Rogue as first released to the world in 1981: 26 levels and the Amulet of Yendor.
Rogue 3.6 (June 1981) is the first version of Rogue that spread widely across Unix machines, by Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman and Ken Arnold. It is the version Advanced Rogue and Super-Rogue were built from. Twenty-six levels, twenty-six monsters from the giant ant (A) to the zombie (Z), and the Amulet of Yendor to carry back up. Death is permanent.
About the game
Rogue is where it started: one screen per level, no town, no shops and no way back up until you hold the Amulet of Yendor from level 26. Levels are thrown away when you leave.
- No classes and no spells: everything comes from items, identified by use.
- Each capital letter is one monster; deeper letters appear deeper down.
Keyboard controls
The keys to remember
- ?
- In-game help (* all commands, @ items)
- x
- Auto-explore: walk to the nearest unexplored spot
- Enter
- Menu of all commands
- i
- Inventory with a cursor: letter = use, Enter = all actions
- <
- Go up (walks to the nearest known staircase)
- >
- Go down (walks to the nearest known staircase)
- O
- Your class and quest item
Essential keys
Moving
- hjklyubn/arrow keys
- Walk / attack
- HJKLYUBN
- Run
- x
- Auto-explore
- >
- Down stairs (walks to the nearest known ones)
- <
- Up stairs (only with the Amulet)
- Space
- Rest
- s
- Search
Fighting
- t
- Throw
- p
- Zap a wand in a direction
- z
- Zap a wand or staff
Items
- i
- Inventory with a cursor
- d
- Drop
- w
- Wield
- W/T
- Wear / take off armour
- P/R
- Put on / remove a ring
- q
- Quaff
- r
- Read
- e
- Eat
- c
- Call (name) an item
Information & system
- Enter
- Command menu
- ?
- Help (* for all)
- Ctrl+R
- Repeat last message
- o
- Options
- S
- Save and quit
- Q
- Quit
Complete key list (45 commands)
?prints help
/identify object
hleft
jdown
kup
lright
yup & left
uup & right
bdown & left
ndown & right
Hrun left
Jrun down
Krun up
Lrun right
Yrun up & left
Urun up & right
Brun down & left
Nrun down & right
xexplore (any key stops)
t + directionthrow something
f + directionforward until find something
p + directionzap a wand in a direction
zzap a wand or staff
>go down (walks to known stairs)
<go up (walks to known stairs)
ssearch for trap/secret door
(space) rest for a while
iinventory
Iinventory single item
qquaff potion
rread paper
eeat food
wwield a weapon
Wwear armor
Ttake armor off
Pput on ring
Rremove ring
ddrop object
ccall object
oexamine/set options
Ctrl+Lredraw screen
Ctrl+Rrepeat last message
vprint program version number
Ssave game
Qquit
Saving your game
- Saving is automatic. The game is stored in this browser (IndexedDB) every two minutes while it waits for your next command, and whenever you switch to another tab or window. Reloading the page continues from there.
- S (answer y) 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. Use them for a backup or to move a game to another browser or computer.
- Window layout, zoom and the sound switch is stored in the same browser storage.
- Private/incognito windows and "clear site data" delete the stored game. Export first if it matters.
Tips
- Keep your armour on and your weapon wielded from the start.
- Eat when "Hungry" appears; food is scarce.
- Rust monsters (R) ruin armour; umber hulks (U) confuse you with their gaze.
- Leprechauns (L) steal gold and nymphs (N) steal items.
- Walking picks things up; Space rests for a turn.
New player's guide
Your first steps
- You start with food, ring mail, a mace, a bow and arrows. x explores; fight by walking into monsters.
- Walking over things picks them up. Gold (*) is your score.
- > walks to the known stairs and goes down.
- Rest (Space) or search (s) to heal; eat (e) when Hungry shows.
History & differences
Where it all started. Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman wrote Rogue at UC Santa Cruz in 1980, using Ken Arnold's new curses library to draw on the whole screen. Arnold joined them at Berkeley, and Rogue spread with BSD Unix. Its name now stands for the whole genre: random levels, permadeath, items identified by use.
This version. 3.6 (1981) is the Rogue that spread across university Unix machines as source code, before the later 5.x versions were
kept closed. That is why the first variants start here: Super-Rogue and Advanced Rogue both grew from 3.6, not from the later 5.x.
What is unique about it.
- The first monster alphabet: giant ant, bat, centaur, dragon, floating eye, violet fungus, gnome … zombie. Rogue 5.4 (and Rogue PC) replaced half
of them; 5.2 and 5.3 still used these (aquator, emu, venus flytrap, griffin, ice monster, jabberwock, kestrel, medusa, phantom, quagga, rattlesnake, xeroc, black unicorn).
- No fight command, no trap identification and fewer options than 5.4; the rules are at their simplest here.
- The same 26 levels and the Amulet of Yendor as every later Rogue.
Trivia.
- "Yendor" is "Rodney" backwards. NetHack later named its Wizard of Yendor "Rodney".
- Jay Fenlason wrote Hack (1982), the ancestor of NetHack, because Rogue's source was not available to his school.
The family at a glance (numbers counted in each game's source):
| Game | Year | By | Built on | Classes | Monster kinds | Goal |
|---|
| Rogue 3.6 | 1981 | Toy, Wichman, Arnold | — | none | 26 | Amulet, level 26 |
| Rogue 5.4 | 1985 | Toy, Wichman, Arnold | Rogue 5.2/5.3 | none | 26 (new set) | Amulet, level 26 |
| Rogue PC | 1985 | Toy, Lane, Wichman (A.I. Design / Epyx) | Rogue 5.x | none | 26 | Amulet, level 26 |
| Super-Rogue | 1984 | Robert D. Kindelberger | Rogue 3.6 | none | 52 | Amulet, level 35+ |
| Advanced Rogue 5.8 | 1985 | Michael Morgan, Ken Dalka | Rogue 3.6, Super-Rogue | 4 | 120 | a random relic (11) |
| UltraRogue | 1985–95 | Herb Chong | Advanced Rogue | 10 | about 400 | the artifact at the bottom |
| Advanced Rogue 7.7 | 1986 | Michael Morgan, Ken Dalka | Advanced Rogue 5.8 | 9 | 125 | a random relic (16) |
| XRogue 8 | 1991 | Robert Pietkivitch | Advanced Rogue 7.7 | 9 | 211 | your class's relic |
Playing in the browser
- Windows: the tiled map on top; Messages (with history) and Status below on the left; Inventory on the right. Help, lists and menus pop up over the map.
- Resize windows by dragging the gaps between them; a window's contents shrink to fit when it is too small. Reset windows puts everything back.
- Zoom: A− / A+ on the Map title bar (shown on hover) change the size of the map tiles (up to 96 px); when the map is bigger than its window it scrolls to follow you. Hover over a text window's title to show its A− / A+ buttons.
- Sound effects are off until you switch them on under Audio ▾. They are synthesized for this port (Rogue 3.6 has no sound of its own); there is no music.
- Keys: hjklyubn, the arrow keys or the numeric keypad move you; 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