This September 19th, the first Annual Roguelike Release Party will take place. Not quite a literal party, the ARRP is a community-driven event in which roguelike developers are encouraged to put out a release with the intention of garnering, among much fame and fortune, increased visibility and feedback. As of now, there are 24 entries in the official announcement page, including Dance of Death version 0.6.

Version 0.6 is coming along quite nicely. Besides scaling back on movement at the world level, all of the other items for the goals have been completed, a number of bugs have been eradicated, and some additional features have made their way in, including the food/hunger system, which I am currently finishing up.

Admittedly, I have been fiddling with ASCIIPaint far too much for my own good. ASCIIPaint uses an excellent 8×8 character set that blows Dance of Death’s current 9×16 tile set out of the water, except for one detail: it is a bit too small. The fact that 8×8 is so small in itself is a big part of its magic, however: every tile represents an explicit decision to place every pixel in the right spot. It’s this sort of attention to discrete details that appeals to me about roguelikes in general, especially ASCII-based ones.

The 8×8 tiles not only look tighter, but have the obvious benefit of being square. Dance of Death currently uses 120×40 tiles, largely due to the additional horizontal tiles required to hit the target screen width. It might not be for a few versions, but eventually I plan to decrease the overall amount of tiles horizontally, and implement square tiles, with the option of selecting 8×8, 12×12, or 16×16.

Looking forward to the ARRP!