RRogue Adventure JournalEST. 2016
A game-development journal · Shoreditch, London

Roguelike craft, logged one seed at a time.

A dimly lit procedurally generated dungeon from a Rogue Adventure Journal prototype
№ 238

We take apart procedural generation, permadeath economies and the small joys of a good death screen — then publish the notes, code and post-mortems so you can build sharper roguelikes.

Read the latest dev logJoin the workshop
51k+
monthly readers
238
dev logs published
12
prototypes shipped

Postmarked & catalogued

Eight years of stamped, dated dispatches

  • 51,400Monthly readers across the journal
  • 238Dev logs & post-mortems published
  • 12Source-available prototypes released
  • 2016Founded above the roasters on Club Row
The Rogue Adventure Journal writing desk overlooking Club Row
Written in Shoreditch, London

Founder's note

Notes from a desk that overlooks Club Row

I started Rogue Adventure Journal in 2016 after a decade shipping tile-based roguelikes that almost nobody played. The journal is my attempt to write the resource I wanted back then: honest, specific, and unafraid of the maths behind a fair random dungeon.

Every fortnight I publish a teardown — drunkard-walk caverns, loot-weighting tables, fog-of-war performance tricks — built in Godot or Unity and released source-available so you can poke the seams yourself. No hand-waving, no "it just works".

Marlowe Finch

Founder & lead writer

Programmes & offerings

Ways to learn the craft with us

From free fortnightly teardowns to hands-on cohorts run from the studio in Shoreditch.

Roguelike Systems Teardown

Roguelike Systems Teardown

Our flagship fortnightly deep-dive into one procedural system — generation, balance or feel — with commented source you can clone.

Free · every other Tuesday
Procedural Design Cohort

Procedural Design Cohort

A six-week evening course building a complete seed-based dungeon crawler in Godot, capped at 14 people so feedback stays personal.

From £480 · 6 weeks
One-to-One Mentorship

One-to-One Mentorship

Bring your prototype and a problem — turn-scheduling, save systems, difficulty curves — and we untangle it together on a call.

£95 / 60-min session

Source-Available Prototypes

Every teardown ships a MIT-licensed Godot or Unity project so you can read the whole thing, not just the pretty screenshots.

Godot 4 · Unity 6

The Dungeon Dispatch

A monthly letter rounding up the best roguelike releases, jam entries and design writing we found worth your time.

Monthly newsletter

Studio Office Hours

Drop into the Club Row studio on Thursday afternoons to pair on a tricky system over a flat white — first come, first seated.

Thursdays · 14:00–17:00

Questions, answered

Everything you might reasonably ask

Most teardowns are built in Godot 4 because it is free and quick to clone, and a good number are mirrored in Unity 6 for teams already invested there. Each dev log states its engine at the top, and the source repository includes setup notes so you can open it in minutes.

No. The fortnightly Roguelike Systems Teardown and every published post-mortem are free to read forever. Paid programmes — the cohort and one-to-one mentorship — exist for people who want structured, hands-on guidance beyond the written notes.

The six-week cohort starts at £480 and runs on weekday evenings so it fits around a day job. Places are capped at 14 so everyone gets direct feedback, and each intake is announced a few weeks ahead via the Dungeon Dispatch newsletter.

The teardowns assume you can already read basic code, but the cohort is designed for confident beginners moving from tutorials to their own projects. If you have finished a small game or two and want to understand the systems underneath, you are exactly who we build for.

You can request a full refund up to seven days before the first session, no questions asked. After the cohort begins we offer a pro-rata refund through the end of week two if it turns out not to be the right fit.

Yes — Studio Office Hours run every Thursday from 14:00 to 17:00 at 19 Club Row, and you are welcome to drop by. For guest teardowns, email a short pitch and a link to your work and we will reply within a week or so.

Say hello

Start a conversation

Questions about a programme, a guest teardown pitch, or just want to argue about corridor generation? Send a note.