@ijones72.bsky.social (it seems the original thread was locked so I reply here) XCOM DOES actually have BOTH permadeath and procgen. Permadeath just means that dead soldiers stay dead. (Savescumming is clearly not the way XCOM is supposed to be played, serious players do not savescum.) Same in Civ.

A minor, but still quite large, update to HyperRogue! Suggest moves after 3 incorrect attempts, grow Ivy through narrow chasms, use compasses, rulers and non-Euclidean tools in the built-in drawing tool, more intuitive touch dragging, bugfixes and more! github.com/zenorogue/hy... #roguelike

Devised a Steam game ranking system based on direct comparisons between games Expectation: #roguelite metaprogression, gambling aesthetics, upgrade gambling will lose against #roguelike infinite replayability and freedom Reality: Vampire Survivors wins, with a huge margin (fun game BTW)

Are roguelikes indeed infinitely replayable? Let us plot the % of Steam reviews over the given playtime. Can you guess which #roguelike or #roguelite has the highest curve? Read this thread to find out, repost if you did not guess! Curves drawn until they depict <10 outliers. Data from January.

Post some of your favourite video game characters for international women's day! (alt text for explanations)

Some fun with searching for keywords in Steam reviews. People who misspell #roguelike as "rougelike" consistently review everything higher. [thread]

HyperRogue is now verified for SteamDeck! ✅ A perfect game/platform match: mostly only movement so no need for complex buttons, joystick is good for its non-Euclidean movement directions, bigger screen and more powerful hardware are a better fit for infinity than phones. #roguelike #steamdeck

Steam reviews give playtimes, so we can compute some statistics. HyperRogue: 122h on average, 22h median, and 348h on the 90% percentile. (Plz more reviews!) For comparison: Tales of Maj'Eyal: 323h average, 116h median, 802h on 90%. Silksong: 75h average, 67h median, 132h on 90%.

The Coastline Paradox - Deep Zoom Terrain Generator #indiedev #gamedev #solodev #programming #coding #procgen I wanted to make a terrain you can zoom into like a fractal...

Still being made. But non-Euclidean.

Jupiter Hell Classic 0.8 "Arsenal" is out now! Item perks, ADV gear with random perks, powerful Relics, clearer UI, reworked status timing, assembly cleanup, balance tweaks, and a new difficulty curve! #traditional #roguelike store.steampowered.com/news/app/312...

An aperiodic tessellation of the hyperbolic plane, found by Toimine in the #tessellations channel in the HyperRogue discord. These tiles have edge length of 0.56358, less than the previous record for a equilateral convex tile (0.56626, achieved by the regular {7,3} tiling).

Any ideas for new cool features for the "database of games I played" at zenorogue.itch.io/zgdb ? Any new tags to filter the games? Any new cool visualization features? Any new games which should be added (which I played but forgot to add, or did not play but I should)?

A monster kills a monster, only to be killed by another monster, and somehow, there are enough monsters for every monster to kill forever.

Want to help indiedevs? Join this 10-seconds survey (link below👇). Tell us: - which genre name you prefer - how you usually discover these games A hugely popular genre still has no Steam tag, and great games keep getting buried. Let’s fix that! #indiegames 💥 #gamedev #indiedev #BulletHeavenFest

In platformers with "double jump", where should you actually perform the second jump? Generally somewhere in the middle. Your jumps reach the furthest if you do so.

How can we tell how good are we in run-based games? Win rates? Streaks? Streaks ignoring one loss? Here is how much information is given by various methods, depending on what our winning probability roughly is, and the number of runs. More details on: mathstodon.xyz/@zenorogue/1... #roguelike

Take a grid, for each line add 1 to all points on a randomly picked side of that line, paint points black if the result equals 0 to 1 mod 4, and you get a hitomezashi pattern. But what if we do this for an arbitrary pattern of curves instead of a grid? #hitomezashi #mathart #generativeart

a tiny world, pretending to be infinite

They say that making "roguelikes" makes things easier for developers. But Rogue devs wanted a game that was exciting every time you played it. That is definitely HARDER than making a game that is exciting once. Procgen games take ages to mature. Otherwise they feel repetitive. For example:

There should be a genre of "genreless" games. A good genreless game is good because it has unique ideas that make it different from everything else. At the same time, it is a perfect realization of that idea, and/or that idea is difficult to replicate, so it does not start a genre. Your favorites?

