can't wear armor and are half decent as casting spells, so you should consider learning some magic. Most races are similarly suited for a mix of melee, ranged, and casting.

Religion is the second most important choice, and is usually made around level 7. The god you pick greatly affects your playstyle. 

Your background or class seems important, but it mostly just affects the first few levels. It does, however, reinforce the direction you envision for the character. For example, if you start a human wizard you are likely to train your spell skills. However, if you find an amazing suit of heavy armor you might abandon those skills in favor of combat.

The Bad

I love Crawl. It is my favorite game in one of my favorite genres. Everybody should play it. Why don't they? There are a few reasons.

The learning curve is hefty. You might play 1000 hours without winning. Losing is Fun™ but some people want to win. 

The controls aren't intuitive. This is more learning curve stuff, but I find it far easier to play with the vi keys than the cursor keys. Plenty of people will refuse to learn the vi keys to move. 

Spell casting is hard. Playing a berserker is easy to get far without knowing anything, but playing a wizard is tough. Once you get to the end game, wizards and soldiers are about the same difficulty, but new players never see the end game and only see wizards as super tough to play. Also, playing a troll berserker feels like a one trick pony. There are actually a lot of subtle tricks to learn, but after 10 games of playing a troll, a newb is ready for something different because he isn't learning fast enough.

The soul crushing defeats weigh on you. You are having a great game where you die to a dumb mistake. So frustrating.

For the most part death can be avoided, but sometimes the trick is to adopt an uncomfortable playstyle. For example, the top players will mark spaces that monsters have stood on because they are less likely to be trapped. For a mediocre player like me, traps are responsible for less than 10% of my deaths. However, to a super expert, they are more like 50%. That means if I get a lot better, I need to start paying more attention to traps if I want to stay alive. 

Final Assessment

Maybe Crawl isn't the best for a starter roguelike, but if you already like the genre, this is the best out there. I've played lots of Rogue, Angband, Nethack, Adom, and others. They all have something to offer, but generally speaking Crawl is the best.