Game Review of Nethack for Various Systems

The game itself is simple in execution. You are an adventurer, who enters a randomly generated dungeon filled with treasure, monsters, and items. At the start, you create an adventurer, with choices including some stock fantasy stereotypes (Wizard, Barbarian, Priest, Rogue), along with some more unusual types (Tourist, as a nod to Twoflower in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, or Archaeologist, complete with bullwhip and fedora), and you enter a dungeon with a few meager supplies, and a pet dog or kitten to assist you. Your goal is to descend the levels to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, a powerful magical artifact craved by your patron deity, and then return to the surface clutching it. Like so many goals, this does not prove to be as straightforward as it sounds...

Nethack is simplistic looking, to say the least. The dungeon is represented from a top down view, as if you were perusing a map, and is displayed entirely in ASCII graphics. Your character is shown as a white @, and other creatures with different characters from the alphabet. A rat would be shown by a brown lower case r, an ice troll by a white upper case T. Items are similar; for instance, a magical potion would be shown with a '!', in various colors depending on its effects (If you're wondering why a ! would look like a potion, consider the symbol upside-down).

Initially, when you enter the dungeon, much of the map is unexplored, and the screen mostly dark. As you move around, you reveal more of the map, much like how many real time strategy games have a 'fog of war', only revealing details after you explore.

The game has been around since 1987, and is regularly updated with new features and tweaks, to the point where a ubiquitous phrase among its devotees is simply "The Devteam thinks of everything", a view rather hard to dispute. Consider an example. Your adventurer finds a room containing a sink (Which came into the game a few years ago, after someone commented how the game included everything but the kitchen sink). There are various things you can use this for. You can drink from it, and water is only one of the possible fluids which might gush forth. You can give it a kick, and possibly dislodge a random magical ring from its drain. After all, we all know these items tend to go down the plughole. Or the kick might awaken a variety of monsters lurking in the plumbing. Attacking the sink with a pickaxe will destroy it, but leave you an ornamental fountain gushing from the floor, which has its own many and varied uses. And, if your character has been somehow cursed with the gift of levitation, and is unable to get back down to Terra Firma, hovering over a sink will bring you back to earth rapidly. Because being near it makes you 'sink', you see?

This attention to detail is lavishly present throughout the game in almost every single aspect, and keeps players interested for years to come. Various tactics can be tried, with degrees of success. Pets can be trained to steal items from the various shops dotted around the dungeon. Experienced players can try to complete the game with various conducts, such as Vegetarian (no eating of meat), pacifist (no attacking monsters yourself), or even illiteracy (no use of the various magical scrolls and books in the game, or even reading graffiti or tombstones).

I myself have been playing for at least 7 years, have completed the game with all but two of the character types at least once, and I still keep coming back for more. Nethack has a very steep learning curve, and new players can expect to die over and over at first. With the game's unusual structure of deleting saved games once you die, this can make it a little frustrating at first, although it has an 'explore mode' which can be activated for beginners, effectively making you immortal, though not recording your score.

In short, if you're looking for a change of pace in video games, or looking for a fantasy RPG that offers a little more than the rest, I recommend heading over to http://www.nethack.org immediately, and downloading the rather petite executable of your choice.

Oh, did I mention Nethack is also completely free?