One-Week Dungeons: Diaries of a Seven-Day Roguelike Challenge

by David L. Craddock

Eleven game designers. Eight grand ideas. Seven days to will them into reality.

Every year, programmers around the world compete in the seven-day roguelike challenge, or 7DRL, a week-long game jam where participants endeavor to design and program a roguelike role-playing game. Their day jobs, family responsibilities, sleep deprivation, and visionary concepts too big for 168 hours to contain.

Told over a series of daily journal logs, One-Week Diaries of a Seven-Day Roguelike Challenge chronicles the journeys of eleven 7DRL participants as they race to build their dream games before the clock expires.

Genres: Nonfiction, Games

171 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 10, 2015

About the author

David L. Craddock lives with his wife in Ohio. He is the bestselling author of Stay Awhile and Listen : How Two Blizzards Unleashed Diablo and Forged a Video-Game Empire - Book I, and Heritage : Book One of the Gairden Chronicles, an epic fantasy series for young adults. Please follow along with him on his website/blog at DavidLCraddock.com .

Reviews

[Sotolf Flasskjegg · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good, short read, I think I've been saying this quite often this year, I really like narrative non fiction. This was a fast paced look in to 7drls, something that's probably so niche most people wouldn't have heard about, but the book is well written, and kind of shows how important it is to get your thoughts in practice so you can see if they were good.

I enjoyed this book quite a lot, and I'll be keeping my eyes open for craddock, he seems to be writing good video game books.

[Anders · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's daring to write a book on such a narrow topic, but if you have the slightest interest in programming and rougue-likes, this book is for you. :-)
I would have liked it to be a little more in-depth, but it's probably impossible to get more information from people participating in a 7DRL challenge.

[Bjoern Doebel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice stories around participants in the 7 Day Roguelike challenge. You will enjoy them if you're into the genre and have interest in their development.