larn

Larn is a dungeon-crawling roguelike video game originally released in 1987 by designer Noah Morgan for Unix-like systems, with later ports to DOS, Amiga, Atari ST, Macintosh, and other platforms. It is one of the early roguelikes and helped define several conventions that became standard in the genre, including procedural dungeon generation, turn-based exploration, permadeath, and a strong emphasis on item management and tactical combat.

Gameplay involves guiding a single character through a series of increasingly difficult dungeon levels. Players navigate a grid-based map filled with monsters, traps, doors, stairs, and treasure. Movement, combat, and actions proceed in discrete turns, and death is permanent. Players collect weapons, armor, potions, scrolls, and other equipment, manage inventory, and try to descend as deep as possible while avoiding or defeating threats. The game's ASCII graphics (with later tile-based ports) offer a compact, strategic presentation common to early roguelikes.

Development and reception: Larn emerged from the roguelike tradition of Rogue and Moria and became influential in the community, appearing in various forms and ports over the years. It inspired later community projects and forks, and its code and content were distributed across Unix and other platforms, contributing to the spread of roguelike design.

Legacy: Larn remains of interest to historians of video games and roguelike fans as an early example of procedural generation and permadeath mechanics. While not as actively developed as modern roguelikes, it helped establish conventions later popularized by NetHack, Crawl, Angband, and their descendants.