7 Days Not Too Long

Andrew Doull writes to tell me that the the 7-day rogue-like challenge has come to a close. In this clearly gloriously masochistic event, developers try and make a workable rogue-like game in - waitforit - seven days. Twenty-three people gave it a shot, of which nine managed to pull it off. They're now available to download , and over the next seven days the Temple of the Roguelike will be playing and reviewing them. I haven't had a chance to play all of them yet, but I did have a quick crack at what appeared to be the most initially intriguing one, Fatherhood.

You play a father. There's your three somewhat mischevious kids following you around, and generally doing their own thing (Mainly playing tag, it seems). Your job is basically to look after them. Rivers are flooding into the area. Fire is spreading. By dragging around rocks and similar, you're able to create firebreaks or build dams. I probably should have played the three-built in tutorial maps, but I dove straight into a proper one and got a hang of it really quickly. It's really quite neat, and it's the only Rogue-like game I can remember with a Scold or Praise command. Also, for those intimidated by Rogue games, it's simple enough to dive in. Pressing ? will bring you the controls, of which the basic ones are number keys to move around, x to look at things (Move cursor to examine), g to pick stuff up and d to drop it. Good work, Jeff Lait. Get it from here.

Other ones which catch the eye include Slash's left-right-scrolling MegaManRL, Robson's educational Rogue-like Numbers and Kadweill's Tribe which in a quasi-Dungeon Keeper twist positions you as a Goblin trying to organise his eponymous Tribe to sort out the so-called Heroes who keep on turning up and trying to kill the lot of them. The bastards.