Īngband is a dungeon-crawling roguelike computer game derived from Umoria. Angband features non-permanent levels (if the player leaves level 11 and come back to it later, a new one is generated), randomized objects (a pink potion could be a Potion of Healing in one game and a Potion of Confusion in the next), hundreds of different monsters and powerful Unique creatures and artifacts from Tolkien mythology (Sauron, Saruman, Grishnakh the Orc, Elendil.).Īngband has several display modes (ASCII text or graphical tiles), as well as a sound engine in recent releases.Īngband can be freely downloaded at the Angband homepage. The player chooses between 11 races and 6 classes to create a character, buys equipment from the shops on the surface, and sets off to explore the dungeon, kill monsters and gather loot and experience. The goal is to travel down to the 100th level and kill Morgoth the Valar (the major villain in Tolkien's "The Silmarillion"). Angband is still in development and is considered one of the foundations of the roguelike genre.Īngband is a dungeon crawling game. The open nature of the codebase (first under a free for non-commercial purposes license, now under the GNU GPL) has lead to the development of dozens of variants. Angband has seen a lot of changes by a lot of different developers and has been ported to a lot of different platforms. It was first intended as a UMoria 5.2.1 variant with more Tolkien Tolkien-inspired content. Nethack is clever and sandbox-ey while Angband feels more epic.Angband is a roguelike game. Uniques are also another upside of Angband, it is very rewarding to slaughter entire orc armies without breaking a sweat while in Nethack you have to live in fear of Team Ant until your to-hit bonus is more reliable. Special rooms look exactly like normal rooms with a lot of stuff crammed in them). Obtuse controls have never really bothered me (I play a crapton of dwarf fortress anyway), and in both games you have to grind a lot before you can finish them but at least Angband had pretty vaults to engage my interest during that (barring special levels which are my favorite thing in nethack, nethack doesn't have any vaults. I find that Angband's power curve feels a lot more fun than Nethack's in the sense that your character grows in power steadily and you feel more rewards as you climb vs Nethack's quest for the castle "omg I got a wand of wishing! now I have -40 ac and nothing can harm me how boring." I have won both games several times and still play both regularly. In that sense, Angband aged better than NetHack. While it's cool, it also downplays the aspect of exploration and game feel. DCSS, for example, became more easier and changed a lot for modern audience. And it's kinda sad, because too much of a dry information kinda ruins the feel of the "game world". It was like uncovering a mystery while getting new acquaintances, and now it's kinda completely gone, with wikis and stuff, and spoilery nature of Nethack turned to be "bad design" rather than feature. I think problem with Nethack is that one of the features for it was the fact that people shared information about it on the internet. But I played more Nethack, simply because it has a good port on my phone. I get that it has some epic moments and huge fights, but I always disliked grinding and wasting of time. Angband, while being pleasant to play in terms of UI, was just.boring. Nethack has many annoying moments, and I always disliked companions in video games, it just always seems tedious. I played both Nethack and Angband fairly recently, I mean, played more deeply, not just tried for a short period of time. Most regularly I play Brogue and Sil - first one when I want to experience "dungeon life", Sil when I want to have some epic, strategic battles (and to feed my obsession with Tolkien). I agree with other commenters about Sil - it is unbelievably good.
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