…Notably MPRDB bears quite a lot similarites to Rogue. Dungeon is discovered in exactly same fashion. One square of visibility in corridors while whole rooms are revealed upon entering. Dungeoneering hero is described by only two main attributes: body and agility.

Read the full review.

• DungeonMinder, Epic! Monster Quest! Hyper!, Underbooks, Excitable Digger, Fortress of the Goblin King, Expedition, and some other 7DRLs got bugfixes versions
• CymonGames has reviewed all of the 7DRL challengers and has three polls set up to congratulate the best entries
• The 2009 7DRL Playing competition has started on rec.games.roguelike.misc

And so it was that 45 brave challengers entered the fifth seven day roguelike challenge!

Of those, 25 returned alive, claiming to have a finished and playable game… Now it is your turn to judge!

The Newcomers (First 7DRL Challenge)

• Adam Gatt: DungeonMinder
• deej: Excitable Digger
• destroysound: Whispers in the Void
• Deveah: Pink Ninja
• Ed Kolis: Decimation
• Elig: Backwards Gravity
• flend: DDRogue
• Florian Diebold: Fortress of the Goblin King
• guesst: The Favored
• Ido: Fruits of the Forest
• idontexist: True God
• jab: Persist
• Legend of Angband: dL1
• Mary Haas and James Madison: Nyctos
• Nils Fagerburg: Cypress Tree Manor
• Numeron: Domination
• purpleflayer: chickhack
• Rick Clark: Escape From Lab 42
• s.chiu: Fist of the Rogue Warrior
• Sir_Lewk: TetRLs
• Xecutor: SpiritsRL

Experienced (2 7DRL Challenges)

• buub0nik & sinoth: Epic! Monster Quest: Hyper
• Christopher Brandt: Underbooks

Gentleman (3+ 7DRL Challenges)

• Jeff Lait: Jacob’s Matrix
• Slash: Expedition

Check the games and give them feedback on the roguetemple forums!

For a groundbreaking number, 41 roguedevs have accepted the challenge! We’re all gonna have a lot of cool games to play next week  :)

• Fruits of the Forest by Ido Yehieli
• TetrisRL by Sir_Lewk
• GrimRL by Nik Coughlin
• Pink Ninja by Deveah
• AbstractRL by jimmy aberg
• Stones of Chaos: the True God by idontexist
• Fl@shpoint by edwardoka
• The Favored by guesst
• Nyctos by Mary Haas and James Madison
• When Zombies Attack!  by David A
• Murder in Moscow by Mike Judge
• Underbooks by Christopher Brandt
• Decimation by Ed
• The Lion King by Darren Grey
• Whispers in the Void by destroysound
• Unnamed attempt by Sherm Pendley
• Environmental Energies by Gamer_2k4
• Hydrosphere by HexDecimal
• Expedition by Slash
• Fist of the Rogue Warrior by s.chiu
• Unnamed attempt by Nils
• Robot Rebellion by Emile
• MultiRL by Nathan Stoddard
• Unnamed attempt by chr.m.charles
• Epic! Monster Quest: Hyper by buub0nik
• Planets of Elderlore by Altefact
• A Roguelike by h.j.l.jones
• Jacob’s Matrix by Jeff Lait
• Escape from Lab 42 by rdc
• Nidhoggr by Michal Bielinski
• Quarterlight by Phil O’Neill
• Fortress of the Goblin King by Florian Diebold
• DDRogue by flend
• Persist by jab
• dL1 by Legend of Angband
• Catacombs of the Soulthief by Derrick Creamer
• DungeonMinder by Adam Gatt
• Tales of Ezcyria by Stein
• SpiritsRL by Xecutor
• DukeRL by corremn
• chickhack by purpleflayer

Find full info and links at this roguetemple thread

An so it was, that roguelike authors were faced again with the grueling challenge of making a complete roguelike within one hundred and sixty eight hours.

The time for 2009 7DRL Challenge is on!

