Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

About the game

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (often shortened to Dungeon Crawl, Crawl, or DCSS) is a roguelike dungeon crawler Role-playing game. It is written in the C++ programming language, and is licensed under the GPL Version 2+. Stone Soup is a successor to the game Linley's Dungeon Crawl (also frequently shortened to Dungeon Crawl) by Linley Henzell, which was developed in the 1990's. After Henzell stopped developing Dungeon Crawl in 1999, a group of contributors kept the game alive until, in 2006, the Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup project began. The game is available in both graphical tile and ASCII versions and does not require 3D hardware acceleration. The graphical tiles are largely released as CC0 (public domain), but some are unclearly licensed and so it is possible that only the ASCII version of the game is completely libre.

In Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup the player must delve deep into a dangerous, monster-infested dungeon on a quest to retrieve the fabled Orb of Zot, then return with it to the surface. In order to get to the Orb, the player must first collect a series of magical runes hidden throughout the various branches of the dungeon, all while encountering traps, finding magical and/or cursed items, and battling many enemies. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup has a great many race and class combinations to play, and numerous gods to worship, all of which will drastically affect playstyle and game outcome. A lively player community exists around the game. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup can be played both offline and online in a web browser, and there are frequent competitive tournaments.

At the beginning of a new game of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, the player chooses a race and class combination to play as. Unlike many other roguelikes, race has a much more drastic effect on playstyle than class, which only determines starting stats and equipment. The player must then venture through the mostly randomly-generated corridors of the dungeon while leveling up and collecting items. There are various enemies to fight, including dangerous unique enemies that have names and special abilities. One of the core mechanics in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is the god worshiping system. Players can choose one of several gods to become disciples of. These gods will give the player access to special rewards and abilities, but will also make demands of the player and sometimes forbid certain actions. The god that the player chooses to worship has a huge impact on the way they will play the game and how they will have to strategize to survive in the dungeon.

Technical notes

Imported from LibreGameWiki. Verify platform-specific requirements on the linked project/download page before installing.