The 1985 ancestor of NetHack: thirty levels down to the Amulet of Yendor, with your little dog.

Hack (Jay Fenlason 1982, Andries Brouwer 1984–85) took Rogue and added the things NetHack is known for: a pet dog, shops with shopkeepers, engravings, a huge list of monsters and items that react to each other. Go down to level 30 or deeper, take the Amulet of Yendor from the Wizard of Yendor in his maze, and come back up. Death is permanent. This is restoHack, a careful restoration of Hack 1.0.3 for modern systems.

• About the game
• Keyboard controls
• Saving your game
• Tips
• New player's guide
• Playing in the browser

About the game

Hack is the direct ancestor of NetHack. Levels are kept when you leave them, there is no town, and most items are unidentified until you use them. What makes it different from Rogue: a pet dog, shops, engraving, and monsters and items that interact.

Keyboard controls

Essential keys

Saving your game

• Saving is automatic. The game is stored in this browser (IndexedDB) between your commands (at most every two seconds). Reloading the page continues from there.
• S saves and ends the session, as in the original; reload the page (or press Play again) to continue.
• When your character dies or you quit with Q, the save is deleted: death is final.
• Each browser keeps one game. New game deletes it and starts over.
• Export save downloads the save file; Import save loads one, also a save from the Mac version (save/save/501Name: user number, then the character name).
• Private/incognito windows and "clear site data" delete the stored game. Export first if it matters.

Tips

• Keep your dog close: it fights for you, and it will not step on cursed items, so drop unknown things in its path to test them.
• Search (s, several times) at dead ends: secret doors and corridors are common.
• Eat corpses only of monsters you know are safe; never eat a cockatrice, and don't fight one bare-handed.
• Pay (p) for what you pick up in shops, and don't dig or teleport out of one owing money.
• Engrave Elbereth in the dust (E, -) when in trouble: most monsters won't attack you on it.
• Fight in corridors so only one monster reaches you.
• #pray exists but does nothing yet: healing comes only from potions and rest.

New player's guide

Your first steps

1. Answer n to "experienced player?" and the game picks a class, or y to choose one.
2. Look at your gear with i.
3. Explore with x, with the dog following you. Walk into monsters to fight, pick things up with ,.
4. Search dead ends (s), then press > to walk to the stairs and go down.
5. Save with S; the next start continues the game.

Staying alive

• Rest (., or s which also searches) before going down.
• Leave floating eyes alone: hitting one in melee freezes you.
• Keep food: you get hungry, and weak, fast.
• Unknown potions and scrolls are safest to try at full health with no monster around.

Playing in the browser

• The map is drawn with tiles, as in the Mac version. Tiles switches between the DawnLike and the NetHack tile set (the choice is kept in this browser). A− / A+ on the Map title bar (shown on hover) change the tile size.
• Keys: hjklyubn or the arrow keys move you (Home, PgUp, End, PgDn for the diagonals); capital letters run.
• Browsers keep a few shortcuts for themselves (Ctrl+W, Ctrl+T, Ctrl+N, and Cmd shortcuts on a Mac), so those never reach the game.
• If the game ever crashes, a message appears at the top; reload the page to continue from the last autosave.

About this version

• Based on restoHack (github.com/Critlist/restoHack), a restoration of Hack 1.0.3 (1985) by Jay Fenlason and Andries Brouwer.
• Our changes (tiled window, auto-explore, stairs walking, command menu, inventory cursor and item menus, web build) are local to this port.
• Tiles: DawnLike by DragonDePlatino and DawnBringer (CC-BY 4.0); NetHack 3.6 tiles (NetHack General Public License).