Stu’s post on The Void inspired me to not only go out and buy the game, but to consider the games I want to rave about.  The first one may seem like a strange choice, but it’s one of the first applications that goes on every single PC I own – and has been for the last 18 odd years.

Nethack is a what’s called a ‘Roguelike‘ game.  It’s a top-down dungeon exploration.  Your goal is to work your way down through various levels of dungeon, killing monsters and amassing experience, to find the Amulet of Yendor and then escape.  Simple.

However, even describing Nethack then becomes a problem.  It started out in life, simply called Hack in around 1985 and has been in active development (it’s an Open Source game) ever since.  Awesome.

The ‘graphics’ in the game still split people pretty much down the middle.  Basic Nethack uses extended ASCII graphics to represent the dungeon and everything within it.  Some of the basic character are:

• @ - me (the player)
• d – my little dog
• & – a dragon
• / – a magic wand
• ? – a scroll
• > – staircase (down)

You get the idea.

While the game looks incredibly crude and simplistic, the real value and joy of Nethack is in its depth and complexity.  It is arguably the first ever ’sandbox’ game.  Every level is randomly generated, within a given set of rules.  So every single game you play is different.  Within those levels you’ll find hundreds of different monsters, hundreds of different items and even some world infrastructure – shops, mines, banks, guards, temples and so on.

Each and every single one of these items, people and creatures can interact in different ways.  In almost every possible way in fact.  Exploring these interactions is where Nethack creates something unique and entirely different to any other game.

I’ve been playing it since 1987 and I’m still finding new and interesting things to do (and being honest, still occasionally dying on Level 2 when I run out of food).  I once spent an educational fortnight picking up every item I could find from over 30 levels, piling it all in one spot and then zapping the whole lot with a wand of transformation.  This included my little dog (different races get different pets/familiars including cats, dogs and ponies).

In my newly-formed crystal plate mail, with my pet black dragon (& remember), I went through the next several levels like a greased squirrel.  Until I ran into a hive of killer bees nine levels below, my little dog (or dragon) fell through a trap door and I put on a cursed ring of transmogrification turning, at one point, into Lichen.

The thing is that having worked on the game for a couple of decades now, the near mythical Dev Team has run across, thought of, and then included most things in there.  This means that more than any other game I’ve ever come across, if you ever think ‘Oh, I wonder if I can do [X]?’ Not only can you do [X], but the consequences will either be awesome, indescribably punishing, or so unexpected, you’re left gaping, slack-jawed, at a screen full of ASCII, wondering how they knew you’d do that.

Oh, and that’s all without mentioning the fact that you can’t just save anywhere you like and restart, without your original save game being overwritten – just to stop you trying and retrying the same thing over and over.  Or the fact that the game saves your previous deaths in ‘bones’ files and you can sometimes find yourself in a familiar looking level, scattered with very familiar (ex)possessions, being pursued by your own unmerciful ghost.  Did I mention you can also train your dog/cat/pony to shoplift (warning: spoilers), fight monsters, find food and grab gold if it finds any?

No?  I meant to, because it’s all in there.

The best thing is that Nethack is free.  Free as in beer, as well as in speech.  You can download it for pretty much every single platform out there.  If there’s no official version of your platform of choice, it’s a very good bet indeed that there’s an offshoot out there somewhere.  Plus, if you’re really, seriously picky about playing a game that looks like a typewriter that’s been hit by a bus, then there are lots of other open source offshoots, which put prettier and stranger graphics around the same, unbelievably clever and complex core.

Try it.  Live it.  Love it (or not, I’m not, you know, telling you how to live your life or anything).

- Brian (@flackboy)