7 Day Roguelike - Don't ASCII, Don't Tell

[Screw Danlon]

So, the 7 Day Roguelike Challenge is starting this weekend again, and since we don’t have a thread for it, I thought I’d see whether anyone is planning on either participating or watching. I'm thinking I might actually try to compete this year.

For those who don't know, a roguelike is - traditionally - a free turn-based game in top-down ASCII format, that's essentially about exploring a procedurally generated dungeon and fighting the monsters inside for loot. Things like procedural generation, permadeath and hunger mechanics are common features.
Roguebasin has a pretty good description:

Some of the most common elements in roguelikes are:

• The User Interface: ASCII display of a tiled world has become a distinctive feature of roguelikes.
• The Game World: random world generation may be the most common feature of roguelike games. They usually provide little plot, and instead focus on creating unique layouts.
• The Gameplay: turn-based gameplay and dungeon hack are most often proposed.

Even among the "major roguelikes", it is not uncommon for one or several of the above guidelines to be broken, such as ASCII character display (Many offer a sprite mode and options.) or plotlessness. (ADOM is heavy on plot.)

Though, these days, all sorts of takes on the roguelike have showed up - everything from a puzzle roguelike called Road Not Taken to a survival roguelike called Wayward to a hexagonal tactical roguelike called Morphblade. And of course, most people are familiar with the ever increasing genre of rogue-lites which take roguelike concepts and adapt them to non-roguelike games - things like Spelunky, FTL, Nuclear Throne, Slay the Spire, and arguably Demon's Souls (though not the Dark Souls games).

Anyway, 7DRL is a game jam wherein people attempt to make a roguelike within 7 days. And because of this, the games tend to be much smaller in scope than a lot of the traditional roguelikes, which may be dozens or hundreds of hours long. But they often lead to interesting new ideas and takes on the genre.

So, if you're going to try participating, let us know how it goes. And if any interesting games come out of the jam and you find one, post it here.

Here's a link to the catalog of the previous entries, by year: http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Seven_Day_Roguelike_Challenge