Firstly, my apologies for the lack of updates these last few months. Job-hunting, house-hunting and the new podcast have all leeched my time away. This update covers activities for the whole of the last three months.

Major News

Roguelike Radio podcast
     A new weekly podcast has started focusing on our favourite game genre. Roguelike Radio has had 10 episodes to date, as well 4 bonus interviews with developers. Each week the topic alternates between a focus on an individual game (such as DoomRL or Dungeons of Dredmor) or a discussion on a general topic to do with roguelike game features.

Cardinal Quest released
     Ido Yehieli has released his commercial roguelike Cardinal Quest, available on BMTMicro and Gameolith, with a free demo playable on Kongregate. Its retro graphics and music have proved so popular that a free giveaway caused BMTMicro’s servers to crash after 100k copies were downloaded in under an hour!

Annual Roguelike Release Party 2011
     ARRP 2011 proved a huge hit with 27 releases, including 9 completely new titles. You can find a full list at Björn Ritzl’s blog.

Classic RLs in Your Browser
     Donnie Russell has been hard at work converting several classic roguelikes for play in flash in your browser, making them much more accessible on modern systems. Available are Rogue, Hack, MAG and Larn, some with tiles options. There are also versions of Rogue and Hack for the GameBoy and Nintendo DS.

New Roguelikes!

Allure of the Stars – Sci-fi tactical squad-based roguelike
Bushudo – Island survival game for the iPad
ButtonHack – Coffeebreak RL playable in your browser (using Unity)
Cardinal Quest – Arcade-style dungeon crawler, on sale for $4.45
Dungeons of Decay 0.4.9 – Coffeebreak RL written in libtcod
Hack n Slash Online – Alpha of an in-browser online roguelike
Harrowed – Minimalist roguelike made in 1 hour for the Zero Hour Game Jam
Into the Dungeon++ – Graphical roguelike released for ARRP
js-like – Javascript-based roguelike in beta stage
Legacy – New graphical roguelike with an overworld and animated actions
LumberjackRL – Explore the wilderness, chop down trees, eat flapjacks!
Magog – Hex-grid game with portal-connected areas
Netpack – Pac-man with random levels and inventory system
Rings of Valor – Real-time roguelike with a variety of races and classes
Rogue Assassin – Stealth-based roguelike still in early stages
Rogue Zombies – ASCII zombie-killing browser game
RogueDungeons – Graphical roguelike with a great UI
Run from the Shadow – 2DRL with themes of guilt and escapism
The Lair of Xar – Tile-based dungeon crawler
The Slimy Lichmummy – Retro roguelike with some cyberpunk elements
World of Tey – Short alpha of a new fantasy roguelike
X@COM – ASCII squad game based heavily on X-COM
Zombie Swarm – Zombie-killing RL with guns and allies

Updated Games:

91	LarnHD 1.1
Angband 3.3.1	Legend of Siegfried 0.2.0
Anquestria 0.12	Legends of Yore
Bardess 0.4.2	Legerdemain 1.1.0
BOSS 2.4c	Lost Labyrinth 4.7.1
Brogue 1.5.1	MAGHD 1.7
Cataclysm	Middlecrest 0.1.95
Caves of Qud 1.0.4293.15893	Neon Roguelike Engine 0.3.5
DCSS 0.9.1	Netwhack 0.6.3
Descension 0.1.81	NPPAngband 0.5.3
Desktop Dungeons	POWDER v116
Diggr 11.10.09.3	Prospector RL 0.2.3a
DoomRL 0.9.9.4	Pyromancer 0.2.0
DungeonRL	Quickband 2.04b
Dungeons of Dredmor 1.0.6	Red Rogue
Dweller 1.11.1	RevivedHack 2.5
EmoSquid 0.5	Stellar Edge 0.0.50
Expedition 0.4.1	ToME4 b34
Fall from Heaven 0.0.6a	TomeNET 4.4.8
Fangband 1.2.6	Traction Edge 0.2b
FayAngband 1.1	Triangle Wizard 11.02
Hordes of Tarshish	Unangband 0.6.4b
Hydra Slayer 12.9	UnNetHack 3.6.0
Ignite 0.038	Untitled 0.7.1
Infra Arcana 9.2	Vapors of Insanity 0.52
JADE 0.2.0	Voyage to Farland 1.8t
LambdaHack engine

Sources: Planet Roguelike, RogueBasin, Temple of the Roguelike forums, List of Actively Developing Roguelikes, rec.games.roguelikes.announce
 

Know of any other news? Got anything you’d like featured next month? Post in the comments or on the forum.

