Comment by djao

Nethack is what you get when you take a team of developers and have them focus on gameplay to the exclusion of all else. No graphics, music, marketing, apps, action sequences, or profit motive. Just pure gameplay, with a richness of interactions and possibilities unmatched by more polished modern games. Nethack is so well balanced that, for most players, being gifted the three most powerful items in the game from the start barely affects your winning chances.

AI researchers think NetHack is interesting [1, 2]. You should too!

[1] https://proceedings.mlr.press/v176/hambro22a/hambro22a.pdf

[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.00690