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]

Yes, I'm writing a game every week! The first one, Wizkill, was released yesterday. It's a tiny download - about 40K - so don't be afraid to give it a go and post your scores! We've already had one winner, why not be the next one? Hey, why not take this opportunity to suggest ideas for new games? I've already started on something, but I'm definitely taking down stuff for other weeks.

Well, here it is - our first entry in "Game A Week", an exclusive Kotaku AU feature where you guys come up with ideas for simple games and I try and code them in seven days.

This little guy is called Wizkill. It's a roguelike, which means it's nothing but ASCII graphics, letter-shaped monsters, gold and dungeons. Roguelikes are traditionally quite hard and have a steep learning curve. I've tried to minimise the latter by limiting the number of keys, removing classes and providing a single goal (killing monsters), but who knows, it might still take a while to come to grips with.

There's a score component, calculated when you die or hit level 25. Feel free to post your highest score in the comments for this post. Oh, and if you notice any bugs or want to suggest some changes, add them here as well. If there are enough, I'll make the appropriate tweaks and release a "final" version on Monday.

If you'd like to start playing, you can download the game after the jump. I've also included a write-up on the design and development process, and what I'll be taking across to my next Game A Week project.

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I had my PSP playing Angband for a few months, until my brother updated the firmware and I lost heart in the whole homebrew venture. If only there was a boutique manufacturer willing to build a handheld console dedicated to playing roguelike games such as Dwarf Fortress, ADOM and Nethack? Sadly, no such vendor exists, but that hasn't stopped BoingBoing from coming up with Photoshop prototypes.

From the post:

Some sort of UMPC or handheld console solution dedicated to one single purpose: Playing ASCII rogue-likes on the go. Everything has to be designed so you can play Dwarf Fortress or Nethack with the minimum amount of bullshit.

Who'd like a portable text game console? [BoingBoing, via Backstrip]

Tales of Game, the team behind Charles Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden have released their latest freeware roguelike The Sewer Goblet: The Wu-Tang Clan and the Wu-Tang Baby, a dungeon crawling adventure starring GZA, RZA, the late Ol' Dirty Bastard, Raekwon and the rest of the Wu-Tang crew. And for maximum appeal, Tales of Game has introduced the Wu-Tang Baby, a "tiny but majestic baby with a mysterious pendant" adopted by the seminal rap group.

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