---
title: Announcing Write Yourself a Roguelike
teaser: 'Read our new book to create your very own command line game in Ruby.

  '
tags: news,books
author: Matt Mongeau
published_on: 2015-03-13
---

Command line games have a long history, and one of the most revered is
[Rogue][rogue]. However, there's never really been a good source for
understanding how to build your own version of a roguelike game. You
could have spent months reading through cryptic 30 year old C code, but
we wanted a better option. So a few months ago, we
[started writing a book][landing].

The book we've been writing is meant to be a fun exercise using Ruby and ncurses to build
a working roguelike game in the spirit of [NetHack][nethack], a well-known
roguelike game. We've studied the arcane source code and have begun distilling
the important parts into an easy to follow guide on how to implement your very
own Roguelike!

**We're very excited to announce that [Write Yourself a Roguelike][landing] is ready for
public beta.**

This is an early-stage release. The content is still evolving and you may find
grammatical or technical errors as we continue to write and review. What you're
getting is access to the actual GitHub repository where we're working on the
book. This is a great way to get in early and help shape the content. As we
change and add things, you'll be able to see it in real time, comment on Pull
Requests, or provide feedback as Issues.

To see the current Table of Contents, get a sample of the book, and buy access
to the GitHub repository, please head over to [write-a-roguelike.com][landing].

[rogue]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game)
[nethack]: http://www.nethack.org/
[landing]: http://write-a-roguelike.com