Cast your votes: Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2012

It is time for another Roguelike of the Year poll hosted by Ascii Dreams. Would be voters need to brave almost three hundred checkboxes! With many indie and commercial developers picking up the roguelike formula for their creations the number is likely to go even higher in future.

The assortment of games varies greatly in roguelikeness. Some clearly belong under the label. Many embrace the nature but are willing to move away from the genre core. Quite a few stray so much they are really roguelike-likes at best. Even further on the scale is a peculiar group of games. These have so few things common with roguelikes that calling them such has no merit. However, which titles fall into the last category will vary from person to person so it is good that Ascii Dreams poll stays very inclusive.

Since the amount of titles to vote for is so great readers may find themselves not recognizing the majority of them. This is caused mainly by the sheer numbers of games. Add to this the commercial titles which can be truly appreciated only by those who purchased them. Mix in games available exclusively for mobile devices and the result might be irregular vote spread. Is this going to visibly affect the results? Soon, we shall see.

The 2012 7DRL Challenge Evaluation Results

7DRL Challenge 2012This year brought sixty-three completed 7DRLs. The number seems overwhelming at first but to play them all one merely needs to try 1,21153846153846153846153 games a week for the next year. Not all are willing to show such dedication. For those, a team of evaluators was assembled to give all the roguelikes a once-over. Their work is now complete. The committee proudly presents you the results. http://www.roguetemple.com/7drl/2012/ However, if you dive deeper into assigned scores you will find even they disagree on what exactly is most worth playing. For example second place is occupied by no less than five titles.

Each 7DRLs was judged under six categories. Score for each rank is either 1, 2 or 3 where higher is better. Getting a 2 is a adequate achievement in first five categories. The last criterion is called roguelikeness. Here 3 means roguelike, 2 is for games only partially fitting the genre and 1 for the rest. Note reviewers used their personal opinion on what constitutes a roguelike. Thorough explanation of the categories can be found under results table.

The Honorable Members of the Committee

  • @ Todd Page, Robo-ambassador
  • @ Michał Bieliński
  • @ Risto, Mysterious Northern Coder
  • @ Michael Curran, Knight Burzmali
  • @ Z, The Hydra Slayer
  • @ Jice, Marquis of Doryen
  • @ Slash, Priest of the Temple of Roguelike
  • @ Jeff Lait, Serf in Zincland
  • @ Darren Grey, Scholar of the roguelike world
  • @ Joshua Day
  • @ Ido Yehieli, Lord of Tametick
  • @ Joseph Hewitt, Ataraxia Overlord
  • @ Oddmunds, Knight of Tametick

Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year 2011 winners!

Voting for best roguelike games at Ascii Dreams has finished today. This time almost three thousand people have voted! Undisputed winner is:

Tales of Maj'Eyal logo

Tales of Maj’Eyal

Following are the 20 first games (note we have two ties):

1. ToME 4 with 702 votes

2. Dungeons of Dredmor with 612 votes

3. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup with 486 votes

4. JADE with 431 votes

5. Desktop Dungeons with 391 votes

6. Dwarf Fortress with 373 votes

7. Brogue with 240 votes

8. The Binding of Isaac with 199 votes

9. DoomRL: Doom, the Roguelike with 178 votes

10. Cataclysm with 170 votes

11. Legends of Yore with 94 votes

12. X@COM with 90 votes

13. Caves of Qud with 87 votes

14. UnReal World with 79 votes

15. Angband with 68 votes

15. Cardinal Quest with 68 votes

17. POWDER with 66 votes

18. Infra Arcana with 62 votes

19. Prospector RL with 49 votes

19. Rogue Survivor with 49 votes

2010 Annual Roguelike Release Party: Results

It’s been more than a month, still, I present you the results of the first ever ARRP, directly from roguebasin! Short reviews will be made for each one in the following week,

IRDC 2009 is coming!

The Second International Roguelike Development Conference is coming! While some votes are being cast over r.g.r.d. for the location of the main event (discussion has barely started), it has been proposed that many micro-events be held on different cities all around the world roughly at the same time!

If you would be interested in participating or helping host such a meeting, please fill the Clustered Model survey, so we can find out how many neraby roguelike lovers could meet!

What is this conference? if you are a roguelike developer or player seeking to have a nice time with fellow roguelikers, and probably watch one or two roguelike development related conferences, this is your oportunity!

Berlin International Roguelike Development Conference 2008

And so it was that several roguedevs met at the historical city of Berlin for the first IRDC on September 2008. There were not many, but it is quality which matters, and we are looking forward for future events.

You can download the videos and related material at http://sheep.art.pl/misc/irdc/

These are some of the presentations:

  • Christopher Brandt: How not to write a roguelike – a review of his own experience trying to write DungeonHunter contrasted with his success on Aviel’s Stand
  • Ido Yehieli: Description of facing-based field of view, hearing radii, and their impact on UI and gameplay.
  • Jeff Lait: Survey of different methods of discretization and its gameplay implications.
  • Radomir: Introduction to Python as an effective roguelike platform with examples from Z-Day.
  • David Ploog: Remarks on Roguelike Design (Not Coding)
  • Mario Donick: Symbolism on roguelikes

The so-called “Cabal of Elite Roguelikers” also announced an official roguelike re-definition, “The Berlin Interpretation”,  based on the current roguetemple definition; you can read and discuss it here

Have fun watching the videos!