Newcomers to old-school roguelikes may find Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup more accessible as an entry point to the genre, which can be played in a graphical interface in your web browser via https://crawl.develz.org/play.htm or via classic SSH interface at [email protected] (password "joshua").
I've been playing DCSS super casually, on-and-off, for well over a decade now, and the last time I checked in, it felt like they've perhaps sanded too many of the sharp edges off. I enjoyed the hunger system. butchering creatures into chunks for my kobold to eat was fun. throwing potions was cool. the identification minigame was good classic roguelike fun, and cursed equipment was fun. I could go on and on.
I understand that they have to keep updating it to keep it fresh for long-time super-experienced players, but it's like an entirely different game now, compared to the one I first played years and years ago.
The online servers for DCSS often host old versions if you'd prefer to play those; crawl.akrasiac.org hosts versions back through 0.11 (released in 2012). Given that it's so easy to play old versions, I'm happy that the devs are open to toy with getting rid of sacred cows in the new versions.
Also, item identification still exists, even if everything else you mentioned has been changed in some way. :P
identification is still a thing, but iirc cursed items aren't a thing anymore?
but yeah, it's nice to be able to go back and play older versions, but at this point I don't even know which version I would like to play. I'm fine with playing trunk here and there, it's just interesting to see a long-term project like this gradually shift focus over time.
I just liked playing as a kobold berserker, a cannibalistic little bastard tooling around a dungeon, getting into trouble, killing stuff and chopping it into chunks to eat, and occasionally being rewarded by my blood god.
