NetHack

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This article is about the culture, development, and historic aspects of NetHack. For information on how to play the game and a start to the game mechanics, see Guidebook.

NetHack is a roguelike computer game, and the most famous and popular of its kind. The latest version is 5.0.0, released on May 2, 2026. NetHack can be downloaded at the official NetHack download page. It is also available in other languages. Many variants and patches are also available.

The collocation of vanilla with NetHack refers to the DevTeam’s edition, without any additional patches. This began on Usenet in 1989 under the announcement thread for NetHack 3.0.5 when, after the contact and coordinator Izchak Miller used "mint" to label pristine code, Jeff d’Arcy chose “vanilla" instead. This eventually was applied to other roguelikes in comparison to mods. The game documentation does not use this nickname. mint: 2; vanilla: 10,000.

Screenshots

  • Text-mode

  • Text-mode, with special characters

  • Tile-mode on Windows

There is an open drawbridge portcullis here.--More--                            

                                                                                
                                                                                
 ┌─────                                                                         
 │    0│                                                                        
 │ ┌─┐ │ ┌─────┐                                               ┌─────┐          
 │ │ │ │ │.....├───────────────────────────────────────────────┤.....│          
 │ │0│ │ │.....▒                ) )  %% %                      ▒.....│          
 │ │   │`└────┬┴───────┬──────────┬─────.─────┬────────────────┴─────┘          
 │ │ ──┤``````│........│).....................│                                 
 │^│  <│.....`│........│).........│...........│                                 
 │ ├── │.....`│......%.├──────────┤*..........├──                               
 │ │   │.....0@.*......▒          ▒..........(. ^                               
 │ └─┬─┘.....`│........├──────────┤....)......├──                               
 │   │ ......`│........│...(..    │...........│                                 
 └── │ │``````│...[....│..(..............%[...│                                 
 │   │ │`┌────┴────────┴──────────└─────[─────┴────────────────┬─────┐          
 │ │ │ │ │.....▒                        %))    )))/ %%[))%    )%.....│          
 │ │ │ │ │                            ─────────────────────────┤..(..│          
 │ └─┘ │                                                       └─────┘          
 │     │                                                                        
 └─────┘                                                                        
DerekS the Warrior St:18/12 Dx:15 Co:18 In:9 Wi:10 Ch:8 Lawful S:323997         

Dlvl:28 $:0  HP:136(136) Pw:14(14) AC:-5 Xp:14/114569 T:17124                   

Why do people like NetHack?

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"This page should be a kind of FAQ, as it may be the first place strangers will visit upon seeing the Main Page."

NetHack enjoys popularity in niches. Mathematicians, programmers, physicists, engineers, linguists, and writers all feel a strong pull, though anyone with an eye for detail, a sense of completeness, a respect for complexity, and a head for numbers will be at home.

On the surface, the game is a hack'n'slash Dungeons and Dragons clone, but its subtle sense of humor and intellectual rigor elevate it from the faintly nerdy to the sharply geeky.

Just as a mathematician seeks elegant expressions over fuzzy generalities, NetHack eschews graphics in favor of perfectly crafted, well-defined ASCII characters. While other games are dated by their interfaces, NetHack is preserved in ascetic purity.

The programmer is drawn to NetHack as an extension of the operating system. Its culture is deeply intertwined with that of the Unix systems, and indeed is a staple fixture on any good Unix system—a known quantity, ageless, familiar, and soothing; whatever hairy command-line tasks are required, nethack(6) is always there.

NetHack is hard: while other games can be completed in an afternoon, you may go years without finishing NetHack.

NetHack is unforgiving: if you die, you stay dead. There is no save-and-reload crutch. Put simply, NetHack is a harsh mistress, whose respect you must earn. In time, you learn to respect it back.

