dreaded_beast said:
So, anyone wanna give a list of good nethack or rogue-like clones.
The big three have already been mentioned.
I haven't played nethack in a long time, but my only win was with a Tourist, of all things. Definitely a silly game, and far from balanced, but still great fun. Nethack
is a pretty direct descendant of the original rogue. It's very difficult to win mainly
because you have to get lucky in a lot of different ways--there are a few points in the game were it's possible to get stuck because you never found the item you need to get farther.
Angband is a roguelike game with a Tolkien feel. It's not silly like Nethack is, and
the mechanics are more robust and balanced. Essentially it's just a 100-level
dungeon with the occasional unique monster, potent artifact, or vault room (a complex room containing valuable treasures and difficult monsters) to spice
things up. It's a lot more fun to play magic-users in Angband because you have a wide variety of spells in your books and you can cast them as much as you want. The dungeon levels are large (several screens, not just one) and fun to explore. The random number generator is your ally and enemy. It can be quite thrilling to stumble across an artifact sword early in the game, and you'll kick butt for a while. But if you get too cocky you can also run into Azog the orc king long before you're ready to face him and get your butt handed to you! I have never won Angband.
ADOM is halfway between the two, and I think better than either. It has an overriding story and lots of side quests like Nethack, but without the silly add-ons. (Well, there are some silly things in it, but not enough to break the mood.) It has an awesome variety of class and race combinations as well. It's also one of the few roguelikes with a bit of role-play in it; you have to make choices throughout the game than affect your alignment, which in turn affects your options later in the game. I've won ADOM twice, and still go back for more!
Zangband is Angband with lots more character options and monster types, and many silly aspects. There are a couple of dozen Angband variants out there,
each with it's own theme. The source code is easy to read and modify; one of the great things about Angband is that you can play the game a while, then change all the things about it you don't like to suit your taste.
--Ben