>>1976772Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is one of a class of games known as roguelikes, after Rogue, the first such game. The ancient legacy is apparent. Although this open-source game has a graphics mode, it can also be played in straight ASCII, where your character is an "@" and the monsters are various letters or symbols. The "tiled mode" provides simple 2-D graphics.
The goal of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is simple: Descend into the immense and randomly created dungeon, battling monsters, avoiding traps, and becoming more powerful, until you finally find the magic amulet and escape. (If random dungeons and magic items and unusual things to find sounds familiar, it may be because Diablo took a lot of roguelike concepts, then ramped up the graphics quality and ramped down the complexity.) Familiar it may be, but it's is hardly easy. There are countless ways to die (a common acronym in roguelike discussions is "YASD": Yet Another Stupid Death), and many things to discover. Each level can hold surprises and each game is different. Magic items are also randomized, and you need to test items to find what they do. The first item I found in my first game was a cursed ring of teleportation that could not be removed and would randomly transport me across the dungeon.
