No credit for the art direction and inspiration? Brogue?
Or did I miss the attribution?
* Edit: I’m not looking for the downvotes or to stir things up. I’m simply calling out that this is a small niche community we notice these things, we’re very free with our code, and copy is a compliment, but so is attribution.
The author wasn’t so much inspired the by Brogue style, but copied it directly down to the animations and ASCII.
somewhatgoated•May 13, 2026
Calling it rogue-like is basically attribution since Brogue is just the follow-up to Rogue which invented the genre
sandoze•May 13, 2026
I’ll be sure to keep that in mind with my next plumber platformer
somewhatgoated•May 13, 2026
No one calls them plumber platformer though…
If you call it “Mario-like” then I would say most people would understand where the inspiration comes from.
fsckboy•May 14, 2026
most people would name hack (1984) or the fork nethack (1987) as the successor to rogue (1980). brogue (2018) i never heard of till now but probably i aged out by then (aged out of spending many mindless i.e. repetitive hours of fun)
Widdershin•May 14, 2026
Brogue was released in 2009 for what it’s worth.
bayarearefugee•May 13, 2026
> No credit for the art direction and inspiration? Brogue?
In the age of LLMs the "author" might not even know where the art direction and inspiration came from!
marcingas•May 13, 2026
I know, this is intentional :)
I took things I like from Brogue and added my own spin on it.
BeetleB•May 13, 2026
Wouldn't the credit go to ... rogue?
sandoze•May 13, 2026
The genre of course. But this is almost a 1-1 copy of the Brogue style. Right down to the colors, animation, and ASCII
devindotcom•May 13, 2026
are you not familiar with the actual game rogue, or nethack?
sandoze•May 13, 2026
Yes. I don’t think we’re having the same argument though.
yeah, this is a Brogue-like. I love Brogue and have been inspired by it. XsofY is not an exact clone but I've studied Brogue C source heavily when making this.
I'll link to Brogue in the README :)
sandoze•May 13, 2026
Amazing and great work!
deathanatos•May 13, 2026
While I can see perhaps a claim of "inspiration", when I put Brogue & this side-by-side, while artistically there is similarity, I wouldn't say "copied".
Brouge isn't the only rouge-like with LoS mechanics.
marcingas•May 13, 2026
Brogue is insanely well balanced and ingeniously designed. XsofY is a mere tribute ;)
the lighting effects are very brogue and like nothing I've seen in angband, which is very very barebones ASCII by comparison. brogue-likes push into ANSI art territory with their abuse of terminal formatting.
SubiculumCode•May 14, 2026
Some of the many variants did expand on the ASCII graphics a bit, but yeah, I see what you mean.
bennettpompi1•May 13, 2026
fun project!
Razengan•May 13, 2026
Noun of Noun
gchamonlive•May 13, 2026
Reminds me a lot of NetHack, good times
Parcival•May 13, 2026
Pretty fun! I keep getting instantly killed by things though and I'm not sure why, possibly a bug.
andai•May 13, 2026
I see you haven't played Noita!
marcingas•May 13, 2026
Noita was another inspiartion when making this - the inverted power curve is real! Start squishy, become a god, die anyway.
zardo•May 13, 2026
A wand related accident has to be the number one cause of a Noita run ending.
CyberShadow•May 13, 2026
No, I think I'm seeing the same bug. Time seems to sometimes subjectively freeze:
─── Messages ───
Old man shuts the gate behind you. You hear him mutter "every time, I swear..."
You must retrieve the Amulet of Lost Semicolons.
You kill the rat! (sneak attack!)
The rat squeals and dies!
You wait. (x10) ᛜ
ᚢ You kill the rat! (sneak attack!) ᛉ
The rat squeals and dies!
You hear muttering. ᛋ
You hear muttering.
You hear muttering.
You hear a distant creak. ᛖ ᛃ
The runestone crumbles as you touch it. You learn: ᛟ means "ice"! ᛚ
You hear a distant creak.
The goblin misses you. (x3)
The goblin hits you for 4.
The goblin hits you for 3. ᛏ
The goblin hits you for 4.
The goblin hits you for 3.
The goblin misses you. ᛚ
The goblin hits you for 4.
The goblin hits you for 2.
The goblin hits you for 4.
The goblin misses you.
The goblin hits you for 2.
The goblin misses you. (x2)
The goblin hits you for 2.
The goblin kills you!
You die...
