So, my favorite genre is roguelikes. For years, I've been pretty disdainful of the lack of this type of game on the 83/84+ series. Finally, I decided to just make my own.

I'm about 60% done with it. I coded the engine over about 2 days, and now I'm just doing a ton of stats tweaking and adding monsters, items, etc.



I'm keeping the storyline under wraps for now, but the basic premise is that you can only go forward.

Some quick notes:
I'm doing the project with Axe.
I'm using Crabcake.
I used a slightly modded version of Builderboy's flame routine for the holybomb animation.
I've already changed how some of the items work since this screenshot. I have one more item that I currently intend to implement, with maybe others if they improve the gameplay without breaking the game. Getting the stats just right for a difficult but still beatable roguelike is incredibly tedious.
My main overhaul that I need to do is start adding a ton of text for events and (maybe) some special events, rooms, etc. too. Those are a big maybe at this point.
Yes, the walls are supposed to get weirder as you get deeper into the game.

I am in deep need of help for character design. If anyone wants to volunteer (for credit when the game is released, of course) to design a big bunch of 6x7 px sprites for monsters, that would be wonderful.

At this point, I don't think that I'm going to add any of those types of stats. I am modelling that part of the game on Brogue, an absolutely astounding roguelike: https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/

In this game, strength is really your only stat that you have to worry about. I'm doing this for two reasons. One is that I want this to be a bit of a coffeebreak roguelike, such that it is streamlined and conducive to a series of fast, brutal playthroughs in short amounts of time. Secondly, I simply don't have the ambition to deal with implementing systems for all of the stats right now. Strength in Chambers is based exclusively on your level. The only three relevant stats to your character are HP, strength, and Experience points, which can only be gained from killing monsters.

As a bit of added history to my development process, for anyone who's even slightly curious:

I don't remember a lick of ASM, so I decided, hey, let's start this off in TI-BASIC. I created the general map generation engine and the player-movement engine in about an hour on a Thursday. Generating an all-wall map was fast and easy. Already, it was taking about 2-seconds per turn to detect input, do wall detection, overwrite the character, redraw the character in a new place, etc., on the graph screen (I wanted to branch out from solely ASCII). I remembered quickly that this is why I never undertook an RPG in TI-BASIC. Just to draw a nice, pretty map with sprites, it would often take between 30 and 60 seconds on my old 83. Obviously, I was going to have to try to relearn ASM in order to do this in any manner that I could be satisfied with. Or was I? 

And that is where you took up Axe?

And how! 

Added an item that randomly teleports you to an open spot, along with an animation for it that any fan of TI-83 manuals will love
This will have a good chance of helping out when stuck in a really tight spot in a tough room. Like the holybomb, could randomly help you. Unlike the holybomb, could randomly make your situation worse, depending on the room. Oh, emergent gameplay...

Also, set up the inventory screen so that you can wrap top to bottom and vice versa. I was getting sick of having to scroll all of the way to the bottom instead of just hitting "Up" once.

See attached image for both of these additions.

I also remapped some keys for usability and intuitiveness. A lot of work tonight, very few visible results. My next step: back to designing monsters and tweaking a ton of stats.

I spent the morning adding event text (e.g.,  "You got a medkit", "You got a teleporter"). I spent last night adding the condition of rooms potentially being dark when you walk into them, where you can't see anything at all. You still get event text (for hitting a wall or getting attacked, etc.) so that you can "feel" your way around. In addition to that, then, I added a flare item which will light a darkened room. Just another thing that makes item management (since you can only have 5) all the more important in the game. Trying to decide if I should make the flare do something else if a room is already lit.

I know that I'm not the most efficient coder in the world, and the engine for this game is actually rather lofty, but it's already sitting at 11659K in size when compiled. I suppose that means that it's time to focus on just adding monsters and an end condition.

A screenshot of my current state.

Mostly, there's far more event text. I was hoping for more chances to show off the flare and the teleporter and their utility, but it really depends so much on the random generation whether or not you're going to get stuck in a tight spot and need them. I had added a really cool effect (or, I thought so) for the flare so that you would kind of have a spotlight around you still in the darkness, and it kind of flickered with light (used a for loop to define circle radius, used character position, drew a series of spotted circles with "flickering" areas around the edge during the getkey routine), etc. I ended up cutting it because it added to the response latency by about 1-2 seconds whenever you'd press a key. It was pretty, but, ultimately I want it to be responsive more than anything. I would be more than willing to guess there's a much better way to get a similar effect that I wanted, but, whatever.

@aeTIos: Usually when I am doing gray, I set Wabbit at a lower shading to make sure the screenies don't get too massive.

@Phero: As ever, nice job