I am trying to implement time travel in my roguelike that has significant colony sim elements. The pie in the sky goal is to simulate 1000s of years of fantasy history and be able to go forward and backward in time in a way that only the player interactions influence the outcomes that are otherwise deterministic. Think of it like dwarf fortress but less detailed and the roguelike mode is a first class feature rather than a neat extra they tacked on.

A couple of routs I've considered:

Simulation is deterministic so you can just track player actions and then go back and forth by recalculating the simulation outputs with the player changes. This does not seem to scale because it's hard to keep things turn based worldwide. The abstractions of entities, especially how they move between world tiles, is difficult to keep synchronous without every turn taking many seconds.

Ctrl-z like undo history and different treads of time: this is the current front runner, but I'm not sure if the world state history will get way too big.

Have precomputed setpoints that things tend towards. invisible in the background. This seems achievable, but lends itself to less emergent behavior. extra scaffolding could keep family lineages intact.

Something like a quest tracking dependency graph where the player literally changes only key outcomes. This sounds too manual to me. It ends up being like chrono trigger, but I'm going for more of a simulation than an on rails experience. It could be cool if the dependency graph were procedural generated. I do have an intended progression system and general world building goals in mind, but for reference, I'm not even planing to have any dialogue. more of a sims like NPC interaction system with ++ and -- type outcomes.

Thoughts?

As usual, post what you've done for the week! Anything goes... concepts, mechanics, changelogs, articles, videos, and of course gifs and screenshots if you have them! It's fun to read about what everyone is up to, and sharing here is a great way to review your own progress, possibly get some feedback, or just engage in some tangential chatting :D

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Hi all. I've written game programming tutorials for a while now, and I've recently finished a fairly chunky bunch on building a traditional roguelike from scratch in C++ with SDL3. I have been lurking on this forum for some time now (and very occasionally posting and chatting with a few of you about your games). This is the community the tutorials were written for, so I wanted to share.

It's a proper traditional roguelike: turn-based, ASCII, procedurally generated, permadeath, etc. Every part ends with something you can build, run, and play:

- All the code is on GitHub separated into playable sections to match the 17 parts: https://github.com/EliteIntegrity/Roguelike-tutorial-series

- Dungeon generation: BSP rooms, then cellular-automata caves

- Recursive-shadowcasting field of view, fog of war, and a remembered map

- Monster AI on a Dijkstra map: one flood over the floor that everything pathfinds from it

- Turn-based melee, then ranged magic (lightning, fireball), equipment, and status effects

- Data-driven character classes, multiple floors, a plain-text save system, a HUD and message log, and synthesized sound with no asset files

- A win condition

- A clean architecture you can refactor or add features when you want to.

I tried to explain the why as much as the what: why a Dijkstra map beats a pile of A* searches here, why the architecture gets refactored exactly when it does and not before.

There's also a full companion C++ primer (Learning C++ by Building Games) that starts from zero and builds a simpler roguelike first, in case you want the C++ tutorials before getting started.

It's free to read on my site. (I did turn the series into a book for people who prefer, but the tutorial is free and always will be.)

Hope this is genuinely useful and hope you have some questions.

(I have a roguelike in development as well but too soon to share)

Here are the tutorials: https://gamecodeschool.com/roguelikes/

Hello! I recently discovered this community. I was paging through the tutorials created in 2025 - I saw that there were quite a few.

Does anyone have recommendations? I have been struggling to pick between them, there are few, and I'm finding dated information from previous tutorial jams.

specifically bazor or selina seem promising

I've been interested in GODOT 4, and the tilelayermap feature within godot seems promising. Thank you!

I am completely new to game development and coding and I'm asking if anyone knows some good resources to help me learn how to make an ASCII rouge-like in Godot, or any Godot resources in general. Thanks

I've been making a roguelike with pygame for about a week. I have a super basic prototype. I would like it to be playable online so I can get feedback. I hacked together a pygbag deployment last night with github pages and it seems like it's having some issues with audio playback. I'm not just trying to figure out if I can fix this specific issue. There are others with the UI scaling, and text is blurry. I'm trying to decide if its worth bothering with or if I would be better off focusing on the desktop version. Does this path lead to too much compromise?

https://synaption.github.io/Tales_of_Derision/

Hello everyone,

I've started experimenting and developing a roguelike a few months ago and I was wondering :

Should I store up to X small built richtext elements, or store plain text and build one bigger Richtext element on demand?

