Haven’t played in awhile, but have been trying to ascend for over 12 years at this point. Best game ever, imo. Should really try again sometimes. The android app is really good but the IPhone one sucks, tempted to switch back to android for that reason alone..
I personally think the android ports of nethack and unnethack are probably the gold standard for what porting an old roguleike to touch ui should be.
Everything about them is extrememly intuitive. The movement works perfectly and the context bar and quick popup keyboard make playing almost quicker than on pc for me. Plus, there's the whole, nethack in your pocket bonus.
I've tried ports of angband, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead for android and found angband and DCSS to be totally unplayable. CDDA was playable, but kind of clunky and awkward and not very fun in the end.
Highly recommend anyone into roguelikes give the android port of nethack a go.
I've been playing Cataclysm DDA on Android for last two years. It's clunky and awkward, but for me it's still the best game on platform. It's the only mobile game that managed to keep me hooked for months.
One thing that's even better than the desktop version is the amount of immersion. You play out this character's life in post-apocalyptic world. You get to make choices for him: what items to collect and leave, what to craft and cook, what to eat and drink to get necessary vitamins & minerals, how to dresses for each season, how to recover from injuries and sticky situations, how to maintain and upgrade a vehicle, how to learn skills necessary to survive... and it's a turn-based simulation. When you are interrupted by RL, you just put the app to background and forget about it for hours or days. Then you start the game again and your character is still where he was, waiting for your choice on what to do next. It's incredible to be able to have something like this in your pocket. A simplistic but still immersive simulation of reality where you can lead a second life.
As a bonus you get to pick up basic knowledge on wide range of topics, from item descriptions and craft recipes - chemistry, medicine, farming, ancient and modern weaponry, car mechanics, survival in the wild...
One word of advice - turn off all enemies when you are starting out, and focus on interacting with the game and its rich world.
How easy is it to learn/remember what all the keys do? I've tried nethack a few times, and had a very... Dwarf-Fortress like experience, in that I had no idea how to accomplish anything via the opaque UI.
I'm not sure how long exactly. I played with the wiki open for a fair bit. The help in nethack is pretty descriptive for keys. You end up remembering the ones you use the most pretty quickly. Some of the more obscure ones I forget.
Something about the complexity of the controls is part of the charm for me though. Suddenly you remember you can do something you totally forgot about and it changes the way you play the game. Or you reach some kind of understanding about one of the mechanics that just makes it part of your play style.
I've played a lot of different roguelikes, nethack and its variants are some of the few I still get that feeling of discovery from, despite playing it for years, scouring spoilers and even looking at parts of the source for fun.
It's easier than learning vim, that's for sure. Try following the guide from the wiki at first. [0] After a while you'll be navigating the UI subconsciously. Don't be fooled by this though, the game itself is quite unforgiving if you don't know the mechanics and aren't thinking ahead.
I think pathos fit the bill better, even if it's a simplified nethack, precisely because a popup keyboard is not a central part of the gameplay experience
I've got pathos, I could be wrong but I think it was designed for mobile originally wasn't it and only based on nethack's rules not a port of the original?
I was referring more to roguelikes originally designed for keyboards and adapted to touch ui rather than ones designed around it from the beginning.
Just for a game with the complexity of nethack, that expects a full keyboard full of controls(with modifier keys), originally designed around a bare terminal, they found a particularly efficient and intuitive(for me at least) solution, especially compared to other ports i've played.
I once made it to Sokoban.. didn't get through it. Been playing on-and-off since 1996. Sometimes I wonder if I live my gaming life as a warning to others.
Comments
Haven’t played in awhile, but have been trying to ascend for over 12 years at this point. Best game ever, imo. Should really try again sometimes. The android app is really good but the IPhone one sucks, tempted to switch back to android for that reason alone..
I personally think the android ports of nethack and unnethack are probably the gold standard for what porting an old roguleike to touch ui should be.
Everything about them is extrememly intuitive. The movement works perfectly and the context bar and quick popup keyboard make playing almost quicker than on pc for me. Plus, there's the whole, nethack in your pocket bonus.
I've tried ports of angband, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead for android and found angband and DCSS to be totally unplayable. CDDA was playable, but kind of clunky and awkward and not very fun in the end.
Highly recommend anyone into roguelikes give the android port of nethack a go.
I've been playing Cataclysm DDA on Android for last two years. It's clunky and awkward, but for me it's still the best game on platform. It's the only mobile game that managed to keep me hooked for months.
One thing that's even better than the desktop version is the amount of immersion. You play out this character's life in post-apocalyptic world. You get to make choices for him: what items to collect and leave, what to craft and cook, what to eat and drink to get necessary vitamins & minerals, how to dresses for each season, how to recover from injuries and sticky situations, how to maintain and upgrade a vehicle, how to learn skills necessary to survive... and it's a turn-based simulation. When you are interrupted by RL, you just put the app to background and forget about it for hours or days. Then you start the game again and your character is still where he was, waiting for your choice on what to do next. It's incredible to be able to have something like this in your pocket. A simplistic but still immersive simulation of reality where you can lead a second life.
As a bonus you get to pick up basic knowledge on wide range of topics, from item descriptions and craft recipes - chemistry, medicine, farming, ancient and modern weaponry, car mechanics, survival in the wild...
One word of advice - turn off all enemies when you are starting out, and focus on interacting with the game and its rich world.
How easy is it to learn/remember what all the keys do? I've tried nethack a few times, and had a very... Dwarf-Fortress like experience, in that I had no idea how to accomplish anything via the opaque UI.
I'm not sure how long exactly. I played with the wiki open for a fair bit. The help in nethack is pretty descriptive for keys. You end up remembering the ones you use the most pretty quickly. Some of the more obscure ones I forget.
Something about the complexity of the controls is part of the charm for me though. Suddenly you remember you can do something you totally forgot about and it changes the way you play the game. Or you reach some kind of understanding about one of the mechanics that just makes it part of your play style.
I've played a lot of different roguelikes, nethack and its variants are some of the few I still get that feeling of discovery from, despite playing it for years, scouring spoilers and even looking at parts of the source for fun.
It's easier than learning vim, that's for sure. Try following the guide from the wiki at first. [0] After a while you'll be navigating the UI subconsciously. Don't be fooled by this though, the game itself is quite unforgiving if you don't know the mechanics and aren't thinking ahead.
[0] https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Standard_strategy
I think pathos fit the bill better, even if it's a simplified nethack, precisely because a popup keyboard is not a central part of the gameplay experience
I've got pathos, I could be wrong but I think it was designed for mobile originally wasn't it and only based on nethack's rules not a port of the original?
I was referring more to roguelikes originally designed for keyboards and adapted to touch ui rather than ones designed around it from the beginning.
Just for a game with the complexity of nethack, that expects a full keyboard full of controls(with modifier keys), originally designed around a bare terminal, they found a particularly efficient and intuitive(for me at least) solution, especially compared to other ports i've played.
I once made it to Sokoban.. didn't get through it. Been playing on-and-off since 1996. Sometimes I wonder if I live my gaming life as a warning to others.