What is Nethack?
Video games are widely popular, and NetHack is no exception. One difference is that while many popular computer games are highly profitable, NetHack is free. It’s a free roguelike computer game that is said to be very challenging. NetHack is meant to make people think and boasts of being a difficult game to play. Players don’t generally subscribe to “cheats” or “spoilers” and tend to frown upon such things. While you can save files which will allow you to continue playing a character after he or she has died, this too is frowned upon. Numerous lives are common in other games, but many NetHack players feel that this defeats the purpose, since ultimate success in the game is based on critical thinking and strategy. If you can simply resume play after death, you are more likely to play impulsively instead of taking the time to think things through before making a move. The dungeons in NetHack are different from those found in many other games in that they are not always repeated encounter
NetHack is a single player dungeon exploration game that runs on a wide variety of computer systems, with a variety of graphical and text interfaces all using the same game engine. Unlike many other Dungeons & Dragons-inspired games, the emphasis in NetHack is on discovering the detail of the dungeon and not simply killing everything in sight – in fact, killing everything in sight is a good way to die quickly. Each game presents a different landscape – the random number generator provides an essentially unlimited number of variations of the dungeon and its denizens to be discovered by the player in one of a number of characters: you can pick your race, your role, and your gender. For information on running the program see the README that comes with each copy. For details on the game itself, see the Guidebook.
