M
markjms
Guest
If you'd told me in 1985, as my young self pushed his Gnome Mage through the Mines of Moria, that I'd be able to play that game on a small handheld device, I would have laughed you out - them fervently wished you'd be right.
It can be done now! For those unfamiliar with Roguelikes, it's a class of game that directly spawned the Diablo series, amongst other styles of RPGs - in fact, strip Diablo of it's graphics, replace walls and monsters and items with ASCII character representations, and you're right there at the beginning of this genre.
Angband is a themed expansion to Rogue, and the later Moria - you are a character drawn from JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth, and you're fighting your way down the dungeons of Angband to defeat Sauron and his master Morgoth. Along the way are goblins, orcs, trolls, balrogs and other monsters drawn from mythologies and legends. Magical items, artifacts from Tolkien's works, and (if a magic using class) magic spells aid and abet you in clearing out randomly generated dungeon levels. You can clear your inventory and stock up on necessities (and find great stuff at the Black Market) in town at the top of the dungeon.
It's turn-based, so you don't have to twitch and writhe on the bus escaping Nazgul - it's a perfect game for adventuring in between classes, meetings, or stoplights. A keyboard is required (there's many actions controlled via keyboard) and the screen doubles as a 3x3 grid for movement. (the author is working on removing the physical keyboard requirement) The author David Barr has done an excellent job of wrapping the game into an Android-runnable package, and the game is crisp and responsive on a Motorola Backflip.
The author maintains a forum at angdroid.org, and a Google Code site at http://code.google.com/p/angdroid/, where the bleeding edge packages live.
If you've played Roguelikes before, this game is a definite download - the absolute joy of retrogaming with a Roguelike on a phone cannot be described or beaten. If you've never tried one before, then here's your chance - travel back to the days when men were "@"s and monsters were nervous!
It can be done now! For those unfamiliar with Roguelikes, it's a class of game that directly spawned the Diablo series, amongst other styles of RPGs - in fact, strip Diablo of it's graphics, replace walls and monsters and items with ASCII character representations, and you're right there at the beginning of this genre.
Angband is a themed expansion to Rogue, and the later Moria - you are a character drawn from JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth, and you're fighting your way down the dungeons of Angband to defeat Sauron and his master Morgoth. Along the way are goblins, orcs, trolls, balrogs and other monsters drawn from mythologies and legends. Magical items, artifacts from Tolkien's works, and (if a magic using class) magic spells aid and abet you in clearing out randomly generated dungeon levels. You can clear your inventory and stock up on necessities (and find great stuff at the Black Market) in town at the top of the dungeon.
It's turn-based, so you don't have to twitch and writhe on the bus escaping Nazgul - it's a perfect game for adventuring in between classes, meetings, or stoplights. A keyboard is required (there's many actions controlled via keyboard) and the screen doubles as a 3x3 grid for movement. (the author is working on removing the physical keyboard requirement) The author David Barr has done an excellent job of wrapping the game into an Android-runnable package, and the game is crisp and responsive on a Motorola Backflip.
The author maintains a forum at angdroid.org, and a Google Code site at http://code.google.com/p/angdroid/, where the bleeding edge packages live.
If you've played Roguelikes before, this game is a definite download - the absolute joy of retrogaming with a Roguelike on a phone cannot be described or beaten. If you've never tried one before, then here's your chance - travel back to the days when men were "@"s and monsters were nervous!