Angband

Angband is a roguelike game. This means that you move a @ around, trying to find good | and ), and slaughtering the letters of the alphabet (that'll learn that there stuck up Q, only letting U stand around *spit*). There are a few ways to win the game:

1. Kill the letters in the right order to spell out the text of War and Peace
2. You decide that the war on the letter Q should spill over into real life, and are able to hit 3 signs before the cops take you down.
3. You take up a nice sane hobby, like knitting afghans for homeless mice.

I've also heard that you can win by killing Morgoth, but that could just be a rumor.—The Crappy Angband Page (defunct)

History

In 1990, Alex Cutler and Andy Astrand, with the help of other students at the University of Warwick, created Angband, based on the existing code for Umoria, the C/Unix version of Moria. They wanted to expand the game, keeping or even strengthening the grounding in Tolkien lore, while adding more monsters and items.

Like Moria itself, Angband became very popular on the Amiga, which may have been the reason that graphics and even sounds have become an integral part of it, unlike, for example, NetHack, which still defaults to a Unixish view on any operating system.

Angband itself has again spawned countless variants, most of them following a *angband naming convention, some *band. The most popular, and most different from the original, probably being Zangband. Zangband was created on the PC by Topi Ylinen and is set in the worlds of Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber.

The License

This software may be copied and distributed for educational, research, and not for profit purposes provided that this copyright and statement are included in all such copies. Other copyrights may also apply.

This is the original Angband license. Robert Rühlmann started an effort to bring Angband under the GPL, the first version that finally could be dual-licensed was 3.1.1 beta on 2009-07-26.

Links

• rephial.org is the Angband site of Andrew Sidwell, maintainer since 2005 (first release 3.0.8 in 2007). Apart from the latest downloads, it has a wiki.
• Thangorodrim is the site of Robert Rühlmann, maintainer of Angband 2000–2005 (3.0.6). As of 2010, it's still one of the best sources for information.
• The Official Angband Home Page, as it is still called, is maintained by Ben Harrison, the maintainer of Angband until 2000 (2.7.0–2.8.5), and is mainly a source for older versions of the game.
• Angband.oook.cz has more than a thousand screenshots, a ladder, artwork, and monster and artefact spoilers. I came across it when I was googling for the Horned Reaper, usually a creature of Dungeon Keeper, but Angband has one too. He is represented by a blue U.
• Angband Variants Page

  This is my bit for Angband and its wonderful variants. It all started off with me wanting a web page dedicated to the various versions available for the Amiga, but it soon evolved. Whilst it still maintains a strong Amiga theme, it will serve all visitors equally, regardless of platform.