Brief Roguelike history.
Brief Roguelike history.
A brief evolution of Rogue. Thousands of sites exist on the topic, so I won't go into a lot of repeat here, but I thought you might enjoy a quick gaming history lesson.
Tolkein (Lord of the Rings and many other books), inspired the game Moria. Zeb, Cook, and Gygax, creators of Dungeons & Dragons, inspired the game Rogue. Tolkein, from Europe, and Gygax (mainly credited for D&D), from America, detested one another.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is based upon Pixel Dungeon. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shatteredpixel.shatteredpixeldungeon
Pixel Dungeon is based upon BRogue.
https://pixel-dungeon.en.uptodown.com/android
BRogue is based on Angband. https://github.com/bilgincoskun/brogue-android-port/releases/
Angband is based on Moria and Larn and Nethack. Moria is Tolkein's world, Nethack is D&D'ish, and Larn took a whole different theme. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.rephial.xyangband
This version includes several Roguelikes in one, including Sil-Q, the Android port of Moria.
The Android port of Larn (dLarn) is available at - https://download.appsonwindows.com/b/dLarn_free-v3.3-appsonwindows.com.apk?a=azJIZDl2QyttREIxend4L0tyblQwdz09&b=ZmlJL1paUmowSkdDY25XVy9SbGRlTDdreDhhWFc5WWk5NWJORXNrSWN5L1hOamFkWUZsZ21UVVVhSDlwWWtPa2hiT0VIZmQrQ2drTHZoSXJlZ3p4cjNnVlhvWDFSNnNocU1qM0xwcEVKcFk9&c=VkZzUkZ5QjlwQmxrOFJmSWNqR1EvZ3A5MDlSN3I3ZHk4WDFTZ1ZEVnFmQT0&d=4bf63e00
Moria is based on Rogue. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.rufe.moria
"Roguelike Classic" is the only APK I know to include direct ports of Moria, Larn, and Rogue to Android. Sadly, it uses .SO libraries that are no longer supported since Android 11. Mines of Moria does not hold very true to the original Dungeons of Moria. uMoria is not available for Android. Finally, I found Sil. This is an Android port of Moria that holds very true to Tolkein's work, but it is for x86 hardware only. Fortunately, Sil was redone as Sil-Q (silk), and is included in the above Angband apk.
The original UNIX version of Rogue (1978-1980) will not run on modern devices, and the only 2 known Android ports of the 1984-1985 DOS version stopped working at Android 11. The DOS version can be run in an emulator such as MagicDOSBox on Android. The versions up to 1984 were primarily text based, or, if one had a computer powerful enough they could select an ANSI or ASCII sudo graphics mode. It can also be played online. One must register an account before playing. https://rlgallery.org:8080/
A modern Android port can be found in Dungeon Crawl. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.crawlmb&hl=en
In 2015, one of the largest roundups of Roguelikes took place and more than 700 versions were archived. https://archive.org/details/RoguelikeMegaCollection2015
The anual 7 Day Roguelike Challenge adds about 10 new games each year.
About the same time, Pixel Dungeon was bursting onto the scene for Android and not even mentioned in that archive at the time.
A decade later, and there is now well over 300 version's of Pixel Dungeon! That makes for over a thousand roguelikes.
Dial-up Multi User Dungeon's (MUD's), network roguelikes such as Diablo, and MMORPG's such as World of Warcraft are also evolution's of the original Rogue.
*Edit
Although Nethack wasn't a part of PD, it has been a major influence on all Roguelikes. As I mentioned it, I am posting the Android version.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tbd.NetHack
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Long live Nethack!
I did some hunting around and found something I think you will enjoy.
THIS is a link to an archive of 3 Android APK's including Nethack, UnNethack that expanded on Nethack, and Slash'Em that vastly expanded on both.
There is a minor annoyance however, Google. They love breaking things that work, and when they switched to Android 11 Google broke thousands of game's. In this case, Android prevents these APK's from creating the data folder (unless one is running an older version of Android).
The fix is simple but implimenting it can be annoying. The easiest method is to attach your device to a PC and make the folders (screw Android's security). For those who don't have a PC, you will have to use a File explorer with permission to make folders in the Android\Data folder.
If you get an error that the game can't process the content, it is because Android prevented the installation from making the folder. The 3 folder you "may" have to manually create to run the games are -
com.tbd.NetHack
con.tbd.UnNetHack
com.tbd.slex
That aside, the 3 games will work on Android 13.
I've been informed that Nethack 3.7.0 was released in 2023 for Windows and a few other systems (not Android). The Android newest release is 3.6.6-2
It includes several popular Tile sets to chose from and the option to load Custom sets.
The tile sets prior to 3.6.0 no longer work in the new versions, however, I was able to locate several more and put them into this archive.