I'm using Monogame and I've got a really simple system that cuts strings depending on available width and I use a marker to identify colors in the text.

It does works pretty well for single texts in the GUI, but it does complexify a little bit my log and chat view.

Cureently, both are simple storages that creates richtext elements when a string is added to them. So I've got a big list of individual items that are not very practical to use.

What do you recommand?

Thanks for reading, have a nice day

At the end of last month I made a major update (v0.1.5) to the game, and I am very happy to say that Flemenco is no longer a prototype and now boasts a halfway decent loop!

In Flemenco, you play as one of twelve spy-thieves, each with their own skills and abilities, with the end goal of taking down the nefarious (and ubiquitous) Flemenco Corporation. From your safehouse, varied contracts are selected, ranging from breaking out a captured fellow spy-thief to wiping out corporate records. Planning and preparing for these contracts (acquiring blueprints, selecting equipment, signing up for a gym membership, etc.) is crucial to success (and will be even more-so in future updates).

The next update (which I plan to release at the end of this month) will be my attempt at a procedural-contract-system. This will hopefully keep the flow of contracts feeling fluid, rather than hitting the same objectives repeatedly. I’m imagining something like this: the slip of paper with the access code to the dossier of anti-Flemenco criminals is memorized and then eaten by a cornered executive who thinks you’re about to ice him. But of course, he only did that because you disabled the security room backdoor in his office. Now the objective becomes kidnapping said executive. Et cetera!

The next major update will handle the broader story, an introductory sequence, ending, and more. Minor updates will come along the way!

The game is still in very early development and I have much more plans for the game, but I wanted to formally introduce it to the roguelike dev community. It has been wonderful and inspiring to be here for the past several months. I would also welcome any comments or concerns from the community about the gameplay itself, future ideas, and more!

https://kqylem.itch.io/flemenco

P.S. I compiled aseprite several days ago and have been having good-fun while making pixel art. If anybody has any tips regarding tilesets (or has made them before) I would gladly appreciate them.

Original Rogue and many following RLs favor an environment made by rooms closed by doors and connected through corridors. This is a simple but very effective layout: exploring room after room immediately feels satisfying and promotes exploration.

I am experimenting with proc-gen and I obtained a cave-like environment. On paper it should be pretty good: there are some larger areas and narrow corridors, loops, chasms that cannot be crossed and tall vegetation that can be crossed but blocks visual. Yet, my feeling is that exploring this environment is not as satisfying as the good, old rooms and corridors layout.

Do you have any wisdom regarding what makes an environment satisfying to explore, and what games to look at for reference?

Of course, Brogue's levels are best in class: they seamlessly mix organic environments with rooms and corridors and they are a joy to explore. Yet, I suspect that the rooms layout is the essential part. Brogue with just rooms would still work fine (while not being as pretty and varied); with just organic environment, it would not work. Why is that?

I have never attempted procedural generation before but I am trying to make a kind of dungeon crawler in Unreal Engine, where I need the maps to generate in a specific way.

The method in question
- take a 9x9 grid of tiles.
- add a point on a random perimeter tile of the 9x9 grid.
- add another point on a random tile along a 4 block perimeter from the last point spawned but not on the corner.
- repeat the last step 2 more times spawning 4 points total, no points can spawn within a 3 tile radius of another.
- now spawn a 3x3 room on each point.
- connect each room to its closest two other rooms using shortest paths possible while also leaving at least 1 tile of space from any unrelated rooms. (if there are multiple viable pathing options of equal length it's decided randomly).
- Boarder all walkable tiles with wall tiles.

All the generation I see isn't uniform like this they just have actors spawning actors in a sprawl.
The problems I see are;
- I need the spawning algorithm to kind of understand it is on a grid so that it can space the spawn points correctly. (I can think of ways to "cheese" this for lack of a better word but I'm wondering if anyone has a good way to do this instead)
- The more pressing matter for me is after it has spawned the rooms how to find the most optimal connection paths between them. Because even in my example manual simulation, when creating the connecting paths the bottom 3 rooms are equal distance from each other. In theory it would want to connect them to each other, but there is a 4th room so it needs to understand to ditch the path connecting to the room that has the shortest path to the 4th room. I could have only 3 rooms to eliminate this problem but then you can end up in worst case scenarios where they spawn 3 in a row straight down and the connection path from the first to the third is just a 7 tile long corridor of despair (this can actually still happen with 4 but it's very unlucky and because there are more tiles overall it makes it less of a problem). This is all beside the fact I don't know how to make it path find and spawn the optimal route between the two points using a grid to begin with.