A Seven Day Roguelike (7DRL) can be written at any time.  However, a general agreement was reached that it would be fun to schedule a specific week for a challenge.  This allows the various authors to know that others are also desperately tracking down a bad pointer reference on the 167th hour.

Now, we must choose a week.

[..]

As per tradition, three weeks have been selected.  January is right out, as that is not enough warning.  Same goes for first week of February.  The following two weeks can easily run into Valentines, and I don’t want any angry significant others tracking me down.

Thus, the available weeks are:

1) February 21st to March 1st
2) February 28th to March 8th
3) March 7th to March 15th

Now head to rgrd and vote! and remember… We are working, obviously, on the honour system.

Ok, this year we had 23 challengers, 9 winners, 6 failures and 8 runaways. Congratulations to all the winners and better luck next year for the rest!

Next week will be the official 7DRL Playing week, as was the last year… just to play and review these 7DRLs!

Without further ado, here you have the list of official winners!

chrysalis by sinoth – Completed: http://sinoth.net/chrysalis.zip

The goal is to destroy the 10 bases scattered all over the world. You do so by killing the base power core ‘B’ that is somewhere inside each base. You can press ‘r’ to turn on base radar that points you to where the remaining bases are.

Countryside Zomband by zooptek – Completed: http://www.zooptek.net/drupal/?q=node/8

Player enters suburbs when they escape the city. Suburbs have a different random map generation.

Fatherhood by Jeff Lait – Completed: http://www.zincland.com/7drl/fatherhood

As the name suggests, in Fatherhood you play the role of a father who has an important task to perform. That task is the stopping of the flood waters (or on some maps, the fires) that threaten to wash away his homeland. The tension is that you have another implicity task: to be a good father. Your three children are also in the world, running about, either helping or hindering as is their whim.

TrapRogue by Nate – Completed: http://test.clockwatch.info/nate879/TrapRogue.zip

Your goal is to find the Axe of Verwiz deep in the dungeon and evade traps.

MegamanRL by Slash – Completed: http://slashie.net/megamanRL

Use z to jump, x to fire, s to setup

Dungeon Climb by Heck Ruler – Completed: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dungeonclimb/

You have been cast down into a chasm and left for dead. Climb out before you starve to death. Features: An opening movie, 3D map, line of sight, climbing, jumping, falling, falling damage, hunger, food. It’s almost fun!

Numbers by Robson – Completed: http://iceyboard.no-ip.org/projects/numbers/

Numbers is an educational roguelike, created in seven days. It is designed to test and improve your basic maths skills.

Tribe by Kadwell – Completed: http://irrasjonal.net:8080/7drl/tribe/

Deadline in ten minutes, so I’ll be brief. I have completed my 7DRL project about leading a tribe of goblins in defending against an entirely unprovoked attack by a seemingly endless series of so-called “heroes”. It has a strong emphasis on using NPCs to your advantage.

TimeRogue by GreyKnight – Completed: http://greyfire.org/?p=timerogue

Rogue with time-travel, basically

Congratulations again!

6 more brave roguedevs have accepted the 7DRL challenge!

Space Marine type RL by Corremn

You are a mercenary marine that recruits other mercs and take on bad stuff and shit.

“thats a zergling, Leister, smaller type of Zerg…, they wouldn’t be out this far, unless … aww shit!’

A Knight in the Dungeon by Gerry Quinn

The main character operates like a chess piece of sorts – he probably has several lives and normally moves like a king in chess, killing pieces he moves onto. Items or skills may award him special moves or attacks.

ArabiaRL by Andy Pymont

You will play Aladdin, aiming to escape the depths of the cave after being left there by the vizier who has just run off with your lamp, your genie and your girl.

Countryside Zomband by zooptek

The goal is not to update or fix the existing Zomband, but to make a whole new expansion for it. In original Zomband, the goal was to escape the city. My work for the 7DRL challenge will be what happens after your character escapes the city. Although both are in the same executable, the new region your character enters after escaping the city will have all new level generation, tiles, items, monsters, and player abilities.

1DRL by Zaratustra

Started development.

