It will run from May 5 to June 2. If you are interested on participating just head over to the TIGs forum and yell!

Mr. Hewitt has finally decided to say goodbye to his old HTML website in favor of a more stylish, functional website. Say hello to the new GearHead website!

He is also informed me this will be an exciting year for all the GearHead community, as he plans to both finish GH2 and make important advancements of GH1. Cheers for him and good luck!

This release is a development check point which allows you to play a “relatively” bug free version of Unangband, while we significantly hack on the source to add extra features that may potentially destabilize further releases.

Please save often.

Legerdemain 0.9.6

You may find Phenomedom has changed in subtle ways since the previous version. New dialogue has been added along with some new items. Certain regions have been reshaped and/or had their populations adjusted, particularly for the case of early areas that you revisit once your fame has grown.

LambdaRogue 0.2.7

I just released the 7th beta of LambdaRogue and the first version of this game since spring 2007.

DoomRL 0.9.8.10

It is this time of the year again, folks. I thought the next release would be 0.9.9, but there were too many things to do, so I decided to create a 0.9.8.10 version.

Elona 1.04

A new version of Elona has been released. I’ve fixed some bugs and translated some more messages. Also, thanks to f1r3fly, in-game help is being translated. Although it’s not finished yet, I’ve also included the help in this version.

That was the past, I am relieved and excited to see its developer, known as the Crowley’s Cat, has decided to give the game a second shot (after a LONG time), and is working on a much evolved and mature version of his game! he has also set up an interesting blog in which its features are being discussed!

While the newest version is being developed, you cant still check out the latest version of Old Kharne, downloadable from his blogsite!

Further info at http://kharne-rl.blogspot.com/

I keep contact from time to time with european roguelike developer Mingos, whom has just recently launched a googlepage about his project: Umbrarum Regnum; while the project is still under development, it is shaping along nicely!

UR is powered by the evergrowing in popularity Jice’s libtcod library and its main influence seems to be ADoM; the project is ambitious but is on the right path to the release.

More info at http://dominikmarczuk.googlepages.com/

High Value Factors

Random Environment Generation

The game world and its contents are mostly procedurally generated with each game.

Permafailure (including Permadeath)

You must pay for your mistakes and choices, sometimes at the cost of life. Restoring games is discouraged and only provided to allow continuing split games.

Turn Based Interaction

All entities in the game world are queued in an endless loop and get their independant discrete turn to act.

Single command set

You can access all game commands from any place into the game. There are no artificial restrictions on what actions are available in a given game situation

Freedom

Your game is not directly enrouted into a linear progression. You get to choose what you want to do, how and when

Middle Value Factors

Discovery mechanics

You must research or find out the nature and usages of the items into the world.

Single player

You control a lone character

Lots of content

There are lots of monsters, items, locations.

Complex non-trivial world and object interactions

Items have non-trivial usages, you can do some things which may not be obvious for the item nature.

Low Value Factors

High ramped difficulty

The game gets hard very quick and you are very unlikely to win until you have acquired enough experience.

Monsters are players

The nature of the monsters is similar to the player, they can have equipment, player-like stats, artificial intelligence and are subject to the same world rules.

Character-based display

The player interacts with the world via a user interface based on character symbols that represent UI artifacts and entities into the world.

Hack and Slash

Gameplay involves around killing things and acquiring treasure

There’s honestly not a lot to say about this release. It isn’t very polished and the new features aren’t really useful yet - I’m posting mostly to let people know I’m still alive and at least some of the flaws exposed in 0.8 have been fixed.

Warlocks Mountain 0.3.2

As it would happen I was looking at my old source files and came across an old binary for WM. I was stunned that this was a previously unreleased version with a few new features that I had forgotten about.

MageGuild v0.6

Hey, all. Another small step for MageGuild: v0.6.

Zomband 7DRL Merge

I have spent some extra time combining the classic Zomband with the 7DRL expansion, creating one mostly-polished game.

Independant software firm Lukos Software has released the first beta of their .Net MageGuild (v0.5) , looks pretty interesting so far. Note that if you are running windows you will most likely not need to download anything to run it.

Take on the role of a skilled and daring apprentice of the Nahelan Mage Guild. Delve through countless dark halls, gathering troves of hidden knowledge and gaining power; battle hordes of deadly enemies that will test the limits of your power and wit; and if you’re very lucky and very skilled, emerge into the light of day again, a full master in the Mage Guild. Play MageGuild.

POWDER (a.k.a. POWDAH) versions 103 and 104 are out now.

The long sought after fire arrows are finally present, self-poly into an iron golem has been further nerfed, and many bugs fixed. Most notable of the bug fixes is one to correct the gender assignment of dungeon citizens.

Atinar - Valley of Misery, a promising RPG/Roguelike in the works, has a new blog. Although no release is yet available, developer has promised to show off advancements to the public via his blog

Although easy to play, and enjoyable even during a coffee break, it has enough deep and dynamic content as to be able to always show something new and interesting for the player.

MegamanRL version 0.0.8 has been released by Slashie.net, featuring bugfixes and enhancing customization. You can now fully create your own levels and configure your enemies AI!

OK, I’ve sat on the release long enough. I’m sure some basic bug will pop up but what the hey.

GearHead2 v0.501

A new version of GearHead2, the robot-pimping giant-monster-fighting post-apocalyptic pop-singing roguelike, has just been uploaded to SourceForge.

Legerdemain 0.9.5

Legerdemain: the epic roguelike/IF/RPG hybrid that a couple of people are talking about!

Now with only half the crashes!

German NetHack-De 3.4.2-20080309a

NetHack-de is an attempt at a German translation of NetHack.

Sewerjacks 0.8.6d

You can finally unlock all races by defeating the races boss. Defeating the game will give you more classes for the race you were playing.

Angband 3.0.9b

Angband 3.0.9b is a bugfix version of 3.0.9.

Mines of Elderlore 1.0 beta 4 is released

I have continued developing it after the initial 7DRL release, adding graphics, balancing gameplay, and now release 1.0 beta 4 is there.

Unangband 0.6.2 Beta Release 2

This probably the last release with so big changes before 0.6.2 gold. Among other things, options’ names are changed, so some of your old pref files may not work as expected (old option names are ignored).

DoomRL Windows Installer

ADDITIONAL FEATURES
- confirm overwrite of .bat and .ini files during update
- enable or disable deletion of doom.prc, player.dat and score.dat during update
- configuration section in the Windows start menu for game settings, music and sound
- detection if the game is running
- Vista SP1 ready

Incursion 0.6.5B

There are new Win32 and Linux versions of Incursion up on the website. The bug list, down for several days, is now fixed. I’m going to be refactoring the Encounter Gen code next, so no updates (other than hopefully a Mac port of 0.6.5B) for a little while.

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!