Rogue grown up: nine classes, a quest item to bring back, shops and wilderness.

XRogue (1991) is the last of the Advanced Rogue line, which grew out of the original 1980 Rogue. You pick one of nine classes (fighter, ranger, paladin, magician, cleric, thief, assassin, druid, monk). The game gives you a quest item, a relic somewhere deep in the dungeon. Bring it back up the stairs from level 1 to win. Death is permanent.

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

About the game

XRogue is a Rogue descendant, not an Angband one. There is one screen per level, no town to return to, and no word of recall: the only way home is up the stairs, level by level. Stairs (% on the map) go both up and down.

• Each class has its own trick: magicians cast (C), clerics and paladins pray (p), druids and monks chant (c), thieves and assassins steal (Ctrl+T).
• Items are identified by use. Rings, potions, scrolls and wands have random looks per game.
• Beyond level 1 there are wilderness levels and more trading posts.

Keyboard controls

Essential keys

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

• You start in Friendly Fiend's Equipage with some gold. Step on an item and press $ to see its price or # to buy it. > leaves the shop for the dungeon.
• Armour, a better weapon and a healing potion are good first buys. Keep enough gold for food.
• Press O to see your class and which relic you are looking for.
• Unknown potions and scrolls are safest to try at full health with nothing around.
• Trading posts appear deeper down too; % sells an item there.

New player's guide

Your first steps

1. Choose a class (1–9). A fighter or paladin is forgiving. Esc fills your stats with the best remaining values; y accepts.
2. Shop: walk onto items, # buys. Wear armour (W) and wield a weapon (w), or use i and pick the item.
3. Press > to enter the dungeon, then x to explore. Fight by walking into monsters.
4. Rest (.) when hurt. Eat (e) when the status line says Hungry.
5. Take > when a level is done: it walks to the nearest known stairs.

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. Robert Pietkivitch took Advanced Rogue 7.7 in 1991 and made XRogue, "Expeditions into the Dungeons of Doom". Version 8 is the last of the Advanced Rogue line.

The big changes since Advanced Rogue 7.7.

• 211 monster kinds instead of 125.
• The quest is no longer random: each class has its own relic (O shows it). Fighters seek the Axe of Aklad, rangers the Mandolin of Brian, magicians the Amulet of Stonebones, assassins the Eye of Vecna.

Trivia. The Axe of Aklad and the Quill of Nagrom are Advanced Rogue's authors, Dalka and Morgan, spelled backwards. Its README admits "there is little documentation for this version": most of what is known about XRogue comes from its source code.

The family at a glance (numbers counted in each game's source):

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 (XRogue 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

• Based on XRogue 8.0.3.
• Tiles: NetHack (default) or DawnLike by DragonDePlatino with DawnBringer's palette (CC BY 4.0), sprites picked by name via Tommy Ettinger's DawnLikeAtlas; switch with the Tiles button.
• Original source: memmaker/xrogue master, commit 544e05a (dump of the original svn r1490)
• Our changes (port, auto-explore, command menu, web build): memmaker/xrogue, branch rvip-port