10-100

I'm not going to get the runner up details together for a little while, but Darren Grey made the intriguing suggestion that the roguelikes which get between 10-100 votes are the most interesting. With that in mind, and with the assistance of Joseph Bradshaw who has converted the results to a spreadsheet for further analysis (TBD by another volunteer if you want to help out), I'd like to present 'The most interesting roguelikes of the year 2013' as a unicorn chaser.

Wayward	99
Sil	98
Dungeonmans	92
Infra Arcana	84
NEOScavenger	71
Prospector	67
Steam Marines	50
One Way Heroics	46
Pixel Piracy	45
Red Rogue	39
WazHack	39
868-HACK	38
Bionic Dues	38
Diablo, the Roguelike	37
Dungeon of the Endless	35
Legend of Dungeon	35
Triangle Wizard	31
Eldritch	27
Delver	26
Hoplite	26
Hack, Slash, Loot	25
UnBrogue	25
NPPAngband	24
86856527	23
KeeperRL	23
Forays into Norrendrin	20
HyperRogue	20
Aurora	18
Nuclear Throne	18
PRIME	18
3079	17
Paranautical Activity	17
The Veins of the Earth	16
Hydra Slayer	15
3089	15
Drakefire Chasm	14
Tower of Guns	14
Kerkerkruip	13
Ending	12
Voyage to Farland	12
Dungeon Dashers	11
DynaHack	11
Mosaic	11
PonyRL	11
Rogue's Tale	10
8.68-HACK	10
Occult Chronicles	10

Winner of the Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2013: Noxico

You probably haven't heard of Noxico. It is one of the sub genre of adult roguelikes, that I only was made aware of when I ran this poll last year. The link I'm not going to include in this post has an adults only warning on the front page. The site beyond it is NSFW but in reality is only barely titillating. I'm bemused to see that the first bullet point feature the game has is 'Reasonable Unicode Support'.

Nonetheless, it garnered more votes than any other for the roguelike of the year, and I wish to congratulate the developer for his or her persistent fan base.

Request for Votes: Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2013

290 roguelikes have qualified this year: this is only a slight increase of 7 roguelikes from last year and begs the question: 'Have we reached peak roguelike?'. More importantly, there's a significant difference in the included roguelikes as I have included all the 7DRL entries this year. I have not done this in previous years, so the figures could hide an actual drop in the total roguelikes released in 2013. However...

How did the games qualify?

The list was taken from the roguelike releases announced on the Rogue Basin news section between December 16th 2012 and December 16th 2013 and the 7DRL rogue likes that were rated by the challenge evaluation process. Unfortunately the list of Actively Developing Roguelikes is no longer maintained, so I instead included roguelikes listed on the last 6 months of  posts on the roguelikes subreddit. This undoubtedly misses more rogue like releases than in previous years. I especially note that the Rogue Basin news section appears to be heavily biased against commercial releases - whereas the roguelikes subreddit is biased towards commercial releases so in summary it probably evens out. However, more eclectic releases will undoubtedly be missing from the list.

If there is a roguelike you want to vote for which is not on the list, please post in the comments and I will include your votes in the final totals.

What about 'x'? Why isn't it on the list?

Make sure you announced your roguelike on Rogue Basin for next year.

What about 'y'? Why is it on the list?

As roguelikes become more popular, the term is used to increasingly describe a broader type of game. This list has expanded to embrace that idea, but mostly to ensure that we don't miss any actual roguelikes. With this many entries, I'd rather be inclusive rather than exclusive, as I cannot possibly play every entry. You are free to not vote for a game if you don't consider it a roguelike.

What's the prize?
Pride. And a sexy logo - if you want one. You can see the winning 2007 logo on the Dwarf Fortress links page. Other winners are free to request them, but haven't done so. Logo designs for this year are welcome.

Having a competition is a dumb idea/offensive/stupid when you can't police the results.

Yep. Doesn't stop it being fun. You can vote for multiple different roguelikes. The idea here is that you will be encouraged to go out and download a roguelike that other people consider interesting, not that there is any kind of real competition element involved.

Honourable Mentions for Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2012

In an ever-expanding genre it seems there are too many honours to mention. This year all of the top 10 received more votes than DoomRL did when it won in 2009.

4. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup: The loss of mountain dwarves has not put off its loyal community, as this enduring classic has received further polish and a swarm of spiders.

5. Dwarf Fortress: A big increase in Adventure Mode content has made it stand out as a compelling single-hero roguelike in its own right. Planned additions are bound to make this even more popular in future.

6. FTL: The spaceship roguelike has made a big impact in the gaming community as a whole, winning and being nominated for numerous awards. Core roguelike mechanics mixed with many novel features have proven a highly compelling combination.

