@Play 78
One of the little things I've been working on, like, during the long hours when I'm not working on @Play, has lately been a roguelike encyclopedia. Not like Wikipedia, or even the many game specific wikis, this would primarily be a work that would relate, in a way, all the major games to each other. So, for example, an entry on POTIONS would give their general place in roguelikes and roguelike design, then might give more interesting examples from some of the major games. Some other stuff would be in there as well. Some of the entries I figured might look interesting generally, and were entertaining to write at least, so I turned some of them into @Play #78.
Next time... I'm thinking it's been a while since I had a look at the output of 7DRL. There are so many cool and awesome games to come out of that. A couple of years ago I played almost all of the 7DRL games that year and wrote something on all of them for @Play. Unfortunately that ended up taking much too long to finish, so I'm probably only going to focus on highlights this time out.
A collection of John Harris' various columns, articles and other game-related writing.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
@Play 77: Rules of roguelike design
@Play #77
It's been over two months since the last column, a state that I blame on general poor spirits, personal projects and (to a degree) the twin scourges of Minecraft and Desktop Dungeons. The next column shouldn't take nearly as long, as it will consist mostly of excerpts of one of those personal projects, an encyclopedia of roguelike games. (Which complete document will probably go for sale on Lulu or Amazon or some such.)
I should note that the title, "The Eight Rules of Roguelike Design," was not my idea. I don't think there are only eight, or as many as eight, or whatever. I have eight listed in the column but I think it's fairly obvious from the introduction that I don't actually consider them particularly hard rules, although if you break one you should know what you're doing, certainly. I intended it as a kind of guide to how these games work to provide interesting game choices. Rogue in particular shows a lot of nuance in that area, which indicates to me that the developers must have spent a lot of time devising it.
It's been over two months since the last column, a state that I blame on general poor spirits, personal projects and (to a degree) the twin scourges of Minecraft and Desktop Dungeons. The next column shouldn't take nearly as long, as it will consist mostly of excerpts of one of those personal projects, an encyclopedia of roguelike games. (Which complete document will probably go for sale on Lulu or Amazon or some such.)
I should note that the title, "The Eight Rules of Roguelike Design," was not my idea. I don't think there are only eight, or as many as eight, or whatever. I have eight listed in the column but I think it's fairly obvious from the introduction that I don't actually consider them particularly hard rules, although if you break one you should know what you're doing, certainly. I intended it as a kind of guide to how these games work to provide interesting game choices. Rogue in particular shows a lot of nuance in that area, which indicates to me that the developers must have spent a lot of time devising it.
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