Rogue (video game)

"Rogue is a visual CRT based fantasy game which runs under the UNIX+ timesharing system. Your goal is to grab as much treasure as you can, find the Amulet of Yendor, and get out of the Dungeons of Doom alive."

- A Guide to the Dungeons of Doom

Rogue is a 1980 video game and one of the first roguelikes, the one for which all others are named. A top-down, dungeon crawling Dungeons-and-Dragons-like game, it used ASCII-based graphics to depict the dungeon, player and everything in the dungeon.

One of the unique features of Rogue was that each new game had a completely new, randomly generated map. Most games of the time, such as Colossal Cave were completely pre-scripted, or had limited randomness. This feature became one of the defining elements of the roguelike genre.

Rogue was originally written as a test of the curses screen handling library, which became one of the most widely used Unix application libraries. Epyx (the popular game publisher in the 80s) sold a commercial version using tile-based graphics.

A Java-based online version of the game can be found here and is free to play.


 * Anti-Grinding: The game forces you to explore lower and more dangerous levels by using hunger as a time limit. Once a level has been cleared, no more food can be found unless you descend.
 * ASCII Art: When you die, you get an ASCII tombstone with your reason of death on it.
 * Came Back Wrong: Some implementations allow you to resurrect as undead; among other things, it allows you to survive by drinking the blood of your kills, but real food is reduced in value and fruit is a downright waste of time ("you gnaw at the vile rambutan"). The various implementations generally seem to treat this as a cheat, although it doesn't necessarily make the game any easier.
 * Copy Protection: Copying the game made the monsters do six times more damage than normal, and a special tombstone message was shown upon death: "Rest in Peace: Software Pirate. Killed by: Copy Protection Mafia."
 * Excuse Plot: You have to go retrieve the Amulet of Yendor. That's it.
 * Nintendo Hard: Even some of the makers of the game have never completed it!
 * Oh Crap: Occasionally a "monster party" room will pop up, in which you are vastly outnumbered by more monsters than you thought could fit in the space. Normally you can make a good attempt at beating them by backing into the hallway and hacking and slashing your way through, but once in a while you get a monster party room on a level with one. Giant. Cavern. Good luck with that...
 * Perma Death
 * Randomly Generated Levels
 * Sdrawkcab Name: Yendor is backwards for Rodney. If you leave your name blank when prompted for it at the beginning of the game, you automatically get named Rodney.
 * Wizard Needs Food Badly: At extreme hunger levels your character first starts fainting and eventually dies.