Here goes a long list of roguelikes worth watching, enjoy!

Major

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.6

The Crawl devteam announces the release of Heizölrückstoßabdämpfung

DoomRL 0.9.9.1

The new version has several minor modifications, a lot of polish, and a couple major features, including teasers for features yet to come!

Runners

GearHead2 v0.624

This release adds some more content, fixes a bunch of bugs, and introduces a fun toy.

CastlevaniaRL 0.73

Lots of changes on this new version, powered by the results of the February Powerpoll!!

LambdaRogue 1.5

The only book that matters these days. The Book that will set mankind free. The Book of Stars.

Privateer ASCII Sector 0.6.4.3

NPCs now belong to a faction, so killing a merchant on board his ship will decrease your standing with that faction, just like destroying his ship will.

Dance of The Death 0.3.60

This has been the largest iteration to date, and also the most feature-packed one, with a good number of engine, interface, and content updates.

SporkHack 0.6.3

I’m not sure when the nethack.alt.org version will be changed over, but I suspect “soon, once we verify there are no explosive bugs in this one”.

The slimmy lichmummy 0.15

Celebrations were held.

Dweller 0.15.0

Most prominent are the progression/kill tracker that lists slain monsters and J2SE dekstop computer support.

Triangle Wizard 8.05

Also Bless has been made somewhat less powerful in the hope the late game will now be more challenging!

Trascendence 1.01

If player has disposable launcher, Raisu should give launcher (instead of missiles).

Lost Labyrinth

So please help us with testing out all the spells if they still work as expected

Sewerjacks 0.8.8

Trolls now throw chainsaw wielding loonies at you from afar!

Newcomers

Squirm A.0.3

Squirm is being developed in concordance with the SAD (Slow Application Development) methodology, by The Aging Minotaur.

Webraid 1.3

Web Raid turns Web Pages into dungeon levels.

NetzHack 0.2.1

We call it NetzHack (note the ‘z’): the German translation of the classic computer game NetHack.

Rayel 0.1.7

Rayel is a single player roguelike game with static world.

Monastery

Each turn, you and the computer-controlled opponent simultaneously choose an action to perform, without knowing each other’s choice

Underhall 1.2

This version is mostly a bug fix version, but it contains a lot of new features too!

featurecreeper 0.1

Primary gameplay driver is insanity, not hunger

The Hack of Life 1.0.1

I’ve finished my second RogueLike ever, and I’m very proud of it. I had fun, I learned stuff, and I now have a game under my belt that I can be proud of.

Menace of The Mines 0.1

has tons of monsters, many different classes and races and a unique magic system

Development

Charlib 0.3

CharLib is a lightweight library I’ve created for displaying ASCII tiles nicely in a windowed environment, using SDL.

libtcod 1.5.0

This release is stuffed with hot new features

2010 starts strong with 40 announced releases!

Major

Angband 3.1.2

We, the Angband development team, are proud to present the latest iteration of the game, in the form of Angband 3.1.2. Like other releases in the 3.1.x series, this is a beta, though it should be less buggy than other 3.1.x releases have been. Doubtless there will be another release in a few weeks time fixing the bugs found herein, but in the meantime, play.

Runners

UnNethack 3.5.2

A spoilered player shouldn’t have an advantage over an unspoiled one only because he knows of some code-specific behavior that can’t be discovered in-game.

Dawn of the Dead Roguelike 1.8

After some versions comes this one, which will make you end the year with an ear to ear smile.

Spelunky 1.1

If you’ve ever wondered how many times you’ve been killed by arrow traps or how many damsels you’ve saved, now you can find out – just open up “stats.txt” after exiting the game.

Unreal World 3.12

According to beta-testing period the new version is working smoothly.

Cavern

Cavern is a small dungeon crawler in the vein of genre classics like Rogue and Nethack – but not based on any existing roguelike. Completely built from scratch for the iPhone, Cavern features advanced dungeon generator mixing random and predefined content.

