NetHackCocoa 9+

I've loved Nethack for many years - am pretty excited it's been ported for OSX. The game feels just as great now as it did years ago! I really like the interface in this version, although the lack of ability to recover from a crash is a massive problem considering how much time goes into playing the game. And there's a minor annoyance in the lack of defaults file for all the game-start basic config information. Other than that - really good build of the game. It's definitely keeping me entertained! :)

I love NetHack… always have. Don't like playing in the osX terminal though cause I really never liked using the letter keys to move. So tried using a DOS emulator and that works great… but it eats battery up on my MBP. This GUI version is amazing… and is a great way to learn to use the controls as you get the menus on selection. My kids (10 and 11) are playing with this version and love it. This also sips on battery. I can get 8+ hours of this on my MBP with brightness at about 75%… unbelievable!

It is nethack though and if you have never played, it won't make sense until you read some docs about how to play. But trust me, if you learn how to play, you will realize you have never found a game that is as immersive as this… even with the ASCII windows or the simple tile sprites that can be used in this port. (You can go back to ASCII on this though it doesn't look quite like the tty versions.

All in all, it's worth having on your Mac when you get the urge to crawl a dungeon!

It's NetHack, the best game ever. And it runs on Lion, which is nice. And it's available on the App Store, which is nicer still.

So what's the problem? Occasionally it crashes, and once in a while a crash leaves a game in a messed up state. When that happens, and you try to start the application again, you get a message about a current character playing the game, and asked if the current game should be destroyed. If you answer "no", you are kicked out. If you answer yes, you have to start over with a new character. Lose/Lose. The other standard distributions of NetHack come with a command line "recover" tool that lets a user deal with this problem. This seems to be the only distribution that does *not* come with a recover tool. Nor is is apparent where this application puts the key files that must be deleted to recover. So back to square 1.

For a game that takes months to play, this is a pretty fatal probem.