The story of ADOM— a classic roguelike game

Ancient Domains of Mystery is a live classic of the roguelike genre. 26 years have passed since the beginning of its development, but even now its creator Thomas Biskup continues to develop the project. He told the Gamasutra portal the story of this game. We also give the most interesting theses.

About the difficulties and advantages of self-development

• Biskup started creating ADOM to learn a new programming language. Subsequently, he decided that he needed to gain experience on his own, immediately starting with the development of his own game, and not wasting time trying to figure out other people’s.
• This approach has three advantages: a) you learn faster, because you need to figure everything out yourself; b) you can immediately realize your own vision of what the game should be; c) you can devote yourself entirely to your project, and nothing will distract you.
• According to Biskup, he did not expect that the development of the game would be so difficult. What he could call the basis for the game turned out to be in his hands only in 1994. As soon as Biskup realized what kind of game he wanted to create, things went faster.

About the history of ADOM

One of the early versions of ADOMIn 2001-2012, the development of the game stopped, as Biskup devoted all his time to his career and personal life.

• Together with two colleagues, he founded the IT company QuinScape (they still work together, they have more than 100 employees under them). A little later, in 2003-2004, he decided to test himself and try to get a degree. His girlfriend insisted that he sort it out before they got married, and he succeeded. In 2009, the couple got married.
• At that time, Biskup no longer wanted to continue developing ADOM (after all, the longer the break in work lasts, the more difficult it is to return to it later). However, his friend Johan Terstig (now in the ADOM development team) convinced Biskup to return to work on the game. Biskup soon realized that ADOM had already given him everything he needed for development, namely: a large community ready to share ideas with him.
• In 2012, Biskup revived the development of the game, raising $ 90 thousand on a crowdfunding platform. This allowed him to recruit a full-fledged team.
• In 2015, the game was released in early access Steam and began to generate revenue. However, Biskup spends all this income to pay his team’s salary. He himself has not yet earned a dollar on ADOM.
• According to him, a long break in the development of ADOM had a bad effect on her. However, the total volume of its sales is large enough to improve the game for many years to come.

Where do the ideas for ADOM come from

ADOM Deluxe VersionADOM as a game in the roguelike genre has adopted some features from Rogue itself, as well as NetHack and Angband.

• Other sources of inspiration were Warhammer Fantasy, Brogue, Bard’s Tale III and Realms of Impossibility.
• Some ideas of NetHack and Angband were added to ADOM and subsequently expanded, in particular, the “memory of monsters”, showing the player the weaknesses and strengths of monsters he has already met, or the item distribution system.
• Ever since ADOM got fans, Biskup has been in touch with them. And very often they are the ones who tell the developer how to improve the game and what to add to it.

Fans of the game directly or indirectly offered me a lot of amazing ideas. I try to choose the ones that best match ADOM.

Thomas Biskup

Creator of ADOM

About random

• Biskup wanted the effect of pre-prescribed quests to be enhanced by procedural content generation and randomness.
• Based on his own preferences, he decided to write an interesting story and focus on completing quests in ADOM, and not on tactical battles and puzzles, as in other games of the roguelike genre. Biskup wanted the influence of chance on the storyline to encourage players to replay it again and again.
• He noted that now procedural generation and random mechanics are becoming more and more popular, and he likes it.

About modern roguelike

• Biskupa is annoyed that many studios are lying, referring their projects on Steam to the roguelike genre. In his opinion, they do it only for the sake of marketing advantage.
• He would like Steam to demand $2-5 thousand from developers for hosting the game. Then the site would get rid of many low-quality projects that actually do not have the features of roguelike.

About the future Ultimate ADOM

ADOM Deluxe VersionBiskup and his team are planning to develop the next version of the game, which is called Ultimate ADOM.

• Biskup plans to introduce several large intersecting storylines at once, which will continue to be influenced by random.
• Factions will appear in the game, and each of them will pursue its own goal. Their presence will allow the player to choose how and when to perform random story quests.
• In addition, the passing style will also be influenced by the items found by the player, so the ways of passing certain quests will also depend on them, and not only on the level, class and skills of the character. All this together will push the player to search for new approaches.

Source: Gamasutra