I played _so_ much ADOM in the 90's. Submitted bug reports to Thomas and everything. A decade or so later, I am browsing the web and find a hit for my name associated with the game. Curious, and wondering if I'd written an article on it that I just forgot about... I pull it up and it's in the credits for the final pre-Steam release. The man actually went to the effort of thanking all of us from the early days of the community. Big fan, was stoked when he announced that he was bringing it to Steam. One of these days, I'll actually get a win with something other than an archer :P

'Ring of mental stability' sounds like something my therapist would try tricking me into wearing

I stopped to read the Ultimate ending and show "Your deeds are recounted at campfires and interpreted by philosophers and priests alike." My mind immediately thought about the discussion on corpse-eating in ADOM and how somewhere in the future of Ancardia... There is a giant painting of Sampsa eating a bandit, à la "Saturn Devouring His Son", hanging proudly in someone's great hall.

It's crazy that, despite having never seen this game before, I can mostly make sense of what's going on thanks to Dwarf Fortress.

Remember to Rogue"like" this video ;) ;) ;) Seriously though I just wanted to talk about something from my younger years as a bit of a break from Seablock, but on that note, I'm going to be putting up another poll for the next Factorio Challenge run on my Patreon, so expect that next.

Another example of how the Matrix operators could actually comprehend walls of random symbols

ADOM being your childhood game explains so much about your taste in games and I’m here for it

"Oh cool, someone made a video on a game I played obsessively as a teen!" ".... THERE WERE QUESTS?!" Spent 20 years just having fun slamming my face against things... No idea there were quests.

I watched only the first several minutes due to spoilers and laughed so hard when you said "Obliterate a beggar" because I understood your plan. I've been attempting to pass ADOM since 2013 spoiler-less and I must thank you for this video. I never got passed meeting Khelvaster. Your initial breakdown of talents (take Treasure hunter), horoscopes and classes (Only Wiz, Archer and Fighter) completely changed my approach. I now proudly say I've got passed getting the Water Orb. Let's see how far I go this time and how many more years it'll take if I ever do complete it! Cheers from India.

I don’t really like roguelikes but I love hearing people talk about stuff that they’re passionate about

Seriously, thank you! I've been starting the development of a traditionnnal rogue like for a couple of weeks and I didn't have a lot of motivation to really dive into all the hassle of creating something that big, but your passion about Adom is quite a motivation. Thanks for those 49 minutes of pure motivation.

I never realized how much Elona cribbed and referenced to and or from ADOM. Elona's first town straight up sends you to the puppy cave as a first quest, and drinking from wells can grant you wishes or curses as well.

Oh holy shit, Castle of the Winds. _That_ is an unlocked memory I had forgotten. I died so very, very much in that game. And then my gaming took me into the world of MUDs instead of deeper into roguelikes (incidentally, where I learned to touch-type) and I never looked back. Funny enough, the MUD I favored used a very ADoM-like palette, and holy shit is this video taking me back decades.

Babe wake up, it's 3 AM, new Dosh video just dropped

My games still look like that. You look like that. I trained an AI to turn all visuals into ascii text. Ascii is the devine. Reject unicode. Reject smooth reality. 128 code points, 95 symbols, is all you need.

A video about ADOM that has more then 20 views. It's enough to bring a tear to my eye.

A very accessable roguelike that in my opinion still is a real roguelike is shattered pixel dungeon. It got all the unidentified potions, random level layouts and stuff, yet cuts down on some of the complexity and is overall a more balanced environment, while still being challenging. (also the controls are modern and easy)

I played approximately 1,000 hours of a roguelike named POWDER growing up. It was the only game we had on the Windows 95 computers at the after-school daycare in elementary school. And then the iOS app came out and I could play it on my phone. Such a good game, with the depth of interactions and secrets I've come to expect from roguelikes - drop a Warhammer in a hole, push a boulder onto it to bury it, then unearth it somehow and hey presto, an Earth Hammer that can dig through walls and does bonus damage to earth elementals. Not to mention the Minotaur's key, which is used to open the portal to the spaceship (sorry, "cave of steel"), complete with viewports you can break and get sucked out of.

Holy fuck, ADoM was one of my all time favorite games way back when, I literally used to fake sick and skip school to play more of it lmao. Read through the ancient guidebook so many times. I had a pile of shitty midi's I would play for it to have music, to this day, scatman evokes fantasy vibes for me ahaha.

Having recently rediscovered Noita on UKposts, and being astonished by just how much more there was then that one day I found the concept fun, struggled to get anywhere or make any skill, then forgot to go back to it... I want to see Dosh's reaction or hear his opinion on it.

