id Software LLC is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack.
NetHack is an open source single-player roguelike video game, first released in 1987 and maintained by the NetHack DevTeam. The game is a fork of the 1982 game Hack, itself inspired by the 1980 game Rogue. The player takes the role of one of several pre-defined character classes to descend through multiple dungeon floors, fighting monsters and collecting treasure, to recover the "Amulet of Yendor" at the lowest floor and then escape.
John D. Carmack II is an American computer programmer and video game developer. He co-founded the video game company id Software and was the lead programmer of its 1990s games Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and their sequels. Carmack made innovations in 3D computer graphics, such as his Carmack's Reverse algorithm for shadow volumes. In 2013, he resigned from id Software to work full-time at Oculus VR as their CTO. In 2019, he reduced his role to Consulting CTO so he could allocate more time toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). In 2022, he left Oculus to work on his startup, Keen Technologies.
Roguelike is a subgenre of role-playing computer games traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character. Most roguelikes are based on a high fantasy narrative, reflecting their influence from tabletop role playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons.
Ancient Domains of Mystery is a roguelike video game designed and developed by Thomas Biskup and released in 1994. The player's goal is to stop the forces of Chaos that invade the world of Ancardia. The game has been identified as one of the "major roguelikes" by John Harris.
Bethesda Softworks LLC is an American video game publisher based in Rockville, Maryland. The company was founded by Christopher Weaver in 1986 as a division of Media Technology Limited. In 1999, it became a subsidiary of ZeniMax Media. In its first 15 years, it was a video game developer and self-published its titles. In 2001, Bethesda spun off its own in-house development team into Bethesda Game Studios, and Bethesda Softworks retained only its publishing function.
Angband is a dungeon-crawling roguelike video game derived from Umoria. It is based on the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, in which Angband is the fortress of Morgoth. The current version of Angband is available for all major operating systems, including Unix, Windows, Mac OS X, and Android. It is identified as one of the "major roguelikes" by John Harris. Angband is free and open source game under the GNU GPLv2 or the angband license
OpenTTD is a business simulation game in which players try to earn money by transporting passengers, minerals and goods via road, rail, water and air. It is an open-source remake and expansion of the 1995 Chris Sawyer video game Transport Tycoon Deluxe.
Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is an open source development tool primarily used to create graphic adventure games. It is aimed at intermediate-level game designers, and combines an integrated development environment (IDE) with a scripting language based on the C programming language to process game logic.
ZeniMax Media Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Rockville, Maryland, and founded in 1999.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (DCSS) is a free and open source roguelike computer game and the community-developed successor to the 1997 roguelike game Linley's Dungeon Crawl, originally programmed by Linley Henzell. It has been identified as one of the "major roguelikes" by John Harris.
Mojang Studios is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. The studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time.
The Dark Mod is a free and open-source software first-person stealth video game, inspired by the Thief series by Looking Glass Studios. The game provides the basic framework and tools for more than 160 fan-made missions, including several multi-mission campaigns. The Dark Mod was first released in 2009 as a total conversion mod for Doom 3. Version 2.0 was released in October 2013 as a standalone game using the open-source id Tech 4 game engine.
Tales of Maj'Eyal is an open-source roguelike video game released for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in 2012. Tales of Maj'Eyal is available as donation-supported freeware (donationware) from the developers; donations grant some exclusive online features as part of a freemium model. The game may also be purchased through the digital distribution outlets Steam or GOG. The game's TE4 game engine source code is under a GNU GPLv3 license, while the game's assets are licensed for use "with the Tales of Maj'Eyal game only".
Pioneer is a free and open source space trading and combat simulator video game inspired by the commercial proprietary Frontier: Elite 2. It is available for Linux, and Microsoft Windows.
Brogue is a free roguelike computer video game created by Brian Walker. As in its predecessor Rogue, the goal of Brogue is for the player to descend to the 26th floor of the Dungeons of Doom, retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, and return to the surface. Players also have the option of delving deeper into the dungeon to obtain a higher score. This task is complicated by the presence of monsters and traps in a procedurally generated dungeon.
Jupiter Hell is a roguelike video game developed by ChaosForge and published in 2021 by Hyperstrange. It is a spiritual successor to DRL and adapts first-person shooter gameplay to a tactical roguelike.
