How did you find Angband?

[APWhite]

I'm more concerned with the damage you've inflicted on the *banding community by introducing me to it

Well, then in that case, sorry everyone else. Especially Timo, who will undoubtedly do some sort of statistical analysis and assess the mental anguish I inflicted.

[cinereaste]

I don't remember quite how I came across Angband. It was in August of 2001, and I was staying at my girlfriend's house looking for free games to download and play, and somehow I came across Angband and its old home at Thangorodrim. Perhaps it was through Home of the Underdogs; I came across that site at about this time, too.

I played a little, died a little, and then started a save scumming run with a high-elf mage. I put a lot of hours into that character before becoming bored. This was version 2.7, I believe. Then I started grad school, put Angband away until about a year ago, and started in again. I love the developments in 3.1.2 from 2.7. It's much more user friendly. I've also learned that it's a lot more fun to die and restart than it is to save scum.

My first Roguelike was Reaping the Dungeon on my parents' old 386. I enjoyed the game, but never became addicted to it. I always ran out of food or that game's equivalent of food around dungeon level 9, which was frustrating. I also played Castle of the Winds a little bit then, but never got into it. I revisited CotW in 2005, and enjoyed playing through it.

I've tried Nethack on a couple of occasions but could never get into it. The learning curve just seems a little too steep to hold my interest. Plus Angband gives a lot more information about everything, which I like. Also the UI is much better.

[Ycombinator]

In the spring 2010 I was looking for a visibility algorithm on a 2D grid for what was essentially a multiplayer (or rather multiborg) roguelike (it was a programming contest idea which unfortunately never took off). I had heard enough about roguelikes to know that I'm designing one, but my knowledge could be summarized in a few words: "@ in the labyrinth of #s." So after spending some time reading RogueBasin wiki and related articles I decided to try to play something to get a grip of the genre's look and feel. NetHack seemed to be the most renowned, but numerous descriptions gave it a dreaded reputation of incredibly complex game, so I decided to try something else. I don't remember why I've chosen Angband in the first place (alphabetical sorting is one plausible hypothesis), but here I am :-)

[pav]

I honestly don't remember how I found Angband. It must have been 2001 or a year before, because this website went online in summer 2001. I distinctly remember wasting massive amounts of time on #angband on WorldIRC back then. After I won Ey in fall 2002 I lost interest in playing, but I'm still following newsgroup forums regularly.

[Therem Harth]

Whoah, that screenshot brings me way back...

[MKula]

I was at a friend's house, and he happened to be 'messing around with a weird ASCII game he'd read about'. His reaction was 'meh'. Me, on the other hand, well... my eyes lit up. It was pure awesomeness in ASCII form.
That was the mid 90s. I've been playing on and off ever since. Wow how time flies...

[Chud]

My first introduction was in a terminal lab at school, watching a friend... "Hey, what's that?"

It was Moria, on a VT-220 terminal (it really was a terminal lab) running on a VAX-11/750 (VMS) in probably about 1988, I think. I subsequently spent many late late nights in that lab.

Years go by without keeping up with it, and then some while ago I was thinking about it and wondered "hey I wonder if that's still around?" and Google led me to the current incarnation.

[Hariolor]

I started off playing Moria and Larn on my dad's Atari ST back in the late 80's...I was very young and mostly got killed by bats and icky things while digging to get gold so I could (theoretically) buy a SunSword eventually. Clearly I didn't have a good grasp on the game at that tender age. I also loved 'p'raying at altars in Larn, thereby summoning demons and promptly dying, IIRC. I found it hilarious in any case.

In a fit of nostalgia a couple years back, and having exhausted myself on Nintendo emulators, I went looking for Moria. One thing led to another and I have been crunching away at Angband ever since, mostly with limited success - but I enjoy it

[Timo Pietilä]

I started off playing Moria and Larn on my dad's Atari ST back in the late 80's...I was very young and mostly got killed by bats and icky things while digging to get gold so I could (theoretically) buy a SunSword eventually. Clearly I didn't have a good grasp on the game at that tender age. I also loved 'p'raying at altars in Larn, thereby summoning demons and promptly dying, IIRC. I found it hilarious in any case.

In a fit of nostalgia a couple years back, and having exhausted myself on Nintendo emulators, I went looking for Moria. One thing led to another and I have been crunching away at Angband ever since, mostly with limited success - but I enjoy it

You have the original attitude: it's not about winning, it's about playing.