Note how there were no user action messages during the time the goblin was attacking.
fhn•May 13, 2026
yeah. something is wrong. You don't even get to fight back.
marcingas•May 13, 2026
Definitely a bug. I'll look into this at some point. Please note that this is not a finished game by any means. If anyone asked I'd call it a tech demo at this point :)
CyberShadow•May 13, 2026
Seems to be that the sort function accepts a ternary predicate but then passes it to an implementation accepting a boolean one?
marcingas•May 13, 2026
Yeah that was it, the let-go stdlib changed.
marcingas•May 13, 2026
I think I fixed it!
dpkp•May 13, 2026
I see the same but only in browser / wasm. Also notice that the mobs dont move in browser mode. Local via lg in console works great though.
ticulatedspline•May 13, 2026
I feel this comment. Seriously though, damage reflection was one of the many insanely annoying things about that game.
devindotcom•May 13, 2026
that's actually a beloved feature of "true" roguelikes
otikik•May 13, 2026
Found it a bit annoying having to press 'i' at the start in order to equip the dagger and armor that were on my backpack, but well done.
fhn•May 13, 2026
yep. should be equipped from the start.
marcingas•May 13, 2026
Agree, will patch this.
marcingas•May 13, 2026
fixed
Jeremy1026•May 13, 2026
Gets stuck in a redirect loop with the message:
> Interactive input unavailable (no cross-origin isolation).
> Deploy coi-serviceworker-js alongside this file.
in Safari on 26.4
marcingas•May 13, 2026
Author here! Thanks for posting! This game is written in a Clojure-like programming language I've made. So this is a (B)rogue-like in a Clojure-like :)
What I think is interesting is that this game computes the entire world state each tick and does so efficiently thanks to persistent data structures.
To anyone who dared to fire it up: thank you for playing, I'm curious what you think!
jackpirate•May 13, 2026
The name let-go of your programming language is awesome!
marcingas•May 13, 2026
Thanks! Please check it out and leave me a star if you like it :)
biosubterranean•May 13, 2026
Little buggy (dying from things not on the screen), but I love the dwarf fortress esque vibes
Oakwhisper•May 13, 2026
There was a commit a few minutes ago that fixed the instakills for me
marcingas•May 13, 2026
This was caused by a stdlib bug in the language, I bypassed it :D
onlyrealcuzzo•May 13, 2026
This is awesome!
I'm interested in building something similar, any tips besides looking at what you've done and Brogue?
marcingas•May 13, 2026
I'd say don't immediately go into making an ECS and don't sweat about perf too much. You can totally do this in any programming language. This is a good talk about roguelike software design in general: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxI3Eu5DPwE
I did a quick run on the web version. I was able to sneak attack everything on the first two levels, which felt like a bug, but I'm honestly not sure.
When I found a spear, I kind of expected to be able to throw it, but I didn't find a throw option anywhere. I think that makes the short sword better in every case, but maybe I missed something.
Overall, I love the execution. Quality retro fun with a really nice interface.
marcingas•May 13, 2026
This totally is a bug. Was this recently? I thought I fixed this in WASM version.
cmrdporcupine•May 13, 2026
My 15 year old's (who is a roguelike fanatic) first comment was: there's no diagonal movement?
"The visuals are interesting.... oh I died."
marcingas•May 13, 2026
I don't have a numpad so it did not occur to me to add diagonals :D
Good feedback though, I'll add it. Thanks to your 15 year old!
jdiff•May 14, 2026
most roguelikes also add (IIRC looking at my phone keyboard and reverse engineering muscle memory) yubn for diagonals.
pgt•May 13, 2026
Not a Rogue-like specialist, it's hard – I haven't made it out of level 1 yet.
fhn•May 14, 2026
I just got to lvl2 only because goblins aren't insta-killing me
binary0010•May 13, 2026
Isn't this the kind of thing you can essentially fully offload to Claude code these days? Don't really get the point of these tiny primarily llm generated game clones tbh.
frakt0x90•May 13, 2026
Is this a troll comment? I don't see where the author used AI to generate the code and if you don't see the point of experimenting with technology, you're on the wrong website.
binary0010•May 13, 2026
You really don't see where the author uses ai? Pretty much everywhere, all the docs, the overview of the project, a LOT of the code is obviously primarily ai written, etc.
sandoze•May 13, 2026
So the author used the latest and greatest development tech to create a unique little demo in their custom language. I'm unsure your point. You know what I don't use to program with anymore? Punch cards and Borland C++. The industry has evolved for better or worse.
binary0010•May 13, 2026
What are you going on about?
No idea what you think you are arguing. Are you in the wrong thread?
I said I don't get why people keep posting essentially vibe coded game clones...
I get bored checking out GitHub projects on HN that are doing absolutely nothing new and are essentially baby projects made by Claude on a weekend, and terribly architected to boot. Cluttering the feed.
marcingas•May 13, 2026
FWIW it's a good fuzz test for the interpreter ;)
marcingas•May 13, 2026
I see your point but I like to think it's not as sloppy as you'd expect. This one is written in a programming language I've been making since 2021 and it's not a direct Brogue clone despite its looks.
postalrat•May 13, 2026
Consider them prototypes. Like the games submitted to game jams.
marcingas•May 13, 2026
I wouldn't even dare posting this to a game jam... or HN at this point but someone posted it for me, welp.
postalrat•May 14, 2026
I guess it depends whats more important, getting the game in your head out where others can try it, or the process of building the game itself.
seabass-labrax•May 13, 2026
I killed myself with a flaming spear and the game said this:
I got killed by a fire imp and crashed the same way.
cheald•May 13, 2026
"Applied theology with inadequate safety margins" might just be my favorite difficulty description ever.
fhn•May 14, 2026
let's not have q=quit. most rouge games have q=quaff. I mean if people want to quit, they can just refresh or close the tab. At the very least, ask.
ssalka•May 14, 2026
Not sure how you feel about including sound, but I feel like there needs to be a warning sound that plays when you're low HP, like in Pokemon. I keep dying because I don't realize I'm at low health
marcingas•May 14, 2026
Interesting idea... maybe it could send terminal bell or tint the screen red at low health?
hales•May 14, 2026
Been having fun today trying to work this game out.