7. UnReal World: The best iron age Finland survival simulator ever made! Further improvements and new players have given this elder game a vibrant lease of life in 2012.

8. DoomRL: With further updates and a beautiful new tileset from Derek Yu, Kornel's turn-based shotgunning classic remains as bloodily alluring as ever.

9. Brogue: Procedural puzzles, a new charm system, and the removal of experience points from the game have all been part of a continued refinement in an increasingly critically acclaimed game. Oryx's recent tileset may help garner it wider popularity in the new year.

10. Dungeons of Dredmor: Expansion packs and a hugely active modding scene have kept this game fresh, and solved many of the complaints of those who found the game initially frustrating, whilst adding new humour and madness in the form of violent veganism and communist powers.

A glance back at the honourable mentions from 2009 shows just how much the scene has changed in 3 short years. So a huge applaud is due to these excellent games that have proven excessively popular in the ever more active roguelike genre!

Runner Up for Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2012: ADOM

After 10 years without updates one of the greats has returned. ADOM is back.

New classes, races, items, artifacts, endings, bugfixes and rebalancing have all been part of Thomas Biskup’s flurry of activity in the late stages of 2012. This is following an expertly run crowd-funding campaign on IndieGoGo that raised an astonishing $90,169 from 1,666 loyal followers, well above the target Thomas set to resurrect ADOM. It was no wonder then that it did intensely well on the poll, coming a close second to the winning ToME. With all the many planned changes in the coming year, including NotEye integration and a new custom tileset and soundtrack, it’s hard not to imagine it doing even better next year, ensuring another exciting competition for the crown of ASCII Dreams Roguelike of the Year.

Not to be forgotten is ADOM II, formerly known as JADE. Coming in at 3rd place there is clearly still strong support for this super-sized successor to the popular classic. This year it has had significant updates, making the game fully completable and adding quests and additional races and classes. With development continuing in parallel to ADOM it will be interesting to see this expand further in future.

Winner of Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2012: T.o.M.E. 4

Last year Tales of Maj’Eyal became the first game to win Roguelike of the Year for two years running. But in 2012, despite a brush with death, DarkGod has not rested on his lauded laurels. A vast stream of updates to content, interface, web-site, balance, bug-fixing and the opening up of community-built add-ons have ensured that Tales of Maj’Eyal remains the most popular of all roguelikes yet again. Beating off competitors young and old, ToME is now ASCII Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2012.

And it doesn’t stop there, as the game has now reached the all-elusive status of version 1.0 – a prestigious and rare event for a roguelike. With its modern interface and intense emphasis on tight turn-based gameplay it has spread roguelike appeal beyond normal grounds, and has recently been described in the popular press as “the gateway game you've been waiting for”. And that could prove true as it vies to garner enough votes to be the first roguelike to break through on Steam Greenlight.

A new module-making competition also hopes to encourage further games to be developed in the flexible and powerful T-Engine on which the game is based, meaning we’re sure to see some new ToME-inspired roguelikes popping up over the next 12 months. Look out for a new episode of Roguelike Radio in the coming weeks making a return to Maj’Eyal.

Big d@ta

Regular commenter Joseph has done some analysis of the poll results. And a Korean site has a year by year break down.

Full Results for Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year

This is the fifth year I've had to string together superlatives describing the growth of the poll both in record numbers of entrants and numbers of votes. Thanks to all 5,123 of you who voted on the 283 games below.