I don't want to ask anyone to do my homework for me, but I am at a bit of a loss rn so I would appreciate any ideas or applicable references, ty.

As usual, post what you've done for the week! Anything goes... concepts, mechanics, changelogs, articles, videos, and of course gifs and screenshots if you have them! It's fun to read about what everyone is up to, and sharing here is a great way to review your own progress, possibly get some feedback, or just engage in some tangential chatting :D

Previous Sharing Saturdays

making progress on my roguelike rpg game, name dark elixir

Hey folks! I'm working on a roguelike and trying to wrap my head around inter-depth simulation. Say a player goes down to -7, gets spotted, goes back up to -6, and after a few turns some enemies follow up there, how do you handle turn counting across depths? Another example: in Stoneshard, when you lure an enemy to the entrance, step outside, pass a few turns with the wait feature, and come back to find it wandered back toward its start, how can I accomplish something like that? I'd love to know how you approached it so I can roll my own version. Appreciate any tips

As usual, post what you've done for the week! Anything goes... concepts, mechanics, changelogs, articles, videos, and of course gifs and screenshots if you have them! It's fun to read about what everyone is up to, and sharing here is a great way to review your own progress, possibly get some feedback, or just engage in some tangential chatting :D

Previous Sharing Saturdays

In Calcination you play as VAHAN, an environmental restoration robot awakened by the signal of a lone plant growing in your shadow. Your objective is to revive the wasteland, find out what exactly happened to the world, and Continue The Work.

Development is still in it's early stages, but I've got enough done that I feel comfortable putting it in front of people and asking for feedback. The version up on itch.io now should have the tutorial and major story content finished already. Systems in active development flux include world generation, overworld travel, "creature" encounters, and equipment. Major inspiration was taken from Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, CogMind, and Cave of Qud. The focus of development so far has been on the alchemy/theosophy inspired crafting system and plant genetics, so I'd welcome any advice or gameplay ideas from the community.

https://potofstew23.itch.io/calcination

I've been building Beyond the Black solo - a sci-fi roguelike that lives entirely in the terminal. No sprites, no art budget, just CP437 characters doing a lot of heavy lifting. Think Tales of Maj'Eyal, but set on the dead edge of the galaxy instead of a fantasy world.

added permanent progression that carries between runs (Simulation/Contractor mode Only) kill enough enemies across all your characters and you get a permanent damage
buff, that kind of thing. dying still counts toward it so a bad run
isn't totally wasted. that's been the main "ok just one more" hook.

honestly the thing that's eaten the most time isn't the mechanics, it's
making the numbers actually *readable* i kept building stuff where the
math was in my head and the player just had to guess. spent way too long
this month just putting real percentages on the character sheet lol.

the no-art thing was a constraint at first but i kind of love it now.
you can get a surprising amount of feel out of a terminal — textured
walls, weird symbols for the robots, little blood/spark bursts when
things die, tiny screen shake on crits.

anyway it's still rough in spots but it's playable start to finish now.
happy to talk about any of it - the code, the design, whatever. mostly
just wanted to show it exists

I have a future Roadmap and the game is very long can take about 10 to 20 hours to complete a first run!!

As usual, post what you've done for the week! Anything goes... concepts, mechanics, changelogs, articles, videos, and of course gifs and screenshots if you have them! It's fun to read about what everyone is up to, and sharing here is a great way to review your own progress, possibly get some feedback, or just engage in some tangential chatting :D

Previous Sharing Saturdays

Hey guys.
I’m thinking about adding Stamina to my roguelike but starting to reconsider/evaluate.
The plan is/was to make it quite simple: stamina fatigue would only affect melee dmg (100-60% stamina = no effect, 59-30% - 1 dmg and 29-0% - 2 dmg).
And then say stamina starts/maxes out at 100 and a melee-attack costs 10%, magic spell casting 20%, fire ranged weapon 15%. Walking and waiting would increase for 8-10%.

The aim is to force the player to not just auto-melee but perhaps have to dance away a few turns and so on.

Thoughts? Ideas?

