Topics

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7DRLs / [7DRL 2018][Success] Time To Die

« on: March 13, 2018, 12:01:42 AM »

Woo, I love making 7DRLs! This year I made a game about time manipulation, with the main aim being to have time mechanics that are simple and effective enough to use regularly in a tactical way. And altogether I'm very happy with how it came out.

Time To Die is a game about a time cop travelling through epochs to clean up weird anomalies in time. You shoot bullets and place bombs to hit enemies in their direction-based weak points, and you can pause and rewind time at will. Clever use of time manipulation is required, with some enemies needing to be hit from multiple directions simultaneously to be defeated.

Available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Any feedback welcome! So far people have founded it a little confusing and difficult, but I'm used to that each year

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7DRLs / 7DRL Reviews published

« on: April 08, 2017, 03:26:39 PM »

The reviews for this year's 7DRLs have been completed, and are published here:

http://roguetemple.com/7drl/2017/

There are 2+ reviews for over 80% of the 100 games released this year, with ratings on various factors. Personally I find Fun to be the most important

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / 7DRL Challenge 2017 set for 4-12 March

« on: January 11, 2017, 01:05:06 PM »

More details here: http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=7DRL_Challenge_2017

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7DRLs / The Trapped Heart

« on: March 14, 2016, 01:19:18 PM »

The Guardian of Earth is trapped, imprisoned by their own strength in an attempt to seal the Heart of Chaos. Now the Guardian of Air, wielding a Shard of Chaos, seeks to rescue their kindred spirit. But will either of them have to power to overcome prophesy? Chaos can only be overcome by great power or great sacrifice...

The Trapped Heart is my 7DRL with a luvvy-duvvy theme about two nature spirits fighting a lot of ectoplasm. It's hex-based, 1hp, where the player is killed by being surrounded and the enemies have directional shields protecting them. You can download it for Win/Mac/Linux here (ignore the payment request):

https://darrengrey.itch.io/the-trapped-heart

The big gameplay innovation is the directional shields, which means enemies only die if you can hit them from the right direction. Direct damage can be made through lightning bolts or enemies can be indirectly damaged through earth spells pushing them against walls or other enemies. This leads to very tactical gameplay and some interesting and fun bosses.

There's also a little more going on with the story and how to win, though unfortunately what's implemented is a lot lighter than I had planned. The game saves meta-content between runs, so play on one game can affect the next. Breaking out of this "cycle" to get a true victory requires the player to follow special conducts. I had hoped to enlargen this with further details and story and dialogue options, but I was far too constrained for time.

Overall it was a fairly difficult week. I started a new job recently and on weekday nights I was just far too burned out to write useful code (what code I did write was buggy as hell). Some of the technical challenges turned out to be way harder to implement that I expected.

Oh, and I had an artist on board that produced some lovely terrain sprites and player icons early on, but then failed to produce any monster sprites by the end of the week. So I had to ship with my own badly drawn artwork for the enemies :-/

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7DRLs / 7DRL Review Committee sign-up

« on: March 20, 2015, 10:53:42 PM »

We're about to kick off the review process for all of the 7DRLs this year. That need about 300 individual reviews, and for that we need reviewers! If you'd like to help out please fill in the following form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Nc16GIqxAXXz1bCb_uOF5U718snOQ4_WjZry4QFnDfU/viewform

Note that this means playing a lot of pretty woeful games, some of which are hard to even get working. But even if you can do just a few games it would be a big help.

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7DRLs / FireTail

« on: March 09, 2015, 03:57:14 PM »

The world is freezing. Glacial ice spreads across the surface, frost shards smothering the landscape.

You are the last of the fire spirits, possessed of a heart of flame and spreading a blazing trail wherever you walk. You must overcome the chilly sorcerers that are freezing the land and find the final tears of flame, whilst avoiding being surrounded by the encroaching ice. Only through the power of your fiery tail can you hope to succeed...

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Temple of the Roguelike / Ignore function

« on: July 02, 2014, 09:56:58 AM »

Is there an ignore function anywhere on the forum? Can't find one anywhere.

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7DRLs / 26 7DRL Highlights

« on: March 21, 2014, 04:49:31 PM »

I've written up a list of games that have stood out to me so far:

http://7drl.org/2014/03/21/7drl2014-26-quick-highlights/

Will be talking about a number of them on Roguelike Radio soon. Sorry for any cool ones I've missed, will get round to them soooon!

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7DRLs / 7DRL Reviews - Call for Sign-Ups!

