Seven Day Roguelike Challenge

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History and Rationale

In 2005, the roguelike community established a yearly event, the 7DRL Challenge, in which all the world is challenged to create a roguelike in a one-week span. This allows one to have the shared misery of knowing you are not the only one tracking down a bad pointer at the 167th hour. As a suggested schema for proposing the challenge the 7DRL Voting Specification has been created.

The annual event occurs during a week in late February or early March. There is a chance that some other challenges may arise out of schedule, thus allowing more than one challenge per year.

7DRL Challenges are NOT about being a fast coder, but rather proving you can release a finished, playable roguelike to the world. There is no winner of the challenge, but rather all those who finish are honoured for their work, the criterion is completeness.

Event rules

  • You CAN use external libraries, game engines, pre-existing generic code/algorithms, pre-existing generic art, etc. You can even start your game from an existing game, if you are willing to turn it out into something unique, you must however say what resources were reused.
  • It is allowed and recommended to have a rough design idea of your project before starting
  • Check out this article by Darren Grey for a few pointers on how to succeed at the challenge. But ultimately follow your own advice! You're the only one who can make your game.

How to participate

  • After the initial date chosen for the challenge, post your starting development notice on rec.games.roguelike.development or RogueTemple or 7drl.org or the dedicated portal
  • 168 or less hours after this initial post, post your results on rec.games.roguelike.development; if you were successful, post your announcement on rec.games.roguelike.announce
  • The challenge is always Saturday to Sunday; if you start after Sunday you will have less than 168 hours as in-challenge 7DRLs must be completed by the closing time. You can still use 168 hours and have a normal, out of challenge, 7DRL, however

Challenges

To the date, there have been seven annual 7DRL challenges and one bonus Orange October Minigun festival.