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Castle of the Vampire – Day 8, Lighting
This round of development touched nearly every part of the dungeon experience, from the traps waiting in the forest to the way the world fits on screen. The common thread has been making the game more readable without giving away its secrets. Traps for the outdoors The forest now has…
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nesifier – convert images to NES visuals
Just for fun, I created a small node.js cli tool to convert any image into strict NES visual constraints (more specifically, a NES background that could actually be displayed on a console). It’s on npm now. Some Recipes If you want to try it out, this is all you need…
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Roguelike Celebration 2026 Talks Series #1 – The City, The Street, The Lens by Mike Cook
Roguelike celebration 2026 just happened and I wanted to share some of my favorite talks. Let’s start with an awesome talk about Street Photography (?!) The City, The Street, The Lens: Perspectives on Building and Appreciating Generative Systems Cities are beautiful, complex systems that have been built over hundreds, often…
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Castle of the Vampire – Day 7, Fateful Accident
The biggest change today was adding a cinematic intro of the player running into the forest in a dark stormy night in a carriage that is attacked by a flock of crows resulting in tragedy for the driver and the horse. Rain and lighting effects were added for this sequence…
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Castle of the Vampire – Day 6, A Better View
This round of development was mostly about making the dungeon easier to read without making it easier to understand. Slashie worked on the DOS-style font, visibility, and the visual language of objects, then moved on to the mobile interface and the way the game communicates its puzzles. The DOS 8×8…
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Pixel Centurion – Day 9
Improved the scenario setup screen, instead of slides per unit type added a grid of cards per unit type, each card with the visuals of the unit, a smaller button to get the details, and a “spinner” (+ and – buttons with a label in the middle) to change the…
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Castle of the Vampire – Day 5
Finally completed the implementation of the “lock and key” level layouts and the dynamic traps including elements of anticipation, spatiality, and more. The existing implementation divides stages into zones connected by gates, with keys, levers, and timed buttons placed in earlier areas to encourage backtracking and exploration. Boss arenas remain…
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Slashie Game Lineage
As part of preparing my talk for roguelike celebration 2026, I created a visualization of the references between slashie.net projects considering both game design elements and also technical inheritance. Why did I do this? I’ve been making games of all kinds for a long time, so I thought it would…
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Castle of the Vampire – Inception
October 14 — Inception The project began with a single-prompt attempt to create a traditional, turn-based ASCII roguelike inspired by Castlevania. The initial version featured 25 stages, classic monsters, and a final confrontation with Dracula, but its linear levels and punishing boss fights quickly made the experience feel like a…
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Pixel Centurion – Days 4 to 8
October 11 — Day 4: Battle Setup and Command Systems Expanded battlefield controls with Keep Formation and Converge commands, unit combat indicators, and zoom controls. Introduced squad consolidation, allowing weakened squads to merge into full-strength groups after five seconds without combat. Expanded scenario setup to support independent army configurations, including…
I’m Santiago Zapata, better known online as slashie, a Software Engineer and Independent Game Developer and from Medellín, Colombia.
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