C# roguelike, devlog 1: About roguelikes
Rogue’s storyline was very light: the point of the game was to go down all levels of a dungeon, in a world based on Dungeons & Dragons, starting from the top, killing monsters and plundering treasures, until finding the Amulet of Yendor. Then, the player had to climb every level up.
…
Contrary to many other computer RPGs of the time, all levels were randomly generated. Rogue was intended to be played on Unix terminals. Thus, the dungeon was displayed in text mode, characters and monsters being represented by letters. Actions were issued by single keystrokes. Rogue defined the very Roguelike genre. Random generation, basic plot, text (or tiled) based display still are the usual features of Roguelikes.
From the description of Rogue (1980) on roguebasin.com
- Josh Ge, How to Make a Roguelike
- The Birth of the Japanese RPG
- Zach and Tarn Adams, Dwarf Fortress Design Inspirations
- How Two People Created Gaming’s Most Complex Simulation System
- Dwarf Fortress Creator Explains its Complexity & Origins
- Tarn Adams, Villains in Dwarf Fortress
- The 10-Year Journey of Ultima Ratio Regum: The Culture Generating Roguelike
- Brian Bucklew & Jason Grinblat, End-to-End Procedural Generation in Caves of Qud
- Jason Grinblat, Procedurally Generating History in Caves of Qud
- Santiago Zapata, What is a Roguelike
- Roguelike Radio - Episode 21: Procedural Generation
- Roguelike Radio - Episode 31: Rogue, with co-creator Glenn Wichman
- Roguelike Radio - Episode 45: Caves of Qud
- Roguelike Radio - Episode 49: Interview with Tarn Adams
- Roguelike Radio - Episode 53: Game Design in Academia
- Roguelike Radio - Episode 75: Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead
- Roguelike Radio - Episode 80: UnReal World
- Roguelike Radio - Episode 84: Nethack
- Roguelike Radio - Episode 96: Ultima Ratio Regum
- Roguelike Radio - Episode 104: Procedural Narrative Design
- Roguelike Radio - Episode 114: Gameplay-Orientated Procedural Generation
- Roguelike Radio - Episode 121: Simulation
- Roguelike Radio - Episode 134: Randomness
- Roguelike Radio - Episode 137: Book on Procedural Generation in Game Design
- Roguelike Radio - Episode 149: Chaos Theory
- [C] NetHack (in development since 1987)
- [C] Angband (in development since 1990)
- [C++] Cataclysm-DDA (in development since 2013)