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Author Archives: Kyzrati

Weaving Narratives into Procedural Worlds, Part 2: Characteristics

In Part 1 I shared several areas where I believe roguelikes can benefit from the inclusion of story elements. Then comes the hard part: actually doing it :) Because there are certainly a number of ways story can worsen a roguelike experience, the next step is to identify the characteristics of a good roguelike narrative, […]

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Weaving Narratives into Procedural Worlds, Part 1: Value

There’s been very little discussion of Cogmind’s story here on the blog, which belies its informative role and importance throughout the alpha development process. In fact, following the mediocre stock sci-fi back story given to the 7DRL, on rebooting the project in 2013 the very first stretch of Cogmind development was actually devoted solely to […]

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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 […]

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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, […]

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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 […]

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