Nethack 5.0 has been released

‘@Play‘ is a frequently-appearing column which discusses the history, present, and future of the roguelike dungeon exploring genre. So yesterday the Devteam (it is always the Devteam) released version 5.0 of legendary and venerable rogueike compuer game NetHack. It is 39 years old. Nethack (I am more used to writing it without the capital H) is a venerable roguelike computer game, and by some measures the greatest roguelike of them all. Long before Caves of Qud or Dwarf Fortress it was, and still is, a game of surprising depth, and for many years no other games were anything close to it. Even today, few games do. Level 1 of the Dungeons of Doom The history of the game is recounted on the excellent Nethack Wiki. It got its start as a remake of Jay Fenalson’s Hack (1981), itself a recreation of Rogue (1980), and which was remade by Andries Brouwer (1984). The first version of Nethack, sometimes stylized ad”NetHack” was 1.3d, posted to Usenet by DevTeam leader Mike Stephenson in June…