NetHack is deep: in your first game, you shall die quickly, and come back worrying about how to survive. You will learn, eventually, and move onto higher concerns. You will stop worrying about your score, and start considering questions of optimality, efficiency, and elegance. You will consult tables and guides in search of an edge because everyone knows the best way to have fun in a game is to take 20 until you beat an impossible DC, rather than try to actually succeed at something hard yet possible. You may dive into the very source code, looking to explain that one-in-a-thousand shot you just pulled off. You will probably learn some C, and possibly get into heated debates about the merits of pseudorandom number generators, expected returns, inconsistencies between competing mythologies, and the ethics of exploiting bugs.

NetHack is history: Descending from Rogue, NetHack has 41 years of development behind it. It is one of the few computer games widely played by people who are younger than it. From this history arises a kind of authority.

Graphical user interfaces

Main article: Graphical user interface

As well as the standard ASCII interface, many official and unofficial graphical user interfaces are available. Using a graphical interface allows the game to be played with tiles instead of ASCII graphics. The best known are probably the officially supported ports for Windows, Mac and Linux:

  • Microsoft Windows (the standard NetHackW.exe available from nethack.org, or available on the Windows Store)
  • Qt for Linux and Mac
  • X11 for Linux (and Mac if developer tools are installed)

Notable unofficial graphical interfaces are

  • Web terminals, allowing playing on a public server on a web browser with either ASCII graphics or tiles without saving anything locally. Available on NAO and Hardfought.
  • NetHack for Android
  • iNetHack for iOS
  • Falcon's Eye and Vulture, offering a 3D dimetric view of the map. Note that neither of these is supported anymore.

Title

The title is properly spelled "NetHack", with two capital letters. "nethack" is also correct when used to refer to the name of the game binary. "Nethack" is a common misspelling, even having been used by members of the DevTeam in comments in the source code.

Popular culture

This page is a stub. Should you wish to do so, you can contribute by expanding this page.

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"Gads this begs to be longer."

In its legacy, NetHack has directly and indirectly been referenced in many sources.

  • NetHack quotes, on the archived Bash Quote Database
  • The game Deus Ex has a reference to beating a future version of NetHack in the distant future.
  • Dudley's Dungeon, a webcomic set in NetHack.
  • Dungeons of Dredmor is a 2010s sprite animated dungeon crawler with a more in-your-face sense of humor that nonetheless feels almost like a GUI rewrite of NetHack, and features direct quotes from NetHack like "You hear the sounds of a cash register."
  • In the game FreedroidRPG, you can play an ultra-simplified version of NetHack as a game-within-a-game (much easier to beat than actual NetHack).
  • The Screen terminal emulator has idiosyncratic messages from NetHack, such as "Suddenly, the dungeon collapses." when the program crashes.
  • The game Spelunky, which has some similarities to NetHack and is inspired by classic roguelikes, dungeon crawlers, and adventure games including NetHack, has NetHack references such as Vlad, his tower, and the camera.

History

Main article: Game history

NetHack's first version, 1.3d, was released in July 1987, descending directly from Jay Fenlason and Andries Brouwer's Hack. Subsequent early versions of NetHack, namely 1.4f, 2.2a, and 2.3e were released through 1987 and 1988.

In 1989, the first release of NetHack's best-known incarnation, 3.0.0, was posted to Usenet. It featured a massive expansion over the previous versions.

NetHack 3.1.0 was released in 1993, bringing several big changes, such as the introduction of Gehennom in place of Hell, and the introduction of the invocation ritual.

Three years later, NetHack 3.2.0 was released, dedicated to the memory of Izchak Miller.

Several forks of NetHack were produced through the lifespan of both 3.1 and 3.2. The current version is 5.0.0, but 3.4.3 continues to be popular considering that it was the only version long available.

In addition, many variants that are much more open about their development, such as UnNetHack or NetHack 4, are popular.

Download

For downloading the wiki itself, see NetHackWiki:Download.

Official version

Server platforms

Desktop platforms

Handset platforms

iNetHack2 3.6.7 for iOS by Jeff King and Joe Doucette on App Store
Google Play listing, expired
Virtually Fun blog post and comment why the file was obfuscated (but whose directory is now offline for some reason)

Other interfaces

Main article: Graphical user interface

Other languages

Main article: NetHack in other languages

External links

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.2. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-362}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.

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