I highly recommend supporting the developers of the game. The price of the game is not expensive compared to other games. Also, take a look at the updated manual on the Store page. (If the Steam client bugs out showing the PDF Manual, right-click copying the link into a browser will show it).

I like the manual. It looks better and most of the unnecessary information has been removed. In a couple posts asking experienced Rogue players which version they prefer, v1.49 (Epyx) is the most popular reply, which is the same version of the game that this Steam version of rogue is based on.

There are a few flaws found with this Steam version of Rogue.

• Rogue is open source, but this version is closed-source. I don't know what changed.
  
• Steam asks me if I want to load an existing save or start a new game before the game loads.
  
• The settings file was removed and EXOPT.EXE doesn't work.
  
• The command "ROGUE.EXE /S" is ignored. It would show your high-scores without starting or loading a save game.
  
• DosBox is used. There are better alternatives today. For example DosBox-X[dosbox-x.com] allows you to set an opton to choose which monitor the game opens by default.
  
• Only Windows is supported, yet DosBox and its variants support other platforms making it impossible to run DosBox and play natively outside of Windows.
  
• Linux and SteamDeck work due to running DOSBox in Steam's Proton[www.protondb.com], but it's suggested to use Boxtron[github.com] instead of Proton
  
• Mac possibly is supported due to Apple's game-porting-toolkit[developer.apple.com], released June 6, 2023.

Due to the issues above, I don't want to use the Steam version. My suggestion is to play using one of the non-Steam versions, but this guide doesn't care which version you choose. If you want to setup the Steam version of rogue, on the right skip to the section titled "Setup Steam version of Rogue".

This isn't a history lesson on Rogue, but what I feel is important information to understand how to get more out of the game by understanding its history.

I never played the original Rogue, but I chose to in order to experience where roguelike's started. The game has an amazing history, if you are into it, I suggest the game's Wikipedia page[en.wikipedia.org].

No matter if you care of the history or not, head to the Rogue archive[britzl.github.io] to see how many different versions of the game exist there today. The Steam version modifies v1.49 (Epyx). In the Rogue Archive, you can see the source code for Rogue is also listed there. It's likely boring to most players knowing that it's open source, but know since the game went open source in 1986, many other versions of the game were released as seen on that page. The sheer volume of roguelike games could've very well been one of the reasons of creating an entire genre called roguelike.

There's one other thing in the Rogue Archive to look at. That's Rog-O-Matic.

Rog-O-Matic is a bot developed in 1981 to play and win Rogue, by four graduate students in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh: Andrew Appel, Leonard Hamey, Guy Jacobson and Michael Loren Mauldin.

Rog-O-Matic is mentioned in the Rogue wikipedia page as well. There, it states:

Ken Arnold said that he liked to make "sure that every subsequent version of Rogue had a new feature in it that broke Rogue-O-Matic".

And he did just that. In future versions of Rogue, much of the balance of the game changed. It must've been wild for Rogue fans back then as they get a new version of the game and everything's changed. Things like the damage you deal, damage you can take, monsters, etc. A lot of the game is drastically different between versions.

As a disclaimer, If you decide to fully immerse yourself in Rogue and only Rogue for a couple months, please ignore the below spoiler.

While playing I use Nyuundere's guide here on Steam and the info listed on strategywiki for Rogue. I did go through the source code a bit and found they're the most accurate collection of info for Rogue v1.48. Items[strategywiki.org] and Monsters[strategywiki.org] (those are links that you can click). Nyuundere also provided a link at the bottom of the guide to this, highly suggested especially if you want to understand how hunger works, found in the category Other Items > Food: http://www.rots.net/rogue/rogue.html

Setup Rogue and DOSBox-X as follows. If this is too verbose tell me.

1. Download EpyxRogueDOS149.zip called "Rogue 1.49 by Epyx (DOS)" here: https://britzl.github.io/roguearchive/
   
2. Right click and Extract All
   
3. For the location, type C:\GAMES\ then click Extract. This will set the game's path to C:\GAMES\ROGUE\ROGUE.EXE
   
4. Navigate to C:\GAMES\ROGUE\
   
5. Show File Name Extensions, found under the View Menu
   
6. Copy ROGUE.OPT and paste it right here to get ROGUE - Copy.OPT
   
7. Rename that new file, select the entire filename and type ROGUE.BAT
   
8. Click Yes, Windows, I know I'm doing
   
9. Right click the file > Edit, it should be a blank file, if not it's fine
   
10. Copy the ROGUE.BAT script below and replace everything in this file
    
11. Quit & Save ROGUE.BAT

DOSBox-X is great. Adds a lot of new features over DosBox.

