A timeline of traditional roguelikes
Dates are milestones, not always birthdays. A prototype, a public beta and a finished commercial release may be years apart. The linked entries explain the distinctions and give sources.
1970s dungeon experiments
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1980s terminals and source
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1990s families and worlds
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2000s forks and small games
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2010s focused new designs
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2020s old forms live on
Before the name
In the 1970s, PLATO dungeon games and Don Worth’s Beneath Apple Manor explored computerised dungeon play before Rogue appeared. Earlier does not automatically mean a direct influence.
1980 to 1989
- Rogue: 1980: university Unix release
- Moria and Umoria: 1981: BASIC prototype; 1983: Pascal Moria
- Hack: Early 1980s: Fenlason’s game; 1984: Brouwer’s Hack 1.0
- Larn: 1986: Larn 12.0 distributed on Usenet
- NetHack: 1987: first NetHack releases; 2026: version 5.0.0
- Omega: 1987: early release history
1990 to 1999
- Angband: 1990: Angband 1.0 at Warwick
- UnReal World: 1992: first release; 1994: open-ended wilderness
- Torneko’s Great Adventure: 1993: Super Famicom release in Japan
- Ancient Domains of Mystery: 1994: first release; 2012: crowdfunded revival
- Shiren the Wanderer: 1995: original Super Famicom release in Japan
- Linley’s Dungeon Crawl: 1997: original Dungeon Crawl
- Tales of Maj’Eyal and the ToME family: 1998: PernAngband roots; 2009: new codebase; 2012: Maj’Eyal 1.0
2000 to 2009
- IVAN: 2001: surviving early public releases
- DRL: 2002: DoomRL’s early development
- POWDER: 2003: first Game Boy Advance release
- Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup: 2006: Stone Soup fork and first releases
- Brogue: 2009: first release
2010 onwards
- Caves of Qud: 2010: public beta; 2015: Early Access; 2024: version 1.0
- HyperRogue: 2011: Hyperbolic Rogue prototype; 2012: expanded 7DRL version
- Infra Arcana: 2011: first public release
- Sil: 2012: Sil 1.0
- Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead: 2013: Dark Days Ahead continuation
- Cogmind: 2012: 7DRL prototype; 2015: commercial alpha
- Golden Krone Hotel: 2017: full release
- Jupiter Hell: 2019: Early Access; 2021: version 1.0
The dates keep going
Jupiter Hell reached 1.0 in 2021. Caves of Qud followed in 2024 after a long public development. NetHack reached 5.0.0 in May 2026, almost four decades after its first releases.
This is not a sequence in which each new game replaces the one before it. Rogue, Angband, NetHack and their relatives still offer different kinds of expedition.