Rogue Download (1983 Role playing Game)

This classic dungeon-crawl uses ASCII characters (letters and some symbols) and basic colors to depict a rogue's epic adventure through the infamous Dungeon of Doom. Using a host of weapons and items, he explores the dark dungeons one step at a time in turn-based mode. There are 25 different types of monsters, symbolized with their initial letter (L for Leprechaun for instance) and they have different abilities and modes of attack. The dungeons are different each time you play the game. In their deepest level the greatest prize awaits...

Rogue - The Adventure Game is a game that every one should have played at least once. Rogue is more than a classic. Rogue is a piece of history.

The game is set in an underground world named "The Dungeons Of Doom". As usual, you play a young adventurer seeking fame and, well, treasure. Lots of it. To get what you want, you have to explore a vast dungeon system and fight myriads of monsters on the way. Somewhere in the end, the Amulet of Yendor is awaiting you. Of course, there's also that mean wizard guarding it. Well, well, life is always the hardest on those who seek eternal happiness.

The graphics in Rogue are entirely ASCII-based. That means letters are used for everything. For example, the 26 monsters in the game are all represented by capital letters. While this makes it easy to run Rogue in a dumb terminal, in present times, the graphics are way beyond outdated. The original Rogue was monochrome, but color has been added in later versions and clones of the game, making it easier to identify your surroundings. Sound and music are both non-existent in Rogue, also adding to the nostalgic feeling.

In my opinion, you should not be reading this. You should be downloading.

Rogue - The Adventure Game is definitely worth playing it - despite being conceived in the early eighties.

Rogue: Adventure is an ASCII colour adventure game. You travel through levels killings monsters, picking up weapons and potions and collecting money. You have stats like Hits, Strength and Armour and as you kill monsters you gain levels making you more powerful. Its not a bad game and the levels seem to be generated randomly making each game different. But seeing that the game has no story line you have no idea what the game is about. It works in Windows 98 but I would only download it if I had a 286 but its not really worth it otherwise.

Rogue is a very simple ASCII based dungeon exploration game that sparked off a whole generation of imitations: Angband, Nethack, Ragnarok and ADOM to name a few. It's charm lies in its very simple control system, graphics (B=a bat, S=a snake etc) and almost endless replayability. There isn't a whole lot else to say about it, just download it yourself and see.

You ever heard them talk of the rogue-style games? Did you ever wonder what they mean by this? Well, in short words: Rogue was the first open ended ever changing RPG. Everytime you play it it comes up with a new dungeon. Your task is simply to stay alive for as long as possible, go deeper into the dungeon and collect as much gold as possible. On your way you meet monsters, find treasures, magical objects etc. This game comes along very simple but casts its spell on you immediately. You sit there trying to proceed further and further, building up your character to explore the next level and get some more gold.

This game is among the 5 or maybe 10 standard setting games ever made. Hundreds of games have been modelled after its concept. Millions of players all around the world have been playing it for years and years now. Although there have been MANY clones, enhanced versions and so on the classic still remains unreached in its simplicity and the ingenious idea. It's just pure roleplaying in this nice ASCII-environment (yes, I really prefer that as it underlines the spirit of the game). I could go on like this for ever, best is you just have a quick look at it - I guarantee you, if you're an RPG-fan it will be more - far more - than just a QUICK look!

The "granddaddy" of dungeon hack RPGs, Rogue has a long history that dates back to the 1970's. It was first released as a test application for UNIX, and quickly captured the imagination of popularity among system administrators and computer science students. It was such a popular "test" that enterprising UNIX admins and users distributed it, expanded it, imitated it, and ported it to their home computers.

The game's original concept was unique and rich enough that decades later, it has an entire genre of computer games named after it, commonly called "Roguelike Games", and today still attracts a loyal following and lively community and newsgroups.

What is so special about the game that it still attract gamers for over a decade? Many revoluationary features that have become the norm in today's RPGs. Rogue is an ASCII-interfaced (i.e. all text or text-charater based), turn-based, single player dungeon crawl. Its attraction lies neither in plot nor puzzles (both of which are paper-thin... you are a treasure hunter not unlike the Adventurer in Infocom's Zork), but in the seemingly endless combinations of features, a wide variety of monsters and loot, and randomly generated dungeon that guarantees infinite replayability. In short, Rogue is to RPGs what Crowther's mainframe Adventure is to adventures: a revolutionary game that spawned a genre. It may not stand the test of time very well after all these years, but for those who want to get a sense of where today's blockbuster dungeon crawls the likes of Diablo descend from, Rogue is it.

This is the great grand daddy of ALL role playing games.. far back enough to become a classification all it's own.. as in Rogue-type games.. it is the forerunner of Hack, Nethack, Dungeons of Moria, Pitfalls of Angband, Zangband, and Utumno.. it has been worked on and developed over the last 25 years as an international hobby for programmers that have updated and upgraded it, and then passed it on to the next generation. It is a tiny jewel and deserves a place in the Internet Gallery of Antiquity as a revolutionary piece of software. The game itself is rather primitive, lacking even a save feature, but it is worth downloading just as a cherished memento of your childhood.

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

People who downloaded Rogue have also downloaded:
Rogue (Epyx), Secret of the Silver Blades, Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Pool of Radiance, Spelljammer, System Shock, Dungeon Master, Wasteland