Category: Roguelike Development

Roguelike Celebration 2018 is coming!

The Roguelike Celebration, perhaps the biggest roguelike-centered event in the world, is happening for the third time in 2018.

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The date has been set to October 6 and 7, and it will happen again at GitHub’s HQ in San Francisco, as it did last year. Get your tickets now for two days of awesome talks, meeting with roguelike players and developers, playing some games and having a lot of geek fun!

Also, the Call For Presenters is open until July 7, so if you think you have something interesting to share with the roguelike community, share your idea! Past two years have been full of great talks on a variety of topics. Check their website for the full archive of talks in the meantime too!

New Interview with Glenn Wichman

Last weekend I had a chance to share a trip to the Colombian Coffee Area with Glenn Wichman, one of the creators of the original Rogue (along with Michael Toy and Ken Arnold) and a veteran of the video games industry.

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On Sunday we did this small but hopefully interesting interview, in the middle of the Colombian nature. Some of the topics we talked about are:

  • Game Design challenges when incorporating new technologies.
  • “Roguelites” and diversity on game design elements.
  • Issues with current videogame distribution channels
  • The role of the Game Designer and some other related disciplines.
  • A message for the roguelike development community

Check it out here! You might also want to check the previous interview I had with him, 9 years ago!

Ongoing 7DRL Challenge

The challenge has started! Many entrants declared start date and game title. Announcement thread is over seventy posts by now but there is still time to proclaim participation until end of March 6th. A success thread for victorious challengers is already created.

Visit http://7drl.org/ weblog to read how development struggle goes or to learn that other authors are also desperately tracking down a bad pointer reference on the 167th hour.

The 2011 7DRL Challenge is Coming!

The 2011 7DRL Challenge, March 5 to 13

The 2011 7DRL Challenge Logo, by Nik Coughlin
Logo by Nik Coughlin

The time has almost come! Gather all your strengths and build a roguelike, be it your first one or your next one.

A good roguelike is an expression of pure gameplay: as a developer you can turn your ideas into games for the people to enjoy, without the constraints of 3d modeling or expensive graphics creation.

Developing a roguelike also allows you to portrait a theme within the limitations of abstract or simple gfx output, but having imagination as a tool to recreate infinite environments and stories

Summon your indie gamedev friends, be they roguedevs or not for this, the annual roguelike development party!

Links of interest:

ASCIIDreams Roguelike of the Year 2010 – Results

The results are in! going against all laws, conventions and best-practices of roguelike development, DarkGod rose and took the grand-prize for himself and the community around ToME-4. Congratulations!

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Dwarf Fortress and DoomRL continue holding strong into the hearts of the roguelikers.

Thanks to Mr. Doull @ ASCIIDreams for keeping the tradition.

There were 167 entries and 1675 votes. This is the top ten for 2010, congratulations all!

Check this article for the full ranking

Rank Roguelike Votes %
1 ToME 4.0.0 384 22,9%
2 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 294 17,6%
3 Dwarf Fortress 171 10,2%
4 DoomRL 95 5,7%
5 Rogue Survivor 69 4,1%
6 Angband 44 2,6%
7 Goblin Camp 34 2,0%
7 UnNetHack 34 2,0%
9 Brogue 32 1,9%
10 POWDER 31 1,9%

The Serial Killer Roguelike Hoax

After just a week of existence, and being featured in some respectable web publications and forums (in which it got lots of feedback), it has been revealed that the Serial Killer roguelike project was fake.

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The project claimed to pursuit the development of a highly detailed (DF-Level) simulation of murder including psychological traits and dealing with the forces of the law.

Following are the possible reasons of the developer to announce the unsuccessful end of this project:

  • He was doing an university project to study the reactions of people to such a controversial theme
  • He was just a high level troll with flash skills and some spare time
  • The project raised the expectations far too high and scared the hell out of the developer
  • Personal reasons caused the developer to dismiss it, fearing it would affect his life.
  • Someone hacked all of his accounts including bay12 and youtube, impersonated him and deleted everything (that person is probably seeking him physically now, to finish his cleaning rampage)

The news has been received with both relief and disappointment. The theme was disturbing, but everybody is free to pick the games they want to play (I would not play it)

Me myself, I’m sorry there are lots of other real projects which yell for attention and feedback for years, yet never receive the kind of input it wasted.

2010 Failure Rate of Roguelike Games

Lait posted his yearly analysis of roguelike games over r.g.r.d. He wrote:

So where does seven years of data put us? We are doing very well for roguelike creation – 6.75 new tracked roguelikes per month, a new peak. It is tempting to dismiss this as a 7DRL effect, but the Old column I think is correctly tracking the creation of larger projects. While it is a new high, I’d hesitate to call that a trend. I suspect we are seeing a continuation of the 30 new roguelikes a year rule identified last year.

Read the full analysis

The 2010 7DRL Challenge Evaluation Results

With fifty completed 7DRLs this year, some people wonder how they will have time to play them all! Fortunately, that is simple…

Just play one a week for the next year.


For those less dedicated, a team of evaluators was assembled to give all the roguelikes a once-over. We graded the roguelikes under six categories using a simple three point scale. We ensured every roguelike was graded by at least two reviewers, and aimed for most to have three reviewers.

After a long week of playing, we present our results!

Check them out here, at Roguetemple’s 7DRL Shrine! http://www.roguetemple.com/7drl/2010/

The Honorable Members of the Committee

  • @ Darren Grey
  • @ Ido Yehieli
  • @ Jeff Lait
  • @ Jice
  • @ Joseph Larson
  • @ Kaw
  • @ Michael Curran
  • @ Slash

This list is not meant to be an authoritative ranking of the games. If you dive in, you will see different reviewers often disagreed on the rankings.

Instead, it is a way for you to help select which 7DRLs are likely to have things of interest to you.

Specific comments were also written by reviewers. Note that these are criticism for the developer to better improve the game – please do not be unduly offended if they are nitpicky or consist of “I got killed by a ferret on the first screen”.

The categories are, with description of what a 3 means:

  • Completeness: Bug free, polished game with no features that feel like they are missing.
  • Aesthetics: Good looking, excellent controls and UI.
  • Fun: If you try any 7DRLs, try this one.
  • Innovation: Brings something fundamentally new to roguelikes.
  • Scope: Beyond what you think could have been done in seven days.
  • Roguelike: 3 means Roguelike, 2 means Roguelike-like, 1 means Not Roguelike. Each reviewer used their own personal definition here.

Thanks to all the members of the committee for their great efforts, we hope you enjoy it!