You guys. I've played this game off and on for 26 years as of the writing of this review. I have never beat it. Probably never even made it halfway. I'm just too impatient and unlucky, I guess!



I started playing Angband in college. I was stuck with an x86 PC of some kind I can't remember that a parent got from a work trash can, probably. Having grown up with video games, I wasn't about to quit just because my computer was trash (literally). I found a few games the old beast could play, and Angband became one of my favorites.

No-nonsense, Ascii graphics defined the dungeons and monsters that would repeatedly murder me over the years. Like any fantasy/sci-fi admiring nerd, the Tolkien world provided the motivation to return to the mines of Moria... I mean Angband, many times on many different personal computers. Mostly I've played it on Mac and tend to play with the graphic tiles now, to be honest, but it all started on that old PC.

The gaming is surprisingly complex, with various types of combat and magic, a wide array of items to manage, a horde of monsters and unique monsters, and numerous traps and dangers like starvation or just plain getting lost. It's not an easy game, but it does draw you back in to give it another go. Actually, doing the research for this little review has informed me there's a new version, so I should probably download that and see how fast I die these days...

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