Best traditional roguelike for feeling like a proper wizard, with all of the weirdness and hardship that comes with it
Hey folks. I’m somewhat new to the genre, although I’ve toyed around with Qud, ToME and a little adom in the past (though really not much). I’m looking to scratch the itch of playing a kind of “D&D-style” wizard at a very high level that a lot of games just don’t do. I’m not talking about bigger and bigger damage spells with more and more AOE, or anything like that. I’m kinda more interested in the “process” of being a wizard, if that makes sense. Something like:
- having to do research. Finding books or parts of books, reading through them and discovering random spells or arcane recipes through that process. Maybe even inventing your own spells from those readings?
- being able to do rituals. Not just pressing a button and casting a spell - not all the time. But needing to gather certain components, building a ritual apparatus - maybe just a circle, maybe something much more complex - and then performing a long-duration ritual to do… something, whatever it may be.
- being able to go out into the world to track down all the different parts of some big secret ritual - like, say, the ritual to become a lich - and doing it to yourself with a possibility of maybe just dying
Most games that do wizards just don’t really get to that essence of playing a wizard, I feel like, although many traditional roguelikes do nail the level of ‘weirdness’ and complexity involved for sure. I don’t really know all the games out there, and so I’d love to know if there was something that fit the bill!
Bonus points if it’s on steam, where I like to track all my gameplay time, but not a hard requirement. Extra bonus points if it’s not straight ascii, but does have at least a basic tile set.
Thanks in advance!