A cool new Java roguelike is on the works (Go Java, Go! :D) the Caverns of Underkeep project has reached Alpha status, and it is looking very interesting
But anyway, why won’t Caverns of Underkeep have classes? Because it’s a dungeon romp, theres no real roleplaying going on what-so-ever. Your job is to kill monsters, and to do this you’ll need to be able to fight, use magic and pick locks.
Behind all graphics and infrastructure work (you play the game as a Java Applet), the project has some interesting gameplay and dungeon generation ideas discussed in this blog. Also, his highness CG Barret (you may remember him for, ehm… CastlevaniaRL graphicworks :P) seems to be backing up the project 🙂
So, welcome Joshua Smyth to the roguelike world, keep on it!
Source: ASCII Dreams
Temple of The Roguelike 
Thank you for the kind words.
Oh, and there are classes now, but I insist they’re gamemode classes, not roleplaying classes 🙂
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This game is pretty easy as roguelikes go. I cleared it in one try.
It’d probably be decent for a beginner to learn the fundamentals on. One of the big things is, the magic regenerating staves are extremely powerful compared to any of the abilities other weapons give you, and since swapping weapons doesn’t use a turn, there’s no reason why any character wouldn’t be able to carry a staff for magic regen, and then swap to a real weapon when they need to attack something.
I like the lockpicking minigame, because you actuall play it, instead of a dice roll determining success like most roguelikes.
The browser format suits the relatively short length of the game.
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Thank you for your feedback Curseman.
The difficulty is a funny thing, anyone who can play the harder roguelikes will probably clear the game no sweat. That said, you wouldn’t believe how many people have said it’s too hard 🙂
I’m probably going to add a harder difficulty level later on for more experienced players, the ‘vet’ mode, isnt that much more challenging if you use magic most of the time. More/tougher monsters w/ better AI are probably in order.
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