Comment by b0rsuk

Try POWDER. It's made practically by one person, and it's very well designed (inspired by Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup). It also has hands down the best writing in any roguelike. God system in particular is unique, all 5 or so gods evaluate your behavior at the same time. Gods like different actions, and whatever you do you will piss off some gods and delight others. It requires some spoilers to understand, but is very fun once you do. POWDER's implementation of Xom is intriguing - he's mentally unstable and changes his preferences every 1000 turns, first he wants you to act like a warrior, second he gets annoyed when you strike a monster in melee. Or even kill anything personally when he impersonates Pax...

But I digress. POWDER feels very much a designed roguelike, not something that evolved.