Rogue Hearts Dungeon

The art of dungeon crawling was perfected by college students in the mid 1980s on Unix machines. Rogue was the game and it set hearts afire across campuses in America. Monsters and dungeon walls made of ASCII characters provided a stark visual presentation of the action on monochrome monitors. Despite the simplicity of the graphics, the strategy involved in the game kept players rapt and ignited a slew of clones and derivatives that would keep dungeon crawling a popular diversion.

Compile reaches back into the early days of gaming and releases a Rogue that looks a lot better than the original but the game play remains pretty much the game. Players start on the top floor of a dungeon and the only way to go is down. Explore the first level, slay a few sleeping monsters, gather treasure, and then find the stairs so you can descend into the depths below. The design of Rogue Hearts Dungeon retains the simplicity of the ASCII-based Rogue where every game begins with a randomly generated dungeon that changes each time you play. At the conclusion of a dungeon run when you've reached the bottom and conquered the beasts within, all of the items and treasure you've gathered are converted into points and tallied up. In the next dungeon, you'll start again at level 1 with only a basic weapon, a suit of armor, and supplies. «more»