Dude, speaking of the cockatrice. I have to share to add on to that complexity thing you were talking about. I had an amazing run going in Nethack and was practically invincible, except to being petrified...I always kept an eye out for cockatricies because they would be run killers and kept a few lizard corpses on me just in case. Well, I killed one that was on the map and felt safe and continued my rampage and suddenly instantly die. Some elf archer decided to be an absolute chad and dropped his bow just so he could pick up the cockatrice corpse on the ground and bashed me over the head with it...without gloves on I might add. So the guy died in one of the most heroic ways possible, taking me with him...I didn't even noticing before it was too late. Because I could have saved myself by eating one of my lizard corpses. One of the most memorable experiences I have ever had with a game because I would never have expected an enemy in any game to realize what they were doing was not working to then also know how deadly a cockatrice corpse is AND, at the expense of it's own safety, know to pick it up and use it as a weapon...

I wouldn't mind a bonus video of you going even more into detail about your feelings on the classes/races/abilities as you seem to know pretty much everything about the game and I love getting that second-hand passion from that.

My favorite game in the rogue* subgenre has to be Elona. So many references I never recognized, like the Puppy Cave. You can play a game for a thousand hours and still not know the ancient references buried within.

1:35 "I've heard what people really want is passion" it's true. I love listening to you (and people in general) talk about what they're passionate about.

I REALLY enjoy these longform videos of you just talking about your passions in video gaming.

Very happy to see you covering classic roguelikes! I would love to see you check out some other ones, in particular I think Cogmind might be up your alley...

A small nitpick; Hack wasn’t a direct fork of Rogue. Basically what happened was a couple college students asked the Rogue developer for the source so they could fork it, and he said “lol no”. So they tried their best to replicate the dungeon-generation algorithms and made Hack, which later became NetHack.

The whole thing that enraptured my younger years is the amount of play that the developers could have with expectations and interactions. Throwing a list of edibles down, and then recognizing "wait... We put a banana cream pie on that list. I want to throw it at an enemy" and then MAKING THAT DO SOMETHING. Look up Nethack and how "the developers thought of everything" to see a list of interactions that may or may not cross the average person's mind. Like trying to put a sack into itself. Or resisting and surviving all the effects of an irate God's wrath. It's fascinating. And when all you have to worry about is text, with no animations or images? You can just... Write all the things.

ADOM is an amazing game. I remember playing it over 20 years ago. And I'm still able to identify the most dangerous monster at 12:34 , the game is just ingrained in my memory. The original ADOM is completely free. The only thing that the creator asked for is that you send him a postcard.

The thing with most of the skills and abilities being useless is actually accurate to tabletop pen-and-paper RPGs. Like with D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder 1st edition, there's a ton of choices when building your character due to the supplemental material released over the years, but 90% of them are useless or objectively worse than the best/optimal choice. The rest are sidegrades for utility or minor downgrades that you take because you want "flavor" for your character.

Nethack was what got me into the genre. Still my favourite to this day. It really deserves the tagline of 'The devs think of everything.' Thanks so much for this video! Aside from being a general topic near and dear to my heart, ADOM in particular has been a nemesis of mine I've gone back to every so often for many years now. I probably could have gotten a normal win by now but my stubborn desire to get an ultimate win without TOO many spoilers means I've never gotten past the midgame. Well, I'm sure you get where I'm coming from. Seeing your summarized runs here felt good. Maybe do another roguelike video some day? Pretty please? My vote would be for CDDA with the Bright Nights fork or ToME 2.3 (The old middle earth based one, not the new fangled thing.)

Roguelikes are so rarely talked about at length like this so it’s really cool that somebody finally did. I hope you’ll consider others in the future.

The restricted graphics of faithful rogue-likes allow for unique impressions based on the player's imagination, much like good old books, but there is a point at which strictly adhering to that style completely undermines the game's ability to be observed in the first place due to lack of accessibility. With the wide availability of free tools & assets for making games, the cost of development is practically equal to restricting yourself to ASCII. I won't berate developers who want to use the style for that imaginative purity or nostalgia of classics, but even the least bit of modernization in the UI can have a profound benefit in the game's reach. Additionally, there are mechanics that quite simply cannot be expressed without more information being given to the player than a colored shape with a text description.

I really like your style in your non factorio videos. It's like half review, half guide, half video essay. That's an extra half as good as most videos on youtube in my opinion. Excited to see whatever it is you post next.

Men, i know those types of videos don't get nearly as many views as your factorio one but please keep making them, they are so so good. Could hear you talk about the most random video games for hours and hours.

Banger video, loved seeing what people like about such a complex game explained in a non-dry way.

In case you were wondering I would love seeing more stuff like this from you.

Please for the love of god keep making these videos, your variety content is way more enjoyable than your factorio challenges by a lot I think, and I always learn something new about games and game design when you upload one of these.

This video is wonderful, I love when dosh makes videos about games I've never heard of before, always gives me something new to try out.