I have seen some backlash for Silksong destroying the game industry by being cheap, while it is just one game that one cannot even play forever. But we have lots of other "reasons not to buy games anymore" looking more serious, and I do not see much protests against them. For example:

Four new "player character shapes" were added to HyperRogue recently. All can be recolored. send pics of your characters #roguelike

The #HugoAward for Best Game or Interactive Work goes to Caves of Qud.

What is the most important? if you want to know what this #mathart means: mathstodon.xyz/@zenorogue/1...

Fast-paced and turn-based - the return of a roguelike legend! *Jupiter Hell Classic* packs procedural levels, explosive weapons, and brutal tactical combat. Early Access starts NOW! store.steampowered.com/app/3126530/...

nice

Silly alternatives to the classic Chess notation for the squares on chessboard.

HyperRogue 13.1 released! zenorogue.blogspot.com/2025/08/hype... #roguelike #nonEuclidean #mathart

Interesting. The world map in #RealmsOfAncardia no longer is flat. What do you think? (ignore the stupid text log) And thanks once more to @zenorogue.bsky.social for the original implementation idea in bsky.app/profile/zeno... and to @ravenmore.pl for suggesting to use this in #RealmsOfAncardia.

Inspired by @zenorogue.bsky.social 's post about globular ASCII projections (my words) in bsky.app/profile/zeno... I tried that for #RealmsOfAncardia but I guess I have no talent at anything but rectangular 2D maps 🤪 The joys of #roguelike #programming

A yet another vizualization of the distortions of the Mercator projection. A #roguelike map using the Mercator projection is projected back on a sphere. In the map, all the characters are of the same size.

My interpretation of the dragons from HyperRogue #furryart #art #dragon #fanart #HyperRogue

Our new video. Have fun! In most of our videos, we have been playing with the non-Euclidean spaces. However, we have not played with the time dimension in them so far. In this video, we combine spherical and hyperbolic geometry with relativistic effects. youtu.be/PxnoSsjMrck

WE DID IT! Approaching Infinity is Overwhelmingly Positive! #startrek #roguelike #indiegame #gamedev #indiedev

New beginnings... #roguelike #adom #RoA #realmsofancardia www.roguelike.games/2025/05/22/n...

My marine biology roguelike is finished! With 200+ sea creatures, 300+ items, and seven dungeons it's the full release of the underwater dungeon crawler, Crablike! quinn2win.itch.io/crablike

springboarding off this interesting post to talk about some characteristics of "roguelikes" or whatever first thread: map vs. overmap maps, like Rogue: you move and fight on the same map overmaps, like Dicey Dungeons: the map selects the next encounter which takes you somewhere else

The evolution of randomized synergy builders: (1) literal #roguelike: focus on complex turn-based tactics and adventure, with some synergies. (2) Isaac-like: focus on synergies, with some intermediate gameplay/adventure. (3) Survivors-like: more focus on synergies, very simple gameplay. [...]

Metaprogression for me is usually a reason to stop playing the game, but there are some games with metaprogression that I liked, and the common thing in these 2 games is that they do not have other form of progression. Is it the case that intraprogression and metaprogression clash?

I coined the term “roguelike” back on USENET in the early 90s. Don’t know if that’s worth carving on my tombstone but

Just hit 400 Steam reviews and still 95% positive! That's 80% of the way to OVERWHELMINGLY POSITIVE! #indiedev #scifi #roguelike #passionproject

Just published my first math paper! What a journey! youtu.be/zVRNcRFaZ94

Do you want the hexes on a sphere to be regular? Or do you want them to be of the same area? Or do you want straight lines be actually straight? (in one of two ways) #RogueViz #noneuclidean

Feels to me that modern 2D platformers tend to focus too much on awkward jumping instead of satisfying stairways and ladders? It was originally called "ladder genre" [Wikipedia], what if that term won? I started with JSW and Chuckie Egg II, their influence makes my creation feel different. #rulfoa

Some things in video games are just impossible to represent visually

This gives off Berlin Interpretation vibes. It forgets to say that boomer shooter is a subgenre of first-person shooter: no mention of perspective, shooting stuff can be just ignored. Out of context, do all of this but not in a shooter and not in FPP, could become a new "genre" that most indies are.

A procedurally generated, non-human building. What creatures could live in buildings of this kind? (There is a correct answer, but other answers are interesting too.) #Rogueviz #mathart #procgen