91	4 (0%)
3079	8 (0%)
@Star Wars	16 (0%)
100 Heroes	11 (0%)
2419RL	3 (0%)
7DRL	8 (0%)
99 Levels to Hell	5 (0%)
ADOM	1445 (28%)
ADOM II (formerly JADE)	730 (14%)
Afterlife 3: Legends of Rickard Bronson	0 (0%)
AliensRL	72 (1%)
Allure of the Stars	3 (0%)
Angband	91 (1%)
Animonstres	0 (0%)
AppRogue	0 (0%)
Ascension of the Drillworms	1 (0%)
Ascii Wilderness	1 (0%)
AS.T.Ro	1 (0%)
AsylumRL	6 (0%)
Auro	3 (0%)
Bardess	0 (0%)
BattlePaths	0 (0%)
Below	1 (0%)
Beyond the Light	2 (0%)
BileBio	3 (0%)
Bone Builder	3 (0%)
BOSS	3 (0%)
Brogue	349 (6%)
Bushudo	0 (0%)
Cardinal Quest II	23 (0%)
Cardlike	9 (0%)
Cargo Commander	10 (0%)
Castle Dungeon	1 (0%)
Castle of the Winds Online	4 (0%)
Cataclysm	173 (3%)
Cave Chop	0 (0%)
Cave Rescue	0 (0%)
Caves of Qud	138 (2%)
Chengband	5 (0%)
Cinders	0 (0%)
Claustrophobia: The Downward Struggle	0 (0%)
Cogmind	70 (1%)
Como el Rogue	0 (0%)
Cooplike	0 (0%)
Cosmic Commando	9 (0%)
Crossword Dungeon	2 (0%)
Crystal Catacombs	1 (0%)
Cult: Awakening of the Old Ones	28 (0%)
Cursed Dungeons	0 (0%)
Cypress Tree Manor	1 (0%)
DaedlyFlazh	5 (0%)
DaJAngband	3 (0%)
Dangerous Dungeons of Sevenholm	0 (0%)
Dark Valhalla: Prelude	1 (0%)
Dary's Legend	0 (0%)
Das Schurke Boot	0 (0%)
Daybreak RL	0 (0%)
Dead Night Forest Chapter 2: The Lost Caravan	0 (0%)
Death Settler	0 (0%)
Deep Deadly Dungeons	3 (0%)
Delver	15 (0%)
Demonhunt	4 (0%)
Denizen's Den	1 (0%)
Depths of Peril	17 (0%)
Desktop Dungeons	83 (1%)
Destiny of Heroes	1 (0%)
Diablo III	95 (1%)
Diehard Dungeon	1 (0%)
Diggr	5 (0%)
Din's Curse	39 (0%)
DoomRL: Doom, the Roguelike	393 (7%)
Dungeon Panic!	1 (0%)
Dungeons of Desolation	1 (0%)
Drakefire Chasm	17 (0%)
Drox Operative	20 (0%)
DuneRL	5 (0%)
Dungeon Bash Tactics	2 (0%)
Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup	687 (13%)
Dungeon Dashers	8 (0%)
Dungeons of Dredmor	280 (5%)
Dwarf Fortress	605 (11%)
Dweller	59 (1%)
Earl Spork	5 (0%)
ElonaPlus	69 (1%)
Emet	0 (0%)
Encircled	2 (0%)
Enter Thy Name	2 (0%)
Epilogue	13 (0%)
Equal in Death	8 (0%)
Escape from the Vault	2 (0%)
Expedition	4 (0%)
FAangband	25 (0%)
Fabula Divina	2 (0%)
Fall From Heaven	4 (0%)
Fame	3 (0%)
FFHtR	2 (0%)
Fictional Roguelike	1 (0%)
Flatspace	8 (0%)
Flight of the Maxima	0 (0%)
Fog and Thunder	1 (0%)
Forays into Norrendrin	16 (0%)
Fragile Wrath	1 (0%)
FTL	454 (8%)
Fuel	9 (0%)
GatewayRL	1 (0%)
GearHead-2	21 (0%)
Gnoblins	0 (0%)
Goblet Grotto	6 (0%)
Grand Rogue Auto	5 (0%)
GUTS!	1 (0%)
Hack, Slash, Loot	19 (0%)
Hallowmorn Dungeon	0 (0%)
Halls of Mist	20 (0%)
Harmonia	0 (0%)
Hellmouth	1 (0%)
Herculeum	0 (0%)
Hokuto-no-rogue	6 (0%)
Hope	0 (0%)
HordeTheory	1 (0%)
House of the Lost	0 (0%)
HunterRL	1 (0%)
Hydra Slayer	13 (0%)
Hyperbolic Rogue II	5 (0%)
HyperRogue III	23 (0%)
I rule, you rule, we all rule old-school Hyrule	19 (0%)
Ighalsk	0 (0%)
Ignite	0 (0%)
Inferno+	2 (0%)
Infiniverse	3 (0%)
Infra Arcana	52 (1%)
Intelligence: The Roguelike	1 (0%)
Interhack	0 (0%)
Into the Dungeon ++	2 (0%)
JaggedRL	0 (0%)
Jelly	0 (0%)
Kaiju King	2 (0%)
Kerkerkruip	16 (0%)
Kitchen Masters	3 (0%)
LAIR!	0 (0%)
LambdaHack	4 (0%)
LambdaRogue	11 (0%)
Left Field Hotel	2 (0%)
Legacy	0 (0%)
