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Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

Alternatively, for a roguelike cut from the same mold as Nethack but with a very different philosophical bent, I recommend Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, which can be played either locally, online in the classic SSH fashion, or via a web browser with a nice graphical UI (e.g. http://crawl.akrasiac.org:8080/#lobby , click on any name there to observe other players in action).

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I agree wholeheartedly. Nethack is fun but gameplay-wise it's a bit of a mess, many of the mechanics are extremely obtuse if you don't spoil yourself. And when you start spoiling you never know when to stop.

On the other hand DCSS's game design is pretty stellar in my experience. It's better balanced than Nethack and relies less on arcane knowledge to get through the game. I've always ended up being frustrated while playing Nethack blindly because it feels unfair, meanwhile when I started reading spoilers I felt like I was cheating. DCSS handles that a lot better I think.

I think it's the very best dungeon crawler when it comes to comfort of use and startability for new players.

And I would suggest it not just for gamers but for programmers as well. There is a lot one can learn about user interfaces, shells, coding, architecture, data management (items, races etc are all data) with the additional motivation to learn it while playing.

> for programmers as well

https://twitter.com/crawlcode :)

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