Angband
Angband was created by Alex Cutler and Andy Astrand in 1990. Based on Moria, it's one of the roguelike that got the most direct variants.
From the website
"It's a freeware computer dungeon exploration game based (loosely) on the books of J.R.R.Tolkien. You explore a very deep dungeon, kill monsters, try to equip yourself with the best weapons and armor you can find, and finally face Morgoth - "The Dark Enemy".
Angband has a very long history. It started 1990 as an improved and "Tolkienized" variant of Moria. Moria itself was created in 1985 and was inspired by Rogue (from the late 70s). Countless changes were introduced by many programmers on the way to the current versions of Angband. "
Description
Angband is based on the world created by J.R.R. Tolkien (Angband being the fortress of Morgoth, the ultimate evil guy). The player has to crawl down the 100 randomly generated levels of a dungeon in order to defeat Morgoth.
Angband is one of the Major roguelikes, it is based in Moria, which comes from a different line of roguelikes compared to Hack. The tendency of variants of Angband to name themselves as things suffixed with "band" has resulted in the genre characterized by Angband being refered to as the "bands". In J.R.R.Tolkien's elvish language, Angband stands for "Iron Prison", ang meaning iron, and band meaning prison. So all the Angband Variants are differing kinds of prisons. However, although Angband is more akin to Tolkien than Moria, the prison is not recreated acording to his history but rather as a roguelike dungeon.
In Angband you get to choose your character from some of the classic DnD classes and races. You start in a town with different kind of shops, a house of your own and an entrance to a dungeon. Your job is to explore the deep dungeon becoming stronger everytime and finally face Sauron and Morgoth.
An Angband game is normally long but easier than NetHack if you have the patience.
The levels are non persistant, and that means that everytime you get into one, it is randomly generated. They are a bit big and are composed of halls and passages of different shape.
Versions and platforms
Angband is open source. Being a major roguelike, it is available under virtually every platform. Latest version is v. 3.0.6, dating from June 18, 2005.
Legacy
The clean and modular source code of Angband made it a good start to create a roguelike. As a consequence, around sixty variants of Angband have been released. Some of them, like ToME or Zangband, became as widely played as the original.
Resources
- thangorodrim.net, the main Angband site.
- angband.oook.cz, the home of Angband ladder, Vanilla CVS and much more.
- A specific newsgroup is dedicated to Angband. It can be accessed through Google Groups.