Nethack, the Alphabet on Parade!

Nethack is like golf. Both are hard to do well. Both induce slavish devotion and soul-crushing frustration in their players. Most players never come close to a proper game (shooting Par 72 or Ascending a character), but we all dream of the day when the planets might align. In my case it took nineteen years of occasional play from the precursor 'hack' on 68000-based Sun workstations in 1987 to my first ascention.

In both, hours of careful gameplay can be rendered moot by one screwup. But golf is more forgiving because it lacks the concept of insta-kill. If Tiger Woods hit out-of-bounds on the first shot of a three day tournament, he would take a penalty shot and continue play. In Nethack, he would be frozen in place, devoured by a kitten, and never heard from again!

The secret of nethack is that, for twenty years, no effort has been spent on presentation. The screen is a cryptic jumble of letters and punctuation straight out of the 1980's. Instead, all effort has focused on covering each and every possible thing, no matter how unlikely, that someone might try.

If you would like to try, go to Alt.org or Hardfought!

• Alt.org - provides the latest version to online play
• Hardfought.org - provides many variants for online play
• November Nethack Tournament - Now run by Hardfought, once hosted by Devnull
• Junethack - the cross-variant tournement held every June
• Clan DYWYPI, rocking the Devnull tournament from 2009-2016
• Some intrepid souls tried live action Nethack!. What wonderful fun!