Watched this while playing Barony Not quite a classic roguelike, but definitely inspired by them. It even has a secret Sokoban level

Such ASCII roguelike compared to modern games is like a book compared to the cinematography. Always pleased to hear your voice and feel my brain overflow with information to the degree where i'm sometimes unable to comprehend the visuals.

That's an insane amount amount of potential to code for. I love how that last secret ending is even a thing.

This was a great video. Love explorations into games like this. They often feel esoteric and mysterious to me. So seeing it explained so casually is quite entertaining

Unironically some of my favorite content of yours so far. Despite my lack of familiarity with the original material hearing about the general plan and the strategies required to pull that off is very entertaining. Great stuff!

I love his determination and commitment to the things he does because I know I don’t have that

Ancient Domains of Mystery? I remember my few attempts to play this game! Just reading the walkthrough for this game made it into an epic journey!

You started off with an Elona+ clip and now I am immediately invested. Such a good and utterly bonkers game.

love these types of videos, keep it up man! (your voice is so nice to listen to)

I remember ADOM, or more my friend's attempts at getting me to play it. It was a great game.

Funnily enough, one of the main things that prevent me from playing the more keyboard intense games is the fact that I use an Icelandic keyboard layout, and colon and semicolon are on shift+. and shift+, respectively. I could rebind them, but with rouglikes, rebinding keys you don't even know the use of is a dangerous endeavour.

Watched this and your La-Mulana video today, both great. I would love seeing more stuff like this. These videos have actually kinda got me wanting to take another swing at the first couple Might and Magic games again...

So great to see a video made by you not only about factorio, also I am glad that there are still such people as you who make videos about things they passionate are)

Angband is a fantastic game that I love, so I love learning about other old roguelikes.

I never really got into ADOM, but I absolutely loved playing stuff like Tales of Maj'Eyal or Poschengband. I remember playing a ton of the latter as a cursed magic ring that other creatures had to pick up and put on before getting cursed and possessed by me.

Hell yeah. Love Dosh talking about obscure games and rambling about videogame philosophy. These videos are great and I'm always excited every time I see a new one.

Gotta say I friggin love these vids about these odd games.

fascinating to hear that the original idea of procedural generation was to solve the issue of not having enough space to hand craft all the levels they wanted.

Nice new video! I never mind the diversity of the games you cover.

Oh you got me back into Castle of the Winds. So many fond memories playing that as a kid. Thank you Dosh for solving what I'll do on my days off.

PLEASE KEEP DOING THESE TYPE OF VIDEOS ARE SO GOOD

Traditional roguelikes have to be one of if not my favorite idea game genre just so damn rewarding and fun!

I used to play adom at work because nobody would guess that I was playing a game with graphics like that.

one of my favorite longform youtubers covering one of my favorite roguelike games? i couldn't ask for more!

I thought having your channel blow up because of factorio torture mods was rough but watching your other videos on the games you like (which are all great vids) makes me realize you are a true torture pilled gamer. God speed and ty for the vids you maniac.

Dosh, my guy. You can't bring up Ancient Domains of Mystery, Now I'm sitting here remembering my first run and how it made me think of Rogue... Yes C:\games ogue>rogue. Now I feel old as fuck.

Maybe once I'm done learning vim I'll give this a go. I'll need another inscrutable system to learn with dozens of weird key binds to learn

As a guy who knew nothing about games like this in-depth I really enjoyed this video! Keep it up!

What a lovely video! I used to play hours upon hours of POWDER back when I was a kid, and a few weeks ago I actually started getting back into DCSS after not touching any roguelikes for years. I've been having a blast, and it's awesome seeing a deep dive video into another game of the genre. Thanks for the video, love your variety content!

Nice to see a dive into a traditional roguelike and their appeal. Life-long Angband player here, never beat it, probably never will. Love it to death.

I think it's more about the expectations. when i was 11 i would play dwarf fortress and not have any issues with it, and those memes about it being "the hardest game ever" etc, didn't exist at the time, so i never got the expectations that it would be an impossible game to play and just played it and had a good time, i was capable of making self suficient colonies etc, and i barely knew how to speak english at the time.

This was such an excellent video omg! caves of qud got me into roguelikes (and remains firmly my favorite game of all time). Thankfully the devs have done a lot with accessibility features so I can still play and do most things with a controller!

i love hearing about the old internet and people who grew up with it. love this! hope you do more

>Back when What do you mean I still play ascii based games on a regular basis.

