Nethack, a roguelike from 1987, just had its first update in 12 years

Includes a tribute to Sir Terry Pratchet

While Rogue is commonly seen as where the roguelike genre got its start, there’s another game that is arguably just as influential to its formation: Nethack. Originally released way back in 1987, Nethack helped pave the way for the modern popularity of roguelikes, roguelites, rogue-like-likes, faux-likes, and whatever else you want to call them. 

Now 28 years after release, and 12 years since its last major update, Nethack 3.6.0 has been released. Unfortunately, this new update doesn’t add much in the way of major gameplay changes. However, it makes a few necessary changes to allow the developers to expand the game further in the future, paving the way for bigger and hopefully more frequent updates.

The update also includes a nice tribute to Sir Terry Pratchett, who sadly passed away earlier this year and was a big fan of Nethack. His Discworld books inspired the creation of the in-game Tourist class, so the more substantial tribute full of Discworld quotes is just lovely.

It looks like we’re going to be hearing a lot more about Nethack going forward. Considering how much of a role the game played in shaping one of the most popular genres today, that’s pretty dang exciting!