Gang City Brawler by Timothy R. Dean et all

The inspiration comes mostly from 80’s arcade brawler games and to a lesser extent the movies about the punk kids of that time. The overall objective of the game is to eradicate all the gangs in the city by taking out the gang leaders using bare fists, street weapons and even the environment itself as a weapon.

Following the 7DRL phenomenon pre 7DRL challenge (6 projects), 11 developers (for now) have decided to jump into the challenge! this, is their history.

RogueTCG (or possibly RoguEMon!) by Lochok

My goal is to write the RogueTCG (Trading card game) – in which the goal will be to use your RoguEMon cards (your RoguEMen as it were) to battle your way through the foyer, sales and administration to confront the CEO to have your custom card produced.

Simple Flash Rogue by failRate

I intend to make a super-simple Rogue-like in Flash that will save game state both locallly and on a remote server, so I can play at home or away. The latest version will always be found at http://failrate.com/b/7DRL.html

Return to Sorsaria by Krice

This game is set in alternative reality where The Avatar died, sadly. The player jumps into Sosaria through moon gate and finds a world full of hostile creatures.

TrapRogue by Nate

You’ll have to get an artifact from the dungeon and evade lots of traps. I’ll let you be surprised about the rest :)

Rogue Batallion by Ed Kolis

My concept is “Rogue Battalion” – it’s a roguelike in a modern warfare setting, where “Captain @” is the commander of an army battalion. The main unique feature is that of Vehicles

Faterhood by Jeff Lait

The name of the game is “Fatherhood”

SomethingWithZombies by Mr. Red Sunshine

Don’t yet know the goal or the proper Theme. Something with Zombies, biological weapons, a mysterious corporation and an accident. Zombies don’t require much ai ;-)

chrysalis by sinoth

The general game concept is that you start as a weak insect-like creature (I invision it as a zergling (COPYRIGHT BLIZZARD)) and you must destroy the military bases of humans that have invaded your planet.

Gameplay will revolve around destroying fortified bases randomly scattered on a generated world. There will be no dungeon levels up and down, but instead one large map that you can traverse seamlessly.

Unnamed by chukGren

Basically, it will be a forced fight to the death between some number of combatants in a play area that gets smaller as time elapses. The catch is that the combatants all knew each other beforehand so some of them are reluctant to attack others… and they will only start doing so past some psychological tipping point (time, people attacking them, damage, etc).

Undisclosed by Slash

I have started coding my roguelike.
Actually, I havent… but the time is running already, isnt it? :)

Unnamed by Nick Beam

I started a couple hours ago. It’s loosely based in the Magi-Nation universe, a trading card game and game boy game from ~2001. I’m using my Tarn (http://github.com/jdp/tarn) engine to build it. I’m still not sure about the exact story or point of the game, but I’m sure it’ll come to me by the time I finish the subsystems. :<

So, get ready for it if you are participating.

Dont remember what a 7DRL is, had a potion of erase memory recently? go to roguetemple’s 7DRL shrine, which will be populated by roguelikes very soon :)

Jhon Harris, from Gamasutra, has interviewed Tarn Adams, developer of Dwarf Fortress. The interview covers details about the history of the game, and goes as far as discussing some features of its inspiring random world generator and simulated fluid physics. Check the interview

The first overall goal of the world generator is to create enough information to produce a basic biome display. A lot of initial attempts at a world generator will start with things like “I need to lay down some forests, and some mountains, and some rivers, and some deserts…” and then when you end up with a jungle next to a desert, or a desert next to a swamp in an unlikely way, it’s difficult to fix.

Yep, I know what you mean Mr. Adams; also, would be interesting to compare JADE and DF world generators :)

[...]
Jhon Harris: Right. Permadeath is generally a roguelike concept, of course.

Tarn Adams: Yeah, I’ve seen some of those 7DRL contests. It’s too bad it takes so much time to undertake a large project. Time is really the only barrier for a lot of people.
[...]

It is! We are one week away from the challenge… are we ready yet?