Angband game is a Free Dungeon Roguelike Game
Released: 1994
Latest Version: 4.2.0 (17th August 2019)
License: GPL+Proprietary
Developer: Angband Development Team
Angband Game
Angband started life as a game called Moria in the 1980s in a programming language called VMS Pascal.
Later made the transition to C, as UMoria, and eventually become Angband well over twenty five years ago in 1994.
It’s amazing that it’s still going, and part of that is because there is an active and vibrant community of players and an always-changing set of active variants, or modified versions, many of which play very differently to Angband.
The angband game revolves around exploring a 100-level dungeon, in which the player seeks to amass enough power and equipment to ultimately defeat Morgoth.
A new dungeon level is randomly generated each time the player enters a new level for the first time; so no two games are the same.
It has been described by GameSetWatch as “perhaps the purest representation of roguelike tactics in any game”.
Angband gameplay is combat and tactics based, with inventory management as an important aspect of the game which sometimes is termed roguelike.
Games can last for weeks.
The game is often described as “fiendishly difficult”, and players can play for years without getting even a third of the way through the game.
Although saving of games is possible, the death of a character is saved immediately to the file, making it impossible to simply reload the saved game as a means of continuing the game from an earlier point.
As well as having sufficient health points, characters acquire resistances to mitigate or nullify attacks, which at later stages in the game are critical to avoiding being killed instantly by a single unexpected attack.
You (the @) begin in the small trading town above Angband, ready to descend into its depths (using the down staircase, ‘>’). You explore randomly-generated caverns, and find treasure: = is a ring, ? is a scroll.
You fight monsters. o is an orc, p a human, and r a rat.
If you die in battle, you have to start the game again!
Version 4.2.0 Updates
Big changes to two important parts of the game: classes, and monsters.
While each of these was big enough to deserve a minor version increase in its own right, doing both together so they could be balanced against each other was preferred.
As with 4.1.0, there was much community discussion about the changes.
Main Changes in V.4.2.0 Include
Two new realms of magic have been added, nature and shadow, to the existing divine and arcane realms.
Each base monster type has had its game niche reconsidered, and there has been a general push to use Tolkien-inspired monsters where appropriate.
In the course of the class and monster changes, many new mechanics have been introduced, these include
Ainur – most of these now align with one of the great Valar and have corresponding powers
Dragons – these have mostly been made stronger and deeper
Humanoids – dark elves have been replaced with dwarves, gnomes with Drúedain
Hydras – each hydra type is like the previous type with a new head and attack added
People – the association of some of these with player classes has been expanded to include the new classes
Snakes – some of these are now dangerous
Spiders – more dangerous and deeper, with unique abilities
Trees/Ents – these are new, tough to kill enemies
Wights/Wraiths – wights are all now shallower than wraiths, and the Ringwraiths are much deeper
There have also been some improvements to the codebase, both visible and invisible to the player.
Minimum System Requirements: We are sure computer nowadays can run this game.
Angband Screenshots
Angband Videos
External Links:
Download available for Windows PC or Mac OSX
Many derivatives on Angband game have been made, the latest being when source code and story were later rewritten, and the game became Tales of Maj’Eyal (2012).
