Roguelikes Ain’t Dead Yet (MasonicGamer.com)

(MasonicGamer.com) Many of you have probably never even heard of, let alone played the original Rogue, a game written for a Unix-based college computer system more than 30 years ago. There’s a good chance that if you only spend your time on mainstream AAA titles you may not have even played any of its numerous spiritual successors (known collectively as roguelikes). That said, while Rogue and the Roguelikes it spawned are not even remotely mainstream, it has had an enormous influence on gaming, and perhaps as a backlash to the recent focus on fun and accessible games, its brutal legacy is being felt more than ever.

For those of you that don’t know, Rogue was a top-down RPG that put you in the shoes of an adventurer entering a dark and foreboding dungeon. While the graphics used were incredibly primitive by today’s standards, its core ideas are surprisingly modern.