Santago Zapata stops by to talk about the history of roguelikes, his own expansive body of small works for the 7-Day Roguelike Challenge, and his larger works, from Castlevania Roguelike, to Ananias, to his current project NovaMundi: The Spear of Chaquén.
Is it a roguelike, this new game? The purists would say (and have said) no, but it’s certainly philosophically adjacent to roguelikes—with its focus on learning from failed runs, its emphasis on exploring procedurally-generated environments, and its infinity of emergent micronarratives.
It’s also a game steeped in Muisca culture, and as such a great way to talk about the process of research, the semiotics of art direction, and the ethics of using procedural generation in stories about real places and cultures.
You can get NovaMundi: The Spear of Chaquén on Steam.
You can find a whole lot of Santiago’s other work on his website.
You can also follow Santiago on Twitter.
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• Here’s the Berlin Interpretation, as documented on RogueBasin, and here are my weird musings thereupon.
• Here’s Rami Ismail’s thread on Six Days in Fallujah, and here’s his episode of this here podcast.
• Santiago’s talk on roguelikes as “automated dungeon masters” is fantastic, as are all of his Roguelike Celebration presentations.
• And speaking of Roguelike Celebration, here’s that recently-posted talk about Dwarf Fortress. If you’re new to Dwarf Fortress (as a game, and like, as a concept), then the Noclip interview with Tarn Adams comes highly recommended as well.
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“All The People Say (Season 4)” by Drew Messinger-Michaels.
Some exploration music from the NovaMundi: The Spear of Chaquén Original Soundtrack by Juan Carlos Garcia (a.k.a. Quiet Gecko).
Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.