Kooneiform

You would think that in playing muds and IF I naturally would play a lot of roguelike games too, but this isn’t the case (unless you count Dwarf Fortress I guess). It is one of those things I’ve been meaning to check out — with full awareness of the rabbit hole I could then slip down, but never mind that…

The thing is, while I like graphical RPGs, a lot of times the interface isn’t very satisfying. The characters are clumsy looking, it’s hard to get them to move in a natural way, the buildings and landscapes are just that side of pretty where they aren’t very pretty at all. It’s like a cross between Zelda and Virtua Fighter, and not appealing. On the other hand, while roguelikes are (obviously) stripped down to the barest of graphical representation, I can totally get into it and let my imagination do the work.

Thanks to RAIF and TIGSource I found my first roguelike, and it’s called Legerdemain. Coincidentally, according to the developer it’s a cross between IF and roguelikes — the site is even called roguelikefiction. Maybe this is the roguelike I was meant to play first?