11/03/2023
Free Game Friday 11/3/23: NetHack
NetHack may just be the most enduring '80s CRPG ever made; you don't hear about Telengard or The Magic Candle or Bard's Tale or even Wizardry or Ultima much these days, but NetHack continues to have a devoted fanbase and a dev team that regularly gives it new features, bugfixes and tweaks to this day. Modeled on the legendary gameplay of genre-namer Rogue (and a fork of an earlier clone of Rogue named simply "Hack"), NetHack's complexity and difficulty are legendary even among roguelikes; even people who have played thousands of games can count their victories in single digits. But its addictive design, plethora of secrets and hidden strategies, solid sense of humor and endless replayability keep its appeal strong, and will continue to do so in the decades to come.
