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Category Archives: Design

“Post-Balance” Cogmind Item Expansion

Beta 11 was a huge milestone in Cogmind development, having completed a comprehensive review of all items and their stats and mechanics in order to rebalance where necessary, a process I wrote about in detail last year. The results since then have been great, but what comes next? Fun. Lots and lots of fun. Beta […]

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Special Mode Design, Polymind Part 2: Players, Stats, and the Future

Last time in part 1 I covered everything leading up to Cogmind’s Winter 2022/Polymind event, so architecture, UX design, balance, multitile robot considerations etc. Now let’s take a look at the aftermath! After Polymind was finally released and I could take a breather, I had a lot of fun seeing other players dive into it, […]

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Special Mode Design, Polymind Part 1: Architecture, Features, and Balance

At the end of 2022 I launched Cogmind’s most involved special event yet: Polymind (not to be confused with my earlier unrelated 7DRL, POLYBOT-7!). The release announcement already covers the basics, so I’ll assume you’re familiar with those already and avoid rehashing most of that here. Instead let’s talk development! Now that the event is […]

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On Backtracking in Roguelikes

More than once over the years we’ve had discussions in the roguelike development community regarding the idea of “backtracking,” and with good reason: whether or not to allow it has quite a lot of implications! Here we’re primarily talking about the player revisiting earlier floors on their journey, rather than backtracking within a single map […]

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The Scrap Engine

Last time I wrote about item variants and randomization in roguelikes, and how Cogmind is purely based on a large set of static items, but more recently I’ve been running an experiment to play with not-so-static items. The entire mechanic revolves around a single new utility: the Scrap Engine. The Scrap Engine operates like the […]

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