Privateer 0.6.3.1

Added the Lucky Lady casino ship at Nav 2 in the Adavene system.

RuneSword 2.6.0

Redesigned. Improved. Given a good de-lousing. RSII 2.6.0. New pieces have been added on, other pieces have increased functionality. Stronger, bigger, and more powerful than ever, RSII has been given new life with the release of 2.6.0!!!

100 Rogues Beta

Wes, our lead programmer, is really on fire, bouncing back and forth between implementation and bug/crash fixes. Our small community of closed-beta testers are super helpful, giving us great ideas, detailed bug descriptions, and even coming up with great ways to help us market the game!

Prospector 0.1.10a

In an unexplored sector of space humanity is trying to establish a permanent presence. Megacorporations employ freelance prospectors to find exploitable resources and map unknown planets for them. The player commands one of those scoutships, trying to become filthy rich as a prospector.

Triangle Wizard R7.05

So, it has been some time since the last update. I had a very busy period, so it is mainly a bug fixing patch, but I also fixed a typo ;).

HellBand 0.8.7

The most important fix here is stability, there should be no more crash bugs. I’ve been flooding levels with monsters and items in wizard mode and hellband is now responding properly to abuse.

NLarn 0.5.2

This is a bug-fix and refinement-only release, fixing all known issues with version 0.5.1.

ZapM 0.8.1

I’ve been working on ZAPM again after 5 years, and am getting close to a feature freeze for the next version.  I’m releasing a beta for you brave bleeding edge types.

Trapdoor below

You are a great X (choose profession)  who has been chosen to a mighty quest by the town’s eldest. You have to release these moorlands from the grip of the evil demigod who enslaves the people of these lands. There is an underground passage which leads to the labyrinth of death where lives the most horrifying creatures of the world. Good luck. You probably need it.

HamQuest 1.1.0.1

This release is the first after a massive code refactor, and a switch from VC# 2005 to 2008. I felt this made necessary a dink to the minor version

Interhack 2.1.37

Multiplayer variant of Nethack. Fully turn based Roguelike game. Currently in an Alpha state.

GumBand 2.3.2

New version of Gumband, a variant by R Dan Henry.

DaJAngband 1.1.2

Quality squelch of jewelry. Also, squelch (non-splendid) ego staffs if blunt is set to squelch all but splendid.

Newcomers

Light Along that Coffee

LATC is a story based on characters and situations created by Patrick O’Brian in his Aubrey-Maturin novels. Preserved Killick, Captain Aubrey’s steward, is late with the coffee, mostly because he cannot find the beans, the grinder, nor yet even the pot. The morning is wearing on, and the captain is growing impatient.

XONG 1.4

XONG is pronounced “zong” and programmed entirely in Common Lisp.

Test of Inn 0.1

The coolest part of this game is that you can easily add/edit any enemy and item you want, by editing the items.txt and enemies.txt files

Dance of Death 0.1.3

The driving force behind the Dance of Death title and concept was a popular and often resurrected discussion on r.g.r.d.: how to make the warrior class something more interesting than a close-range mage.

Portralis 0.4

There’s a lot of new things, mainly the second main quest boss, who is a LOT more difficult than Quazar. There’s also the revamped Rogue and Elemental Lord classes, a new “very fast messages” option in the Portralis preferences, some bug fixes, a revamped death and score system, and I’m sure I’m forgetting many things since my work on Portralis has been irregular.

WebMoria 0.4

Welcome to WebMoria, a port of the classic roguelike game Moria. This port is based off of the codebase from umoria 5.5.2, with features added from the PC version of umoria by Ed Lee.

PWMangBand 1.1.3

The beta version includes full graphical support for David Gervais tiles (the 32×32 tileset… so if you have a big screen, feel free to enlarge your main client window as much as possible!), and support for everything but the new monsters in the other tilesets (old + Adam Bolt).

PuzzleRogue

Each level is a puzzle, where the objective is to get from the start to the end in a set number of moves. You may find some objects which will help, but there are also dangerous traps and monsters which can slow you down or kill you.

Sanctuary

Sanctuary is a small roguelike game set in an original post-apocalyptic fantasy universe.

