Web site: roguelikes.sauceforge.net/pub/rogue/index.html (not active)
Category: Games
Sub-Category: RPG
Platform: Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, CP/M, MS DOS, Mac OS, Nintendo Switch, Unix, ZX Spectrum
License: unknown
Interface: CLI
Wikipedia: Rogue
First release: March 1980
Rogue (Rogue: Exploring the Dungeons of Doom) – a computer role-playing game from the 1980s developed at the Berkeley Institute for Unix systems.
The player moves through a text-based series of rooms and corridors, fighting monsters, collecting treasures, and trying to find the legendary Amulet of Yendor. The game mechanics are loosely based on the Dungeons & Dragons system. Rogue features a text interface (i.e. everything in the game is ASCII characters), and almost all elements of the dungeon are randomly generated.
Rogue is a precursor to the genre of games called roguelikes after its name, currently classified as a subgenre of cRPG (computer role-playing game) games. Games of this type are still being created today.
The implementation, which was technically limited at the time, proved to be the ideal form for programming non-commercial computer role-playing games. There are numerous freeware variants, but most ports are not free.
The player is tasked with recovering the Amulet of Yendor from a dungeon populated by monsters. To make this easier, he finds a variety of weapons, magic potions, wands and spells, magic rings, armor, as well as food and gold in the various levels of the dungeon. With the necessary luck to find the right items and a good tactic, which plays an immensely important role in this game, he can also hold his own against the very strong monsters in the later levels.
The appeal of the extremely simple game, which was intended as a quick break filler that can be played without lengthy study of instructions, lies in the fact that each game is generated completely anew. This means that repetition is impossible and the player never knows exactly what to expect.
Rogue was inspired by text-based computer games such as the 1971 Star Trek game and Colossal Cave Adventure released in 1976, along with the high fantasy setting from Dungeons & Dragons.
