Roguelike

lastmod 2026-04-20created 2015-08-3014 edits

Roguelike games are a genre of games that share common features, originating with the 1980 game Rogue.

Features of roguelikes

• Every element is displayed as ASCII graphics through a text cursor system called Curses. The player character in particular is usually shown as '@'.
• Every action is turn-based (not real-time; the game waits until the player enters a new command), and commands are usually given by key input.
• Most elements, including dungeons made of rooms and corridors, are generated randomly.
• The difficulty is quite high, play takes a long time, and a scoreboard feature makes players compete.

Yet Another Roguelike Tutorial

• [Recommended] Yet Another Roguelike Tutorial - Written in Python 3 and TCOD · Roguelike Tutorials

Games

• Dungeon crawl
• NetHack
• KeeperRL
• BrogueCE - Community Edition - a community-lead fork of the much-loved minimalist roguelike game
• Geophyte

Development

• rltk
• libtcod
  • libtcod-python
• TinyCurses
• BearLibTerminal
• rotLove (love2d)

See also

• NCurses

Favorite site

• Wikipedia (en) Description of Roguelike
• Welcome to RogueBasin
  • Python - RogueBasin

Develop

• Github: Roguelike game in C++
• Roguelike game in C++ - Bootstrap
• Game Programming in C with the Ncurses Library
• Roguelike Development Resources

Tutorials

• [Recommended] amethyst/rustrogueliketutorial: Roguelike Tutorial in Rust - using RLTK
  • Introduction - Roguelike Tutorial - In Rust