‘@Play‘ is a frequently-appearing column which discusses the history, present, and future of the roguelike dungeon exploring genre.

Larn, created by Noah Morgan, may his name be sung by the bards forever, is a venerable classic roguelike game, from the same era as Moria and the first Hacks. It’s always been more obscure than the other games but was still popular, and it’s still played today. atsb, aka Gibbon, made a GitHub post commemorating its 40th anniversary, and noting the code has been ported to run on many systems, like Windows, Mac, Linux, DOS, OS/2, 68000, Alpha and many others. There they have both its source code and many precompiled binaries. We covered Larn once back on GameSetWatch, but GSW’s now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, and my Larn article from there is in the book Exploring Roguelike Games, so it seems a good opportunity to write of it again here.

You can download it from that page, but note that after unpacking it you should copy the files in the larnfiles directory into that of the executable, then edit larnopts to suit your playstyle (I’d change the player name, turn on color and pick a suitable gender.) If you don’t copy the files you won’t have in-game help; if you don’t edit larnopts your player will default to a male character named Gibbon.

I’ve only played a little of this version, but what I’ve seen is in keeping with the style of olde. Larn is a great game and worth trying. It makes a lot of different choices from its colleague games, which gives it a different feel. By default it’s easier than Rogue or Hack, but you can pick a higher difficulty if you want. High-difficulty games are ranked higher on the scoreboard.

Larn has a town level like Moria, but it includes features like a college that can teach you skills (but cost money and time) and a bank to save money at. It has two dungeons: a main dungeon that’s ten levels long, and a volcano that’s three levels and much stronger monsters. It has many random features, akin to Nethack’s fountains and thrones, that can do various things to your character, and it uses a code-based spell system. Press Shift-I from the spellcasting prompt (the c key) to be told what spells you know and what their codes are.

In the land of Larn many items cost lots of money, but you also find lots of money in the dungeon, there are lots of valuable gems there, and enemies frequently drop more. There are some things that are different from the Rogue and the Hack line of roguelikes that will need some adjustment:

• One key that works the same is Question Mark for Help, which should give you enough information to start you on your way.
• I haven’t tried using a numpad to play yet, but the help text doesn’t mention it. You might have to use the vi keys plus diagonals to move: h–j–k–l for left–down–up–right, and y–u–b–n for up&left–up&right–down&left–down&right.
• While the standard keys < and > go up and down levels, to enter places from down you have to press Shift-E.
• Monsters don’t follow you between dungeon levels, but the stairs, going both up and down, deposit you at a random place on the next level, so you can’t just retreat up if you find a dangerous monster on the next level.
• Some dungeon features use letters of the alphabet in addition to monsters: a deep blue P is a pit you might fall down.
• There is no key to put on or remove a ring, for they take effect automatically as you carry them. They’re identified immediately too.
• Potions and books don’t get individual descriptions when unknown, like “scroll titled KIRJE” or “plaid potions,” but they do still have underlying identities, and get identified when you use them.
• Lots of items, not just weapons and armor, have plusses, and you can even see them when the item type is unknown. What they mean, you’ll have to figure that out for yourself.
• When you find gems, don’t sell them in the trading post. Take them to the bank and have them appraised there.
• The flow of your quest is unusual to players expecting to collect an Amulet of Yendor some ways down and escape with it. The Eye of Larn is at the bottom of the main dungeon, but it won’t cure your daughter. But there is a way it can greatly further your quest, if you can figure out what that is.

A really distinctive thing about Larn is its time limit. Larn doesn’t use a food clock like many other classic roguelikes, but instead your daughter is dying of a mysterious disease whose cure is rumored to be somewhere in the land. As long as you progress slowly enough you can usually handle the monsters, and you can learn new skills in the College of Larn, but if you take more than 350 “mobils” you’ll fail your quest, although there is an item that can give you more time. If you manage to win the game, the Larn Revenue Service assesses you taxes based on your score before you can use the stores in subsequent games, and you can set a difficulty level before playing that affects the game in many ways: use the command-line option -# where # is the level, with 0 being the easiest.

Larn has its own wiki with many play tips (a lot of them spoilers) at wiki.larn.org.

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