Fans of pre-graphical RPGs like Nethack and Rogue might occasionally wander out from their UNIX labs and find themselves confronted with a modern web browser.

Once the initial shock of daylight and antialiased fonts has worn off, they will probably need to chill out with a quick dungeon hack. Tombs Of Asciiroth is a labour of love — recreating the look and feel of an ASCII roguelike in Firefox.

There is full-length quest to be had wandering the titular Tombs, and the usually obscure keyboard commands are illustrated with a nice tutorial level with pop-up tip windows.

It can be a bit slow, and you will need to install Google Gears if you want to save your game, but there is plenty of old school fun to be had. You can’t not like a game that includes the phrase “Use the sword against hostile Ampersands”.

The Tombs Of Asciiroth [Icculus.org]