7DRL Challenge 2026

Hosted by slashie, jmlait, Darren Grey · #7drl

190

Entries

721

Ratings

Overview Submissions Results

Community40

Screenshots Submission feed

7DRL Challenge 2026 community

AI assisted development

A topic by joeyismusic created Feb 16, 2026 Views: 598 Replies: 8

Viewing posts 1 to 7

joeyismusic122 days ago

So what is the official stance on AI involvement in the development process?

1