Why it matters
Rogue was written for university machines with text terminals, and its picture is assembled from the same characters as ordinary program output: the player is marked with the @ symbol, monsters with letters, walls and floors with punctuation marks. There was nothing to draw with, and that became a condition of the problem. Since a level is described by a table of characters, it doesn't need to be drawn by hand, and the program assembles the dungeon anew on every launch.
The rest of the design follows from the random map. The properties of potions and scrolls are also dealt out afresh, so knowledge from the last game doesn't carry over to a new one, and every find has to be tested on yourself. The character's death ends the playthrough entirely, there is no returning to the previous spot, so risk is weighed at every step. The goal, meanwhile, is a single one: go down to the bottom for the amulet and climb back up. The game spread together with university distributions of Unix, that is, it reached people along with the system and without a separate purchase, and dozens of authors took apart and repeated the original idea. The name of a single game turned into a label for a whole way of building one.
Watch it played
Facts
- The picture is assembled from terminal characters: the player is marked with the @ symbol, monsters with letters.
- The dungeon is built anew on every launch, so the map can't be memorized.
- The properties of potions and scrolls are dealt out at random, and what you learned in the last game doesn't work in the next.
- The character's death ends the playthrough; there is no continuing from the previous spot.
- The game spread together with university distributions of Unix.
