Recs.
Updated
Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead is a classic styled ASCII roguelike game for PC, Linux and Mac.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Actively developed and open-source
The game is still in active development meaning there are devs responsible for adding features as well as fixing bugs. This is on top of the fact that the game is completely open-source meaning anyone can help with the development as well as use the code for their own projects.
Pro Being in constant active developed allows the game to constantly grow
Experimental releases exit a few times in a single day. Many people are working on finding bugs, and developers are quickly fixing them and adding new features. This makes for a situation where the game is constantly growing and improving.
Pro Classic computer gameplay that offers a lot of nostalgia
Get taken back to when games were completely made of ascii letters and your imagination. Venture forth as an @ and survive the wild. With the classic ASCII art, it is hard to ignore that this is not a graphical powerhouse, but of course that is part of the fun, allowing your imagination to fill in this void.
Pro Deep Fully Character Customization
You can have almost every profession/"lifestyle" you can even think of like a hobo, car dealing, weeb, trained high techology soldier, skilled sinper, chief, or being naked. Character trait allows you to have an extra peak to improve the quality of your character life such as fast healing, pain resistant, night vision or even psychopath or give your character some disability (in exchange for positive trait point) to kill your character faster in the run for example , getting allergies from eating any type of fruit, meat, vegetable or all three of them, completely deaf, being ugly or can't read a book at all. Mutant your character (by something) to becoming an unimaginable creature with tentacle leg/arm, turtle sell on the back, horn attracts to the chest, spiky skin with cat ear.
Pro Emergent storytelling
Every gameplay is different due to the massive random world generation and in depth mechanics. One playthrough you could be a hunter surviving off the wilds, in another one you build a Death Mobile with high caliber auto turrets on the roof, bulletproof glass and cameras. There's always non-scripted fun and unpredictable stories that emerge from this type of game.
Cons
Con Lacking hardcore survival feel
The game gets to be rather easy once you spend a little time with it. Basements full of everything one needs to survive in every other house, and stores that look like they were left as seem out of place since in a disaster scenario most items would probably have been taken already.
You can tweak the options to suit a more hardcore experience if you so desire. The options allow for a wide variety of difficulty and playstyles.