Elona is a freeware roguelike made by a Japanese developer named Noa. It's set in a fantasy world with bits of sci fi thrown in and the occasional weird and/or quirky thing, such as getting a little girl as a pet, marrying her and riding her as a mount or setting a nuke to blow up in a busy city and rake in the negative karma you get, then getting horribly murdered by guards when you're just trying to pay your taxes. Do your taxes.
The development of Elona stopped in 2010, but a modder by the name of Ano picked it up and made Elona+, which is the recommended way to play the game. E+ adds two new continents to the base game in addition to new items, mechanics, balances, bug fixes and so on. You get the idea.
Ano's Google Translate-tier English translation is pretty terrible at times, and the game is outright untranslated at some points, but it's still very much playable as is. However, a user named AnnaBannana on the Elona Wikia made a mod for E+ called Elona Custom. It adds proper translations to a lot of things and comes with optional settings you can turn on or off in settings. It also restores the cutscenes that were cut from the English translation of the game. Note: You need to install Elona Custom on top of E+. Just downloading Custom won't work.
Snail tourist, obviously. Take a quick read through the Elona Wikia if you're unsure about something. It's more fun running in with a trial and error mentality though. Your first character shouldn't be the one you'll settle in with. Try things, go wild.
Seriously. Read the Wikia. There are a lot of things in this game that are confusing or not really explained. It'll help you out.
I've been running Custom 1.62.2 with E+ 1.63 for a while now with no problems. You don't get the things 1.63 added, sure, but it's like playing E+ 1.62. Anna said she'd release a new version sometime early December.
Carter Harris
I didn't think it added much when the death messages were still in, but now I miss them more than anything.
Liam James
There's been talk of setting up a new server for the chat and death message system, but nothing has come out of it so far. It'd be great to have it back, but don't get your hopes up too high.
Matthew Bennett
I figured as much. I miss moongates, too, but I hear you can still visit some of the moongate rooms.
Chase Lewis
Yeah, I still see moongates pop up here and there. Haven't tried going through any so I can't say if they work.
They're like relics. Seeing one always brings back memories of people dying to the stupidest thing and memories of accidentally bumping into the box that lets you vote for the best character name, only to see Drunken Oni Ibuki Suika permanently at the top. Now nothing happens when you bump into it.
Evan Collins
God, I have some good and bad memories of jumping into random moongate rooms. Most of the time I got fucked, but occasionally, I'd get a room that was just really nicely decorated or if I was even luckier, a room with enemies that gave out wishes every time you killed them. Good times. As for the voting box, I'll say I miss bumping into it and seeing Devil King Eddie Murphy near the top.
Noah Nelson
It hurts, you will never see so and so get killed over and over by a rogue bandit and slowly lose his shit worse and worse.
John Peterson
What now? Do I start fresh, or use a gene with about half of my OP gear?
The grind to get back to where I was seems pretty painful.