0:27 same here. Cogmind was what introduced me to the genre and my god does it hold a spot near and dear to me. (Also shattered pixel dungeon for mobile)

Hey, you have some of the most unique and interesting videos relating to obscure games I've ever seen, I love how indepth and good at explaining things you are, and your sense of humour is great too. I know Factorio is your main content, but I and I'm sure many others would adore some variety content on even more random obscure games you enjoy- They're really quite fascinating and entertaining to watch, so keep it up! :)

Wow, you made me return to Cataclysm after several years of wanting to. And while it isn't really a roguelike, more of a survival immersive sim, rogue-like complexity is what draws me in it. And you reminded me just how exciting and fun this can be. Great video, I think describing your runs is a great way to introduce roguelikes to someone. Thank you.

ADOM is so great, I tried it after I got addicted to TOME along with a ton of other traditional roguelikes. Definitely a genre I think a lot of people should try so they can understand the influences and legacy more but also a genre I know most people wouldn't enjoy playing.

I will always have a soft spot for roguelikes (and I'm talking old school like ADOM here). One of the first kinds of games I ever played was the original Rogue I used to play a lot on my grandpa's computer. My grandpa wasn't really an early adopter of gaming or a gamer at all, but for some reason, he played the heck out of Rogue. I was too young to really get good at it, but it didn't stop me. Eventually, I discovered my first roguelike, Nethack. I played the crap out of it as much as you played ADOM. My second runner up for most played would be ToME (used to be Tales of Middle Earth once upon a time). I didn't get into ADOM or Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup until quite a few years later, but I enjoyed those as well. Maybe I'm a bit of a snob here, but I feel a lot of newer games that take the roguelike moniker bastardize the term. It's like... as long as they can vaguely tie one of its mechanics to the original Rogue, the game is automatically a roguelike.

Another banger. You never dissappoint. Thank you!

Great Video. I doubt I will ever have brain capacity to dive into this kind of games, but I really appreciate people who can and drop good commentary just like you did :) Same goes for factorio videos and La Mulana videos

I just watched a whole video with nothing but meaningless ascii text and no context for why the ascii is now out to get me, and yet I sat here not knowing what was going on and was highly entertained. 10 out of 10

3:08: I had the same experience with Dwarf Fortress tilesets. Though it doesn't help that those old fan-made tilesets tended not to distinguish between different types of terrain...

My best run was up to the tower of flames where my equipment burned up. It's a fun game where the goal is not to win but to get better every time and learn from your mistakes. Everybody should try it. It's easy to get used to the ASCII after a few minutes actually and the screen is clean and conveys all the information. d is dogs, D is demons, f is felines, T is trolls. I played this and Z-Angband a lot back in the days. Also the old version of Tome which was based on middle-earth and was completely retooled to the version that is now on Steam.

Holy moly, you're almost at 200k subs man, congrats! Much deserved.

Why wasn't he using a tileset: "It was actually making me worse at the game because i couldn't recognize any of the enemies" B r u h

Puppy Cave? Blessing water on an altar? Now I see where Elona took all those inspirations from.

Really, really interesting to hear all you thought and experienced with this game. And you are correct, passion is the secret ingredient

I like a lot these non factorio videos, it is fun to see into other peoples head for the brief time of a video like this

Commenting for the algorithm, of course. I truly adore these non-factorio videos. It's sad they get fewer views, cus I genuinely think they're just as good as, if not better than, the Factorio content.

A new DoshDoshington video? And a 48 minute one about actual roguelikes? Let's go! EDIT: And you're already namedropping Castle of the Winds, which was also my first roguelike. 😊

I've played roguelikes for many years now. Usually when people are mentioning them nowadays they speak about roguelites. When you've mentioned in one of your videos the traditional ones i was real excited and it was worth the wait.

sunk so many hours into ADOM, trial and error, never got anywhere near this understanding. great vid.

Just won a tournament and now a new dosh video? how can this night get better

While it's a bit of a sidestep to the topic of this video, considering that its proper Roguelike mode is somewhat underdeveloped and the primary game is the simulation aspect, I am genuinely impressed that you've managed to write this script while avoiding even a singular mention of Dwarf Fortress.

You just don't miss dosh, your stuff keeps aligning with my interests in an uncanny manner. Cool stuff.

I would love to see you review other roguelikes, this was an amazing video.

I've seen the new ADOM because a guy I watch on Twitch used to do a "Roguelike Month" and specifically played things like Caves of Qud, ADOM, and Cataclysm. You know, actual roguelikes.

"More about learning the game than memorising it" is exactly why I like roguelikes, too. You have to learn to be good at the game, not just memorise how to deal with certain very specific situations. That's much more satisfying.

Thanks for making me relive my nostalgia in playing this game more than a decade ago. Had beaten the game only exactly once at one of the easiest ways possible (i.e. Archer then closing the portal). After seeing what it takes to do the ultimate ending, I thought, "Screw it. No need for me to spend many more years on how to pull that off," then moved on to other games. But you did an absolutely outstanding job that you managed to do it. Congrats. 👏

Great video, thanks for showing us such a game!