oolite VS crawl

The main oolite repository is [1] and the repository for the launcher is [2]. Everything, including art assets and configuration files, is under the GNU GPL 2-or-later [3]. You can alternatively use the art assets and config files under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License version 3.0, a proprietary license.

[1] https://github.com/OoliteProject/oolite

[2] https://github.com/HiranChaudhuri/OoliteStarter

[3] https://github.com/OoliteProject/oolite/blob/master/Doc/LICE...

Might look at Oolite for a free lower spec alternative to Elite, if that's your jam. Plenty of mods to work with as well.

If you liked Elite, you should check out Oolite [1] too. FOSS, lots of mods.

[1] http://www.oolite.org/

I was surprised, when I started recording videos for Oolite, by how many people were desperate for Oolite videos.

Many, many hours playing this one to death. And the C64 version before it, and the BBC versions (tape and disk) at my friends houses. And Oolite on the Mac. And I'm a founder backer of Elite Dangerous. And...and...

In addition to the other great recommendations on here, Oolite might also be worth a try. It's free and has tons of expansions modify your experience.

Hmm, I guess that's one way to look at it. ED is all about the freedom of choice, after all. Though I still think OP's idea is interesting. Before playing ED, I've been playing Oolite for some time, and you can actually jump into the wakes left by the ships. So, to see this (or similar) mechanic in ED would be interesting.

link to game

Strong nostalgia whenever I see the BBC Elite opening screen!

These days we can re-live it easily in the browser: https://bbc.godbolt.org/?autoboot&disc=sth%3AAcornsoft%2FEli... Although I can also recommend "oolite": http://www.oolite.org/ which is an open source modernised elite with game play kept quite faithful to the original (I'm currently hooked on this and wasting more my life trying to get that "Elite" rating all over again)

It's probably not as rigorous as what you're thinking of but the devs of DCSS have cited online win rates of certain combinations as the impetus for balance changes before.

https://crawl.develz.org

In a similar vein, see Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, a free and open-source roguelike that's been continuously developed by volunteers for 20 years: http://crawl.develz.org/

They are entirely too humanoid. I mean, look at these splash screens: Kiku, Ignis, Chei. While those images shouldn't be taken as canonical, they at least demonstrate the general inhumanity of the Crawl pantheon.

Since you like turn-based games too, try some old-school roguelikes. Many are open-source freeware so you have nothing to lose but time. I've been playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup for almost 10 years.

Since Brogue's already been mentioned, I'd add Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and Tales of Maj Eyal as pretty beginner friendly games.

For people who don't follow trunk, Okawru's gifting has been changed (and arguably* nerfed):

My personal first timer recommendation? Maybe Nethack or Dungeon crawl?

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - Free traditional roguelike with fair mechanics and a lot of variety between species/skill/god choices (~25 gods and maybe with the exception of sif/veh and oka/trog, they are very distinct). The tiles are great. There's many developers and they are very welcoming of code or vault contributions. Reducing incentives to play tediously is one of the goals. Easily hundreds of hours of gameplay for free. Playable online (connecting to a server through your browser/terminal) or offline (terminal or tiles version). There have been win streaks of 50+ games with a variety of species/background combos so you know it's mostly fair(it IS possible for rng to give you an unwinnable game), but it's very difficult if your goal is to win every game.