[TJA]

I thought, that i was drawn to roguelikes by the Angband comic ...
But now i realize, that those only start in 2001, which is too late already.

So, digging in my brain, i seem to remember that i stumpled upon Nethack somewhere between 1990 and 1999 - and later, i found the Angband comic and started again with Roguelikes

Even after stopping for several years, i now downloaded Vanilla 3.2.0 and will try again!

[bio_hazard]

I first played Angband in '93. my suite-mate in college had an older brother at MIT who sent the game over. I never knew there was a mac version at that point- probably good for my G.P.A. 'cause I could only play when my roommate wasn't using his computer. Same guy introduced us to Magic: the gathering.

Before that, I remember seeing someone play rogue in a computer lab at nerd camp in the mid '80's, but the jerk woudln't let me play.

There was also some kind of mid-80's game on the original Macs (tiny b&w screen) in my middle-school computer lab that wasn't ascii but may have been a rogue-like. I remember un-id'ed equipment, resting. Also maybe daleks, but that may have been a different game.

[Seany C]

My dad picked up a whole bunch of freeware/shareware/pirated games for his Mac in the late 80s – he was never interested in Moria (although he still misses Dark Castle) but I was hooked. Must have been early 1990 when I started on Moria, although I never beat the Balrog, despite (eww) save-scumming like crazy.

I picked up a CD of Mac freeware in 1996 (probably free with MacUser or similar) and I recognised the name Angband straightaway (all that Tolkien geekery paid off). I’ve been playing V and variants ever since, admittedly with a long Championship Manager-shaped gap a decade ago. Now I’ve a toddler, the lack of complicated loading and ‘getting up to speed’ with ‘bands is perfect for concentrated 4-5 minute gaming sessions...

[Bostock]

I encountered quasi-roguelikes on and off in my 8-bit computing days - including, yup, Gateway to Apshai, and hey what about Sword of Fargoal! - and kept repeatedly brushing briefly by the genre on and off until the year I tried to quit Civ and quickly got a HotU introduction to ADOM, plunging me into the genre. ADOM obsession lost steam after a single (but ULE) win. The puzzle-oriented play of Nethack never attracted me, and I kept trying to play *bands as if they were permalevel roguelikes, so I couldn't see the attraction in them for years - years spent as erisdiscordia, famed challenge-gamer of Crawldom. Over that time I began taking an ever greater morbid interest in how people could possibly enjoy a genre as horrid as *bands (...it's a Crawldom thing, you wouldn't understand), and I also began suffering a lot of deservéd punishment for being a thin-skinned jerk. I thus eventually began a new foray in earnest into *banddom that became a permanent exodus, and here I am.

[dhegler]

Odd, I skimmed through some of these and I did not see a mention of the original Hack. At only 33, I must have played Hack, then Moria, due to those $5 shareware 3.5" disks my dad used to order every month or so back in the mid-80's I think... Found Angband around college, although I heard about it earlier, never moved to it. Only recently (last few years) started playing it exclusively and actually won the game, first ever roguelike win for me (with save-scumming), but will eventually try to do it without.

Anyone remember the original Hack? Well before Nethack times I believe... If I remember, it was more like Rogue than Nethack. I remember trying to get my dog to steal stuff out of stores and then trying to get the wand of wishing. Also, I remember dl'ing a spoiler of how to teleport to the last level, whatever that was (maybe a BBS download? Maybe found on internet?) and just about instantly dying.

Oddly enough, no matter how many newer games I purchase (which has decidedly waned in the last 10 years), I always come back to this game.

I just spent a few months playing the new ToME and was really into it when I first started with all the cool graphics effects, etc. However, I realized that despite the storyline and everything, I wanted to get back to Angband again. There is something that draws me to the "simpleness" of the interface, yet complex gameplay and strategy. Also, it is always exciting when finding artifacts, even if they suck. Love plowing through a line of orcs when I have the chance. Love clearing out every room in a level, trying to clear every pit and vault...

[topazg]

Anyone remember the original Hack? Well before Nethack times I believe... If I remember, it was more like Rogue than Nethack. I remember trying to get my dog to steal stuff out of stores and then trying to get the wand of wishing. Also, I remember dl'ing a spoiler of how to teleport to the last level, whatever that was (maybe a BBS download? Maybe found on internet?) and just about instantly dying.

I mentioned it - I started exactly the same way you did