Rogue

Rogue is a 1980 computer role-playing game created by Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, and Ken Arnold.

Created as a demonstration of the then-cutting-edge cursor-manipulation library Curses, Rogue was the first computer role-playing game to use a walk-through randomly-generated dungeon map rather than the original dice-based equivalents. Players would walk through passageways and rooms, finding and using scrolls and potions, fighting monsters with various weapons and wands, in search of the Amulet of Yendor in the dungeon levels beneath. Every time you'd run the game, everything is randomly generated all over again, resulting in a completely different game every time you play - no two games of Rogue are the same! And all this with only text-based ASCII graphics!

It's not as easy as you'd think - the monsters get tougher and tougher on each dungeon level, and few players have reached the Amulet, let alone brought it all the way back upstairs and won the game. You can save the game, but if you die, the saved game is deleted! This element of challenge, combined with the fact that no two games are the same, makes Rogue a fun and addicting game which has been enjoyed for over two decades.