Roguelike Radio

Tom Ford, roguelike researcher who models quests as graphs and demos web-hosted Brogue. Nicola Casalini (Dark God), Tales of Maj'Eyal dev focused on community building and moderation. Rexr-Korum (Asen), organizer and ASCII aesthetics advocate who hosted IRDC Sofia. They discuss procedural story and level generation. They cover community tools, recruiting contributors, ASCII vs graphical aesthetics, and web hosting/spectating.

This is episode 130 of Roguelike Radio, where we talk about Jupiter Hell, the successor to Doom the Roguelike. Talking are Kornel Kisielewicz, Darren Grey and Mark Johnson. Read more »

In this engaging discussion, Alex Cheng, known as VivaFringe, shares his insights as a strategy game commentator. He delves into the mechanics of Imbroglio, likening it to tower defense with innovative board design that keeps players invested. Topics include the game's early grind challenges, acute movement efficiency, and risk management tactics. Alex also critiques the score-chasing incentives while praising the game's hidden surprises, and discusses the dynamics of the expansion Osiru, which introduced deeper gameplay strategies.

Mikko Juola (Adeon), a top NetHack player; David (zxc), a disciplined DCSS competitor; Brandon (Demise), a DCSS speedrunner and content creator; Darren Grey, a veteran ADOM speedrunner. They discuss learning via wikis and spectating, speedruns and challenges as teaching tools, pacing and the ‘cup of tea’ stop-and-think trick, and which skills transfer across different roguelikes.

Mark Johnson, longtime contributor to the roguelike scene and experienced developer, joins lively conference-floor conversations. He talks tooling discoveries, programming craft, procedural storytelling and time-travel demos. The group praises playtesting, community energy, simple AI tricks, and expanding procedural generation into richer player experiences.

This is episode 126 of Roguelike Radio, where we talk about IVAN, with Darren Grey, Mark Johnson, Zeno Rogue, Serin Delaunay and Ryan van Herel. Read more »

This is episode 125 of Roguelike Radio, where Andrew Doull is joined by Daniel Cook, Ste Curran and co-host Mark Johnson to talk about the roguelike puzzle game Road Not Taken (available on Windows, Mac, PS4 and just been released on iOS). Read more »

Chris Park, creator of Starward Rogue and procedural combat systems; Ben Hendel-Doying, maker of Mysterious Space blending shmup and roguelike ideas; James Whitehead of Really Big Sky, a twin-stick shooter with progression. They discuss why to fuse roguelike and shoot‑em up design. They cover procedural vs handcrafted systems, boss and bullet-pattern design as terrain, tradeoffs between long‑term upgrades and moment‑to‑moment choices, and scoring in procedural shmups.

The hosts discuss the role of geometry in roguelikes, including unique spider's web-like geometry. They explore the gameplay mechanics of Hyperrog, the AI coding in Anime Zimtrey, and the challenges of implementing different geometries in games. They also discuss the unique geometry in the final secret area of a game and how node-based geometry can enhance gameplay. Additionally, they explore Swap Bot, a game that uses tile swapping, and discuss the use of geometry in roguelike games, including cross-dimensional interactions and representing higher dimensions in a 2D screen.

A deep dive into tool-assisted speedruns for NetHack, covering save-state methods and precise turn budgeting. They explain polymorph choices, movement subpixels, and clever RNG manipulation. Hear about anti-gold exploits, monster-powered tricks, scripted luck scanning, and the huge scale of automated re-recording. The team also discusses documentation, tooling, and tradeoffs between speed and spectacle.