David L. Craddock

Greetings all,

Two of my books on game design, Dungeon Hacks and Red to Black: The Making of Rogue Legacy, are available in the Rogue Souls Bundle of related publications on storybundle.com! Let me explain how Story Bundles work for those unfamiliar with the service, then I'll dig into what my two books are about.

Story Bundle is a pay-what-you-want service that collects books that follow a certain theme—game development, in this case, and more specifically books concerned with roguelikes, Dark Souls, and games influenced by them. The bundle is a limited-time offer, and runs for the next 22 days.

For a minimum payment of $5, you get my Red to Black book and three other excellent titles. Pay at least $15, and you get six other books—Dungeon Hacks among them—for a total of 10. All books are electronic, and come in PDF and/or MOBI and EPUB formats. Those formats are compatible with virtually all smartphones and tablets, so you can read them on devices you find convenient and comfortable.

The books you get at each tier are as follows:

Spend $5 or more

• Beep - The Complete Interviews by Karen Collins
• Boss Fight Books: World of Warcraft by Daniel Lisi
• Heterotopias 001 by Gareth Damian Martin
• Red to Black: The Making of Rogue Legacy (StoryBundle Exclusive!) by David L. Craddock

Spend $15 or more

• Bug Voyáge! (StoryBundle Exclusive!) by John Harris
• You Died: The Unofficial Dark Souls Companion by Keza MacDonald and Jason Killingsworth
• Dungeon Hacks by David L. Craddock
• Boss Fight Books: Mega Man 3 by Salvatore Pane
• HG101 Presents: Data East Arcade Classics by Kurt Kalata
• Good Nintentions 1985 by Jeremy Parish

Proceeds go toward the authors featured in the bundle as well as the Video Game History Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to preserving the history of the medium. The Rogue Souls Bundle runs for the next couple of weeks. It makes a great gift idea for anyone you know interested in gaming culture and/or how games are made.

This is my third time participating in a Story Bundle, and my third time being in the company of supremely talented authors. Jason and Simon, who curate and administrate these bundles, are great folks; I'm thankful for the opportunity to join in once again.

I'm particularly proud of Dungeon Hacks and Red to Black, both of which chronicle games in the roguelike (or roguelike-like, in the latter's case) genre. Dungeon Hacks is a narrative-style account of the making of seminal roguelike games: Rogue, Moria, NetHack, and others. I decided to write about roguelikes while researching Diablo and Stay Awhile and Listen. In fact, my original goal was to devote a few pages or paragraphs to the genre in order to contextualize how Diablo came about.

The more I learned about roguelike games, however, the more I realized that reducing them to a footnote would be a disservice. So I went about looking up the makers of the who's-who of roguelikes and interviewed them over Skype and email. Dungeon Hacks was the result, and contains some great development stories and anecdotes.

Red to Black: The Making of Rogue Legacy is a more recent publication. It's exclusive to the Rogue Souls package for the duration of the bundle, and is one of five books I have due for release this calendar year. Like Dungeon Hacks, Red to Black is a narrative-style story. You'll meet Teddy and Kenny Lee, two brothers who team up to create video games. Their relationship provides the story's foundation. They argue a lot, but never to the detriment of their sibling bond, and their debates give rise to excellent game ideas.

You can read excerpts from Dungeon Hacks, Red to Black, and any other book in the Rogue Souls Bundle on storybundle.com. I hope you enjoy the books!

Happy reading,

~David