a lot of people say that they can’t get into roguelikes because they’re hard to learn or they can’t deal with the lack of graphics. those are also the reasons roguelikes are the best singleplayer games that exist. they’re ‘hard to learn’ because there’s just so many actions you can do, so many types of objects and enemies. enemies all have different properties and most items can be used in way more than one way. the lack of graphics is specifically because the focus of these games is on gameplay and not aesthetics. maybe the MY IMMERSION!!! crowd appreciates having pretty pictures to look at, but they also probably appreciate mouthwash. so you can’t smell the shit
one of the big things about nhateck is that when you first find items they aren’t identified. so a potion will just be “a dark potion” or whatever. and these aren’t consistent from game-to-game. so you have to figure out what effect the potion has for yourself. there’s a bunch of ways to do this for different types of items, like for a potion you could see how much a shopkeeper values it at, you could dip an item in it, you could just drink it. but since all items can be generated cursed, and you won’t know it’s cursed until it affects you, use-identifying is usually not the best method, but sometimes you can’t afford to go find some other way. so as you can see, even in just the simple matter of identifying an item, ncakteh is already giving you meaningful choices.
the objective is to get down like 50 floors, steal an amulet, go back up 50 floors, fight through 4 elemental planes and eventually through the astral plane itself, and sacrifice the amulet to your god. the planes and a few other levels are always the same, but the vast majority of the levels are procedurally generated when you first reach them. with a few exceptions, items are also placed randomly, as are enemies (according roughly to your level and how deep in the dungeon you are). this means you don’t know exactly what to expect any one time. you have to play intelligently, not strictly according to a practiced run or whatever. you might think that with such a high level of randomization, nhackte basically leaves it up to chance whether you can be successful or not. however, some players are able to consistently ascend characters with very high regularity, showing that ehnatck is really way more of a game of skill than like, most sp games.
these games have permadeath, which means when you die, it’s done. you don’t reload a save state, and in fact you can’t, because when you die the game deletes your save. you’re just dead and have to start a new character. this is one of the best things about roguelikes, and thackne. you really have to consider taking on a tough pack of enemies knowing you can’t just reload. you’ll be way less likely to start randomly quaffing unidentified potions when you’ve sunk eight hours into your character. it infuses every decision with a much higher level of severity. it also serves to numb you to failure. you die a lot in these games at first, but you’re learning through it. after you’ve learned how to avoid a lot of the basic causes of death, the world doesn’t seem so harsh. most people never get over the initial learning curve because they feel like there’s so many things that could kill them it’s almost random; in reality, almost every single death is totally avoidable through VARIOUS means. let’s say you accidentally eat a poison corpse and get sick, which means you die after some time. first of all, you could have known that the animal was poisonous and not eat it. but you have options even once you do. you could pray to your god, and if you haven’t bugged him lately and he’s happy with your conduct, he’ll fix you up (of course, if you do bug him too much, he’ll smite you. of course.). you could possibly have a potion or spell on hand to cure it. you could use a unicorn horn on yourself (it’s magic don’t ask). you could even eat a rotten egg or dog food to make yourself throw up, getting rid of the poison. or you could be playing a barbarian and have poison resistance.
not many games give you that many choices, all of them with meaningful consequences and shit. when people talk about what makes nhathack great, it’s not the paper-thin plot. it’s the GAMEPLAY. that’s why it’s the best