Questions:
1. How do I learn the magic/rune system? I can inscribe them on weapons & armour. Some are verbs and some are adjectives. I am yet to see obvious effects (edit: except for 'arc'), so I wonder if they always do things or often do nothing unless specific combinations are used (like subject-verb-object requirements of a sentence or certain weapon/armour+spell combo validity)?
2. What does "magic" mean when I try to inscribe more than one rune on a thing? Does this mean one rune is free but multiple require magic and are detrimental if you have none?
3. How do I interpret the weapon stats? Eg "Current: 3-5 -> 2-4"
Notes:
1. The game is much easier if I set my gamma up (xgamma -gamma 1.5). Most of the levels are very dark (10% of RGB values dark) so I easily miss items and routes to check otherwise.
2. There are a lot more keybinds than shown onscreen. 'x' to autoexplore, 'r' for a runes page I'm trying to work out. Shift+Z to autorest/heal. '>' will fasttravel you to the stairs down if you have already found them. Shift+direction will autowalk.
3. Don't press 'q'. There is no confirmatin prompt. There are no saves. Aieee :D
16 Comments
Or did I miss the attribution?
* Edit: I’m not looking for the downvotes or to stir things up. I’m simply calling out that this is a small niche community we notice these things, we’re very free with our code, and copy is a compliment, but so is attribution.
The author wasn’t so much inspired the by Brogue style, but copied it directly down to the animations and ASCII.
If you call it “Mario-like” then I would say most people would understand where the inspiration comes from.
In the age of LLMs the "author" might not even know where the art direction and inspiration came from!
I took things I like from Brogue and added my own spin on it.
Brogue looks like this: https://syltefar.com/screenshot/?id=624
1: https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/
I'll link to Brogue in the README :)
Brouge isn't the only rouge-like with LoS mechanics.
> Interactive input unavailable (no cross-origin isolation).
> Deploy coi-serviceworker-js alongside this file.
in Safari on 26.4
What I think is interesting is that this game computes the entire world state each tick and does so efficiently thanks to persistent data structures.
To anyone who dared to fire it up: thank you for playing, I'm curious what you think!
I'm interested in building something similar, any tips besides looking at what you've done and Brogue?
Tbh the whole channel is a gold mine of inspiration. Also check: https://discord.gg/bgd2GrhR
When I found a spear, I kind of expected to be able to throw it, but I didn't find a throw option anywhere. I think that makes the short sword better in every case, but maybe I missed something.
Overall, I love the execution. Quality retro fun with a really nice interface.
"The visuals are interesting.... oh I died."
Good feedback though, I'll add it. Thanks to your 15 year old!
No idea what you think you are arguing. Are you in the wrong thread?
I said I don't get why people keep posting essentially vibe coded game clones... I get bored checking out GitHub projects on HN that are doing absolutely nothing new and are essentially baby projects made by Claude on a weekend, and terribly architected to boot. Cluttering the feed.
> FATAL ERROR: [program exited] "cannot subtract nil and let-go.lang.Int", :data {:trace ("game-loop (<unknown>)" "game-loop (<unknown>)" "update-world (<unknown>)" "run-until-player-turn (<unknown>)" "creature-turn (<unknown>)" "update-ai-state (<unknown>)" "distance (<unknown>)")}}
A fatal error indeed!
Questions:
1. How do I learn the magic/rune system? I can inscribe them on weapons & armour. Some are verbs and some are adjectives. I am yet to see obvious effects (edit: except for 'arc'), so I wonder if they always do things or often do nothing unless specific combinations are used (like subject-verb-object requirements of a sentence or certain weapon/armour+spell combo validity)?
2. What does "magic" mean when I try to inscribe more than one rune on a thing? Does this mean one rune is free but multiple require magic and are detrimental if you have none?
3. How do I interpret the weapon stats? Eg "Current: 3-5 -> 2-4"
Notes:
1. The game is much easier if I set my gamma up (xgamma -gamma 1.5). Most of the levels are very dark (10% of RGB values dark) so I easily miss items and routes to check otherwise.
2. There are a lot more keybinds than shown onscreen. 'x' to autoexplore, 'r' for a runes page I'm trying to work out. Shift+Z to autorest/heal. '>' will fasttravel you to the stairs down if you have already found them. Shift+direction will autowalk.
3. Don't press 'q'. There is no confirmatin prompt. There are no saves. Aieee :D