An increasingly common approach to roguelike map development today is to have content partially determined by so-called “prefabs,” with layouts which are hand-made rather than fully procedurally generated. Doing so gives a designer more control over the experience, or portions of it at least, without completely supplanting the advantages of roguelike unpredictability. Prefabs are a […]
The terrible curse of gamedev is that it’s really hard to finish a game when there’s always something that could be better. The great thing about gamedev is that there’s always something that could be better, meaning room for more new features and content to make players happy :D The previous round of major UI […]
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, […]
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 […]
Few roguelikes are without some kind of inventory system, as it’s a familiar and flexible way to provide access to the tools a player uses to overcome challenges. Regardless of however many items an inventory might contain–2, 26, 52, or something else–how it interacts with the rest of the mechanics, as well as how the […]
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