I’m Santiago Zapata, better known online as slashie, a Software Engineer and Independent Game Developer and from Medellín, Colombia.

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Roguelike in a tweet

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Update: A new version has been released, check it out at  

140 characters… have you ever felt that a tweet is too short to express your feelings to the world?

But, what about putting a whole playable game inside a tweet?

Someone at the office showed me this today, and I was tempted…

After lots of fiddling and different approaches, I finally managed to create my own! 🙂

In my previous efforts I found out I could create a playable and maybe even enjoyable game in about 240 characters, created a simple 2D roguelike and a flappy bird clone… but the 140 characters mark seemed out of reach… the closest I could get was 152 characters… the pain!

But now, here you have it! a full fledged dungeon crawler… how deep can you get into the dungeon?

Screen Shot 2015-07-03 at 9.19.11 PM

Note: I only tested it on Google Chrome, might not work in Internet Exploder (that’s a joke, I’m almost certain it WON’T WORK :P)

How to play

  • Paste the contents of the tweet on an empty html page, or simply go here
  • Click anywhere in the screen to explore the current dungeon level, your stats will show in the page like this:
    • P: Your power
    • L: Current dungeon level
    • S: Determines if you have found the stairs for the next level
  • Every time you get to a new level you have to explore it to find the stairs, when exploring lots of things could happen to you… you could have your power increased by finding ancient artifacts, or have it decreased by fighting evil monsters, or you might find the stairs leading to the next dark scary level of the dungeon.
  • Once you have found the stairs to the next level, you can click your stats to use them, or you may continue exploring the level.
  • If your power drops below 0, consider yourself dead. Your journey is over.

Hope you have fun with it! If you didn’t get it you need a bit more imagination 😉

Submit the deepest level you manage to get to! 🙂

6 responses to “Roguelike in a tweet”

  1. sudzzuds Avatar

    Got to level 491 before my power finally dwindled to zero. God that random number generator was crazy~!

    1. slash Avatar

      Hehe there you are, always breaking the balance on my games 🙂

    2. slash Avatar

      Try the new version 🙂 you pushed me to do it 😀
      http://slashwareint.com/mdc/

  2. […] challenged myself to create a Roguelike in a tweet, this is the game I’ve made with the smallest source code, beating the previous 1KB […]

  3. […] if you continue exploring the current level, or climb to the next one. The design is based on the roguelike in a tweet I made some months […]

  4. […] was challenged by Ashton Morris (The music producer for Ananias) to extend upon my previous effort to create a game whose full source code could be put on a […]

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