Dungeon Adventure

Classic Roguelike action, right in your living room! Retro ASCII graphics, an infinite number of random dungeons to loot, and Global Scoreboards to prove you’re the best.

MageCrawl Tech Demo 2

For those that are keeping score at home, the new feature is the idea of “camp supplies”. Think “tent” from Final Fantasy if you’ve played that game. When you use it, you burn n number of turns resting, restoring a nth amount of your hp/mp every turn.

The Atomic Knight 3.0

Yes, a brand-new release of The Atomic Knight, the new trendy underground ASCII arcade adventure game I created!

Roguelike Gallery

I’ve set up a public server for the original Rogue.  It’s still in the testing phase, but Rogue 3.6 and 5.2 are playable.  To play, ssh to rlgallery.org.  The username is rodney and the password is yendor.

BRogue Win Beta 2

This new version fixes the extremely drab colors and gets it looking closer to the original Mac OS X version.

7DRLs

IFRL 0.4a

IfRL is an Interactive Fiction Seven Day Roguelike programmed in Inform 7. The presentation of IfRL is that of a classic piece of Interactive Fiction. Its gameplay, however, will be more familiar to fans of roguelikes. IfRL is a turn-based dungeon crawl with a randomly generated environment, complex item interactions and permanent character death.

MouseCrawl

MC:B has many flaws, not all of them being caused by the small development time. Still it’s a genuine effort and I hope someone will enjoy playing this small and hopefully challenging game.

1KBRLs

ZigClimb

Over Christmas I had a go at writing a 1kbrl in C. ZigClimb is a quick, 10 level, mostly-traditional roguelike. It’s structurally pretty similar to Jakub Wasilewski’s excellent “A Journey To Hell” – which must have a pretty close to optimal structure for a 1kbrl in C.

Roguelikelikes

Din’s Curse

Din’s Curse pre-order is now available! Din’s Curse is a single player and co-op multiplayer action RPG with 141 class combinations, infinite number of dynamically generated towns, real consequences, and a dynamic, evolving world.

Labyrinthica: The Quest of Lima

It was just another ordinary day for Lima. Though unexpectedly, the routine chore of picking apples, will send Lima into a dangerous journey.

Dev

Name-gen

This is a small module intended for use within procedural games (eg. RPGs, Roguelikes) to generate names or other words.

libtcod.net 1.5.0b

This library is a thin c# wrapper around BSD licensed libtcod (http://doryen.eptalys.net/). It provides a cross platform graphics and roguelike library to those who wish to program in c#.

It’s been a long time, as usual 🙂

Major

iSword of Fargoal

Well, after a quarter of century, I’m proud to announce a brand new incarnation of Sword of Fargoal.

Dungeon Crawl 0.5.2

…with many bugfixes and better Mac OS X support

POWDER 112

Thanks go to Jonathan Buchanan for porting POWDER to the Wii! Whee!

Runners

Triangle Wizard 7.04

Yes, a new update finally!

GearHead2 0.613

You start out with the ability to take on one lancemate; you can gain up to two more slots by completing quests in your hometown.

CastlevaniaRL 0.61

After more than 2 years, a new version of CastlevaniaRL is available! also, now you can play the game without installing Java, as it includes a self extracting temporary VM.

3069 3D.4

Now you can start a new player with preset super-powers (just for fun). Includes “Predator”, “Alien”, “Hulk” and “Nightcrawler”

Nazghul 0.7.0

Obviously, the emphasis is not on graphics or first-person squad-based stealth action.

Papaki 085

This is a new version I am working on, it is not complete (towns and villages are empty), but while I have not much time to add more things these days, I’ll give it to you and see the changes.

Deliantra 2.91

What makes this game special is its depth and the sheer amount of maps to explore: The world is vast (multiple continents, over 4000 manually designed maps, hundreds of monsters and countless variations of generated content) and complex (16 unique races, 17 classes, 40 skills and hundreds of spells to choose from and combine with each other), so there is a lot to explore.

Brogue 1.0.1

Your goal is to travel to the 26th subterranean floor of the dungeon, retrieve the Amulet of Yendor and return with it to the surface. For the truly skillful who desire further challenge, depths below 26 each contain three lumenstones — items which confer no benefit except an increased score upon victory.