Legend of Dungeon	5 (0%)
Legend of Siegfried	9 (0%)
Legends of Yore	21 (0%)
Life of Sir Pointsalot	0 (0%)
LinLem’s Vague Adventure Roguelike	0 (0%)
Locks	0 (0%)
Lost Labyrinth	15 (0%)
MagmaHack	1 (0%)
Magog	0 (0%)
Malastro	3 (0%)
Me Against The Mutants	1 (0%)
Meat Arena	0 (0%)
Mercury	4 (0%)
Microcosm	0 (0%)
MicRogue	5 (0%)
Middlecrest	3 (0%)
miniFlake	1 (0%)
Mont Asall	0 (0%)
Mujahid	6 (0%)
Mushroomvania	2 (0%)
Mutant Aliens!	2 (0%)
Mysterious Castle	3 (0%)
NEO Scavenger	24 (0%)
Neon	6 (0%)
NetHack-De	33 (0%)
Nightfall	2 (0%)
NitroHack	5 (0%)
NLarn	9 (0%)
No Way But Down	1 (0%)
Noxico	30 (0%)
NPPAngband	21 (0%)
OutlastRL	0 (0%)
PabloQuest 3: Danish Adventures	2 (0%)
Path of Exile	57 (1%)
phage	1 (0%)
Pineapple Smash Crew	4 (0%)
Pixel Dungeon	9 (0%)
Porta Lucis	4 (0%)
Portralis - NewAngband	8 (0%)
POWDER	76 (1%)
PRIME	11 (0%)
Probability 0	2 (0%)
Professional Sword Tester the Roguelike	1 (0%)
Project gnh20/The game of my dream (sb3dgraph)	2 (0%)
Prospector RL	42 (0%)
PWMAngband	4 (0%)
QUAD	0 (0%)
Quest for the Unicorn	1 (0%)
QuestQuest	2 (0%)
Quickband	9 (0%)
QuickHack	7 (0%)
QuillRogue	1 (0%)
RailRL	0 (0%)
Random Realms	3 (0%)
Ransack	0 (0%)
Receiver	3 (0%)
Red Rogue	55 (1%)
Revenge on a Toy Factory	1 (0%)
Rings of Valor	5 (0%)
ROADLIKE	2 (0%)
RoboCaptain	1 (0%)
Rogue Mud	0 (0%)
Rogue Survivor	38 (0%)
Rogue's Souls	8 (0%)
Rogue's Tale	10 (0%)
RogueDungeons	0 (0%)
RRRSRoguelike	2 (0%)
Ruins of Kal Raman	0 (0%)
SCP: Site 17	2 (0%)
Second Wind	1 (0%)
Seduction Quest	4 (0%)
Serial Killer	3 (0%)
Shadow Rogue	0 (0%)
Shattered Haven	0 (0%)
Shepherd Slaughter	3 (0%)
Sick Peter	4 (0%)
Sil	130 (2%)
Smooth Rogue	1 (0%)
Solstice	3 (0%)
SpaceNodes	0 (0%)
Spelunky HTML 5	39 (0%)
Spelunky XBLA	52 (1%)
Squirm	0 (0%)
Steam Marines	12 (0%)
Steel Knights	3 (0%)
Stella-111: A Cosmic Voyage	1 (0%)
Stellar Edge	4 (0%)
SUN CRUSHER!!!	19 (0%)
Super Office Stress	1 (0%)
Super Shotgun Showdown	0 (0%)
Swamp Monster	0 (0%)
Sword in Hand	7 (0%)
Sword of the Stars: The Pit	180 (3%)
Tales of Maj'Eyal (ToME)	1659 (32%)
Teleglitch	28 (0%)
Telos	0 (0%)
The Adventurer's Guild	5 (0%)
The Binding of Isaac	150 (2%)
The Challenge!	1 (0%)
The Death of Juga t'Dy	1 (0%)
The Four Challenges	0 (0%)
The Liberate Pixil Cup Quest	0 (0%)
The Light of Amber	1 (0%)
The Serpentine Caves	0 (0%)
The Slimy Lichmummy	15 (0%)
The Well Of Enchantments	1 (0%)
The Wizard's Lair	0 (0%)
Through	6 (0%)
TomeNET	133 (2%)
Top Dog	0 (0%)
Torchlight 2	175 (3%)
Tower Climb	13 (0%)
Traction Edge	0 (0%)
TrapRL	0 (0%)
Triangle Wizard	37 (0%)
Turambar	0 (0%)
Turnament	1 (0%)
Ugly Rogue	1 (0%)
Ultima Ratio Regum	63 (1%)
UnBrogue	26 (0%)
Underhill 2	0 (0%)
UnNetHack	37 (0%)
UnReal World	442 (8%)
Untitled	2 (0%)
Vapors of Insanity	6 (0%)
Voxel Heroes	1 (0%)
Voyage to Farland	3 (0%)
Waaaghammer	5 (0%)
Warden	2 (0%)
Wayward	9 (0%)
WazHack	25 (0%)
WebRaidMobile	0 (0%)
Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space	22 (0%)
World of Tey	1 (0%)
Wyrm	3 (0%)
X@COM	135 (2%)
Yeekband	2 (0%)
YioRpg	0 (0%)
Zaga-33	33 (0%)
Zero-Player Game	3 (0%)
Zombies!	5 (0%)
Zombocalypse	4 (0%)
Zone	3 (0%)