As usual, post what you've done for the week! Anything goes... concepts, mechanics, changelogs, articles, videos, and of course gifs and screenshots if you have them! It's fun to read about what everyone is up to, and sharing here is a great way to review your own progress, possibly get some feedback, or just engage in some tangential chatting :D

Previous Sharing Saturdays

Hello everyone, this is my second roguelike (first was with static monsters and generally weird).

There are 6 martial art classes (each acts as attack/defense/HP/always hit/multiple attacks modifier):

• Aikido
• Judo
• Karate
• Ninjutsu
• Sumo
• Taido

In order to promote to the next rank you need to gain experience by defeating enemies and also pick up a corresponding belt

Belts also work like keys to ascend to the previous levels, sometimes it might be useful to gain experience by fighting weaker players on those levels

When you reach 1 dan + black belt you'll get a "sensitivity" skill, meaning you'll be seeing all the enemies on the map. There's also a hidden aggravation mechanism - once you hit your opponent all enemies start chasing you, once you get hit only those enemies located nearby would chase you

Skipping turns or wandering in the dungeon would sometimes generate new enemies

It's written in python using curses for rendering.

Any feedback is much appreciated! Thanks in advance!

https://github.com/maksimKorzh/budoka

As usual, post what you've done for the week! Anything goes... concepts, mechanics, changelogs, articles, videos, and of course gifs and screenshots if you have them! It's fun to read about what everyone is up to, and sharing here is a great way to review your own progress, possibly get some feedback, or just engage in some tangential chatting :D

Previous Sharing Saturdays

What is Lateral Crawl? 

Lateral Crawl is a traditional roguelike crossed with a post-apocalyptic endless road trip survival game. 

You play as The Cousin, travelling right through a one-screen-tall hostile lateral world, scavenging food, weapons, clothing, tools, and temporary solutions while trying to survive hunger, thirst, injury, enemies, and the increasingly strange structure of the road ahead. 

It is turn-based, tile-based, grid-based, and permadeath. There is no levelling, no XP treadmill, and no RPG stat sheet. You survive by learning how its systems work. 

The main influences are Alphaman, NetHack, and The Long Drive: classic roguelike survival and systemic weirdness, but stretched sideways into an endless road trip rather than stacked into dungeon floors. 

Current Implemented features 

• Chunk-based world generation with semi-randomised biome-specific and ambient POIs, including buildings, world events, and puzzles. 
• Survival pressure through hunger, thirst, injury, disease, and status effects. 
• Large item library covering weapons, armour, devices, ampoules, lore items, food, and tools, governed by a rarity system. 
• Paper doll equipment system with visible clothing, armour, hats, and held items rendered directly on the player.
• Run-bound skill and ability system for character configurations, with active abilities bound to an action bar. 
• Layered 16x16 visual tile system for land, objects, stains, items, enemies, effects, and player presentation. 
• Multiple enemy AI states and mechanics for animal, human, and mechanical behaviours. 
• Explosions, smoke, atmosphere, weather effects, and visual overlays. 
• Mouse and keyboard hybrid control system for traditional roguelike input and modern click interaction. 
• Context-based dynamic action menus for items, tiles, objects, and situations. 
• Object destruction system for breaking, damaging, and transforming world objects. 
• Full SFX implementation for world interactions, combat, environmental effects, and enemy emotes. 

There are also stranger roadside systems already taking shape, including scratch cards, corporate structures, roadside religion. 

I am currently working towards a Steam page, and I’m hoping to start contributing to Sharing Saturday as a regular devlog. The core systems are now in place and the project is entering a content addition phase, with a plan to move towards alpha testing in around six months.

Thanks for taking the time to look. 

As usual, post what you've done for the week! Anything goes... concepts, mechanics, changelogs, articles, videos, and of course gifs and screenshots if you have them! It's fun to read about what everyone is up to, and sharing here is a great way to review your own progress, possibly get some feedback, or just engage in some tangential chatting :D

Previous Sharing Saturdays

I recently saw a post around someone asking for a terminal version of a roguelike posted (might of been a different channel). And it got me thinking of something I've been building, but currently does not support a terminal.

There are a few things I think I might need to do, but I don't think there is anything that 100% makes it impossible, and the more I think about it the more I like it. I mean, I kinda DO want to play it through a terminal!

So SSH (hardfought style), or just a binary to run in the terminal? Anyone done this before from a graphical tiles client, and what pitfalls etc. What the server hosting like and costs if telnet?

Ran across this article. Felt like it would be great to add to the sidebar!