Game Design Deep Dive

Game Design Deep Dive: Roguelikes examines the history and rise of the often-confusing roguelike genre. Despite being more than 30 years old, the roguelike genre remains a mystery to a lot of consumers and developers. Procedural generation, or having the game generate content, has been a cornerstone and point of complexity since its inception. The 2010s saw an explosion of new designs and examples, along with a debate about what a roguelike is. The genre found its way back to mainstream audiences with the award-winning Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. Since then, roguelikes have revolutionized the way we see and design games. Author and game design critic Joshua Bycer explains the differences between the various roguelike designs and give a detailed blueprint showing what makes the best ones work. - The first of its kind talking about the roguelike genre - Examines the design and methodology of roguelike games and the different variations - A high-level discussion and breakdown of procedural and random content generation Joshua Bycer is a game design critic with more than seven years of experience critically analyzing game design and the industry itself. In that time, through Game-Wisdom, he has interviewed hundreds of game developers and members of the industry about what it means to design video games. He is also a public speaker and presenter at schools and libraries on game design and game development.

Joshua Bycer is a Game Design Analyst with over a decade of experience writing for major sites, doing YouTube, and the author of the Game Design Deep Dive series. In that time through Game-Wisdom.com, he has interviewed hundreds of game developers and members of the industry about what it means to design video games.

1 Introduction 1 2 The Birth of the Rogue 3 3 Basic Roguelike Design 7 4 Off-Brand Roguelikes 13 5 Generating Content 19 6 Advanced Roguelike Design 31 7 The Roguelike Rises 45 8 AAA Roguelikes 57 9 The Roguelike Confusion 63 10 Expert Roguelike Design 71 Conclusion 97