« on: March 18, 2014, 02:19:12 AM »

Every year after the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge ends a team of developers and players group together to give every game a fair review. We're doing the same this year, and with over 120 successes it'll be quite the challenge. If you're able to help please sign up on the following sheet:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Nc16GIqxAXXz1bCb_uOF5U718snOQ4_WjZry4QFnDfU/viewform

Note you need a RogueTemple forum account to sign up - this is because we do organisation in a closed forum there and we'll need to grant you access. The e-mail address should preferably be one I can share a Google Doc with - that's part of the organisation too

What we'll need from reviewers:
 - Reviews of at least 6 games (though just 6 is fine if that's all you can do) with about an hour spent on each game
 - Reviews should be constructive but fair and honest. They needn't be long - bullet points are fine.
 - Scores from 1-3 on the categories of Aesthetics, Completeness, Fun, Innovation, Scope and Roguelikeness. There will be formal guidance on how to rate these.
 - Ideally you'll have experience of playing 7DRLs in the past and thus will have some idea of what to expect from such games.

We aim to get 2 or 3 reviews for every game, ensuring any hidden gems are rooted out and every game gets the feedback it deserves. Your help in this would be much appreciated! Also, you'll get to play some cool games

Any questions feel free to ask!

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7DRLs / 7DRL2014: DataQueen success - destroy AIs, repair servers, protect the data...

« on: March 15, 2014, 11:53:13 PM »

I'm finished! Came out nicely, though as usual it might turn out to be way harder than I think... You can find a Windows build here:

http://gamesofgrey.com/games/dataqueen/dataqueen-win.zip

Linux/Mac and more media stuff to come after I get some sleep. Lots of cool mechanics in here, really happy with how the design came together!

Looking forward to playing everyone else's now too

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7DRLs / Success/failure terminology

« on: March 06, 2014, 01:09:58 PM »

Every year we get a lot of clearly unfinished games declared as "successes" at the end of the challenge. I can't help but wonder if a change of terminology might help... At the moment at the end of the week you must say if you are a "Success" or a "Failure". Personally I have no problems admitting failure - years of roguelike experience have driven the expectation of failure into me repeatedly - but perhaps others struggle to admit this? If you've been working hard for 7 days it's not easy to come out and say you're a failure.

I suggest that instead of labelling games "Success" and "Failure" we label them "Completed" or "Unfinished". It's easier to admit your game is "Unfinished", and the term might encourage those that don't manage to complete to carry on and make something complete outside of the challenge process.

For this to work we would need to change the labels on Slash's registration site and in the headings on the RogueBasin pages.

Thoughts?

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Weekly roguelike challenge on Reddit

« on: August 13, 2013, 09:37:58 AM »

I've started a new weekly feature on /r/roguelikes:

http://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/comments/1jzfn3/roguelike_game_challenge_week_1_ending/

Every week there'll be a new challenge featuring a different game. This week it's Ending - challenge is to beat it in gauntlet mode with as low a score as possible (low score is better). The whole point is to introduce people to roguelikes they haven't played before, so we'll keep featuring more obscure games in future.

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Other Announcements / Roguelike Bundle

« on: July 28, 2013, 04:27:16 PM »

I've been tying with the idea of a Roguelike Bundle for a long time, and have been camping on the www.roguelikebundle.com domain. The original idea was linked with the Roguelike Incubator, with a select few chosen games meeting a number of criteria like open source, accessibility, etc.

Well, out with that idea, let's get something more inclusive. Some good chaps on Reddit have put together this torrented bundle, and it would be nice to build on this.

The idea is to include a large number of reasonably complete and playable roguelikes, with extras bundled in that can make them easier to play and a profile for each on the web-site. The intention is to have a large group of roguelikes that newcomers to the genre can be pointed towards, and which even older members will find some new gems in. If it's particularly good we can hopefully get some media attention for the whole genre and get some of the lesser known roguelikes some well-deserved attention. I'm putting together a list here, with additions welcome. There's some discussion of the list on Reddit.

What I need from people:
 - Help updating that list with details for each item
 - General ideas for where this should go, potential problems
 - Help with the web-site, including making profiles for each game. The site essentially needs completely redoing.
 - Hosting? Doing it via torrents would be nice, but is a little less accessible and can't be updated with new games so easily.
 - What games should be included? I'm thinking just polished and reasonably traditional games, and in future having additional bundles like a "Leftfield Collection" that would be games with unusual mechanics.

Zeno has also made a front-end launcher for the bundle, which you can find here. Consider this the Steam for roguelikes Feedback on this is very welcome.

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Other Announcements / 7DRL Reviewer Results!

« on: July 08, 2013, 01:55:32 PM »

It has been a long journey, but we have finally released the 7DRL reviewer results!

http://www.roguetemple.com/7drl/2013/

Blog post with a few details:

http://www.roguetemple.com/2013/07/08/7drl-challenge-2013-evaluation-results/

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Other Announcements / Questions for IRDC on Roguelike Radio

« on: June 06, 2013, 01:52:52 AM »

I'm going to try and get at least one Roguelike Radio recording at IRDC this weekend.  Any questions for the assorted devs?