Newcomers

NLarn 0.5.1

NLarn tries to maintain the atmosphere and story of the original game while improving the gameplay by using state-of-the-art roguelike technology and a simplified user interface.

Interhack 2.1.31

Multiplayer variant of Nethack.

6 Days Later

The gameplay revolves around defending a cellar door from zombie attack.

Plantforce 7DRL

Plants that have different features, which mutate in subsequent generations

MageCrawl Tech Demo

I have a blog that I’ve been updating with thoughts on roguelikes, progress, and random c# trivia as I come upon it.

Prospector 0.1.8d

It is still far from bug free, but it at least isn’t buggier than the last version

EnemyX 0.01

EnemyX is a turn based roguelike game with ascii graphics. The gameplay is similar to the Gollop brothers Lasersquad, Rebelstar and UFO/Xcom games.

DreamHack 0.2c

Specifically, this version can now run on 64-bit Windows 7!

Roguelikelikes

XONG 1.2

XONG is pronounced “zong” and programmed entirely in Common Lisp.

StarMass Alpha

In true Dungeon Crawl fashion, the focus of the game is on defeating large numbers of hostile fleets and gathering vast amounts of wealth and loot, without any complex storyline or multiple quests getting in the way of the fighting

Development

libtcod 1.4.3b1

Don’t think it doesn’t worth upgrading because 1.4.2 is only one month old.

Websites

The Den

Lost in RPG Design

One month and a half since the last release wire, this XXXI post is hot with lots of newcomers!

Major

Spelunky 1.0

Mantrap’s appetite increased. Piranha’s appetite increased. Dice now reveal whether they’ve been thrown or not. Opening a chest or crate won’t cause the player to attack. Mummies shouldn’t bleed.

Runners

Dweller 0.13.3

Use the Movement commands to move. If you have a touch screen enabled handset just tap on the screen in the direction you wish to move.

Legerdemain  v1.0.2

A so-called “heartbeat” release, offered as evidence that the developer still has one.

Privateer: Ascii Sector v0.6.0.3

Wingmen are no longer spawned on pirate bases. Redid the NanoBots to make them more balanced.

DaJAngband v1.0.99

I have tested this version more than the past few versions, so it should have considerably less bugs.

Triangle Wizard R 7.01

This version includes quests (randomly generated), healthbars, buffs for the sorcerer and assassin classes and a few other things.

Wayfarer 8.28.09

Inventory mode should be clearer, and contextual help is improved slightly. Updated alternate version. The download for Windows should now work.

Kharne 0.05

Kharne Alpha v0.05 is now available, and has been released as open source under the MPL v1.1

MetaCollider Beta 8

I just beat the game for the first time, without savescumming, so I know it’s possible. It’s difficult but doable.

Newcomers

3069 – v3D.2

The year is 3069. Earth has since been destroyed by a catastrophic geothermal experiment. Fortunately, you and many others were safely relocated onto planet Esperanza before the blast.

Moth Master 7DRL

I like to make games / programs to give as gifts to my friends online.  Christmas 2008, I decided to make a roguelike similar to the Baldo’s Gate javascript roguelike

Rogue Project 2 v0.0.10

The demo allows you to sail around the world and visit a few non-descript locations, trade blows with some monsters (whom I have attempted to give at least rudmentary intelligence, if you watch closely), experience the weather, and zoom in on any location for a better look (simply press > to zoom into the local view, any where you are).

Iso-Angband 0.2.6

I know the idea of such a graphical view is unpopular among many roguelike fans. Over the years, though, I got emails repeatedly, from people who were interested in this sort of graphical frontend. So maybe this message will reach a few of them.

DreamHack 0.2

In Dreamhack, the player fights strange and symbolic monsters with unusual every day items, just like in a dream

NLarn 0.4.1

I am working on a remake of Larn. I baptized it NLarn.

Websites / Blogs

Numeron Reactor

I should warn non-programming savvy readers that most of the posts here may be highly technical in nature and not for the faint of heart.

Not Quite ADOM

Started a blog today called Not Quite ADoM, aimed at the discussion of news/development and other things that have to do with the Roguelike world, mainly those RLs that aren’t so well known.