1. Download DOSBox-X. For Windows, left hand side choose "Vista+": https://dosbox-x.com/
   
2. Open it and if you get a blue warning "Windows protected your PC", then click "More Info" > Run Anyway
   
3. Keep hitting next accepting the default installation folder of C:\DOSBox-X\ but when reaching the "Select Additional Tasks", uncheck the top two options. Next and Finish
   
4. It'll open the readme and DOSBox-X proper. When it loads, read what it says on the screen. Typing EXIT or using File > Exit will quit. F11+F toggles FUllscreen.
   
5. Try typing the hotkeys it mentions, F11+F, F11+C, F11+M - then take a look at all of the options under the menu bar up top. Exit
   
6. Open Windows Explorer and head to C:\DOSBox-X\
   
7. Open dosbox-x.conf with Notepad and it lists all options fully documented
   
8. Your settings will be different. I changed Fulscreen = true and Monitor = 1 for my gaming monitor. Change the settings how you need them. Start DOSBox-X again and quit to make sure it's how you want it. If needed, the backup to this file is called dosbox-x.reference.full.conf in the same folder
   
9. Copy the code below, under the section dosbox-x.conf
   
10. Scroll to the bottom of the file and paste it into dosbox-x.conf - should be under the section [autoexec]
    
11. Quit & Save dosbox-x.conf

Some of the features allowed in the settings file:

• Your character's name when pressing ENTER at new game start.
  
• Naming your "fruit". By default this is "Slime Mold", but you can name it anything. The game doesn't add a plural name, meaning you could have 1 or 2 "Slime Mold".
  
• Creating a default macro. Must be re-typed each new-game unless set here.

To see a demo of what it's like creating these settings using the MKOPT.EXE file, great video.

Below are my settings found in ROGUE.OPT

To run the setting program. Run MKOPT.EXE in DOSBox-X

To heal. I suggest using a similar macro as below. The 12 s listed there means it'll press s 12 times. 12 Searches. MKOPT.EXE says you can also enter that as 12s, yet if you are attacked mid-way through running that 12s macro, you'll continue searching and getting hit after each search. Here you'll only be attacked once and that'll stop the macro if you're hit. Yes, you're still going to get hit once, but from what I've found it's the suggested way to heal. You'll learn where and when to heal with experience.

Rog-o-matic. It was designed to automatically beat Rogue and was found to consistently outperform any human player, even back in the early 1980's. The main thing it did differently was spending a lot of time healing up.

Choose whatever you want except. Just don't change the save file name unless you edit ROGUE.BAT accordingly.

Again. MKOPT.EXE is not allowed in this Steam version. This means for Steam's Rogue, you will have to type your name and enter your macro each game start.

1. Close the game
   
2. In Steam, right click Rogue -> Properties
   
3. Click the Launch Options drop down and change it from "Ask when starting game" to any other option. Meaning you are to change this to say either "Play Rogue" or "Play Rogue - Resume Saved Game", really doesn't matter which one as we're going to eliminate the need to ask you right now..
   
4. After changing the Launch Option, In the same Properties window under Installed Files on the left -> Browse
   
5. Open the folders "c" and then "ROGUE"
   
6. Right click "ROGUE.BAT" -> Edit
   
7. Right click "RESUME.BAT" -> Edit
   
8. Copy the code below, replace the entire contents of both files with it
   
9. Quit & Save these two .BAT files
   
10. Close the Properties window and have fun

To explain the Launch Options. Why are they setup like this? I don't really know.

The "Play Rogue" option will run ROGUE.BAT
The "Play Rogue - Resume Saved Game" will run RESUME.BAT
However by default it has Asks the player which one todo which is unlike any game I've played

Doesn't matter. If you followed the above steps the game will know if you're starting a new game or resuming a saved game since that .BAT file checks if the save game exists. (If you die your save game is deleted, so obviously you can't resume a game.)

• It is possible to do many things listed in the dosbox-x.conf, but instead on the command line. Here is the list of DOSBox-X command line arguments[dosbox-x.com].
  
  dosbox-x.exe -defaultdir C:\GAMES\ROGUE\ -prerun ROGUE.BAT -fs
  This maybe added to a future revision of the guide. It maybe easier to setup and it makes it possible to run multiple DOS games via DOSBox-X.
  
  
• Retro Rogue Colleciton[github.com]
  This is for sure worth the time for any Rogue fan to check out. It's a port of Rogue's source for modern systems. That means DosBox is not needed. It includes 4 versions of Rogue as well as Rog-O-Matic. It includes many great features, including recording games. DOSBox-X allows recording games as well. I don't consider it a 1 to 1 replacement for the original game yet, but I imagine it's very close and likely the same feature-wise.

• January 19, 2025 - added link to boxtron for Linux & Steam Deck users.
  
• August 24, 2024 - added link to a great guide in the spoiler section.
  
• June 13, 2024 - updated instructions for Steam version to make it clear what benefit there is to using this guide. added more quality of life instructions for making this guide easier to follow.
  
• January 26, 2024 - updated section for installing 1.49 to explain in detail how to change a file extension to work in Windows 10/11. Necessary as Windows 11 removed the ability to right click, create new text file.