Official development blog

Yearly Archives: 2016

Roguelike Celebration 2016, the Experience

For years I’ve wanted to participate in IRDC, but they’ve always been held in Europe, or as of last year the US East Coast as well. Both destinations are too far away and too expensive for me from here in East Asia, so I definitely paid close attention when news first popped up of a […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 2 Responses

Ability/Effect Systems and Scripted Content

While most roguelikes include basic attack and defense mechanics as a core player activity, the real challenges are introduced when gameplay moves beyond bump-combat and sees the player juggling a more limited amount of unique resources in the form of special abilities, magic, consumables, and other effect-producing items. Just as they challenge the player, however, […]

Posted in Mechanics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Alpha Release Cycle: Running a Successful EA Program

Just last week I put out Cogmind’s tenth alpha release, and as we speed towards the end of the open alpha period, now is a good opportunity to look back at the very deliberate pattern behind the development of each release, a repeating cycle that has continued for over a year now. And not just […]

Posted in Gamedev | Tagged , | 2 Responses

Tutorials and Help: Easing Players into the Game

With a generally lower barrier to add content compared to other games, roguelikes have a tendency to be packed with features and mechanics, and while that doesn’t characterize every roguelike out there (notably 7DRLs and other quick hobby projects), there is an important need to help new players overcome the initial barriers to learning a […]

Posted in Design | Tagged , , , , | 7 Responses

Roguelike Celebration--See you in San Francisco?

I’ve always wanted to go to an IRDC (International Roguelike Developers Conference), but they’ve always been in Europe, not easy for me to reach from way out here in East Asia. More recently IRDC has also made its way into the US, but always out on the East Coast, so still not quite within my […]

Posted in Meta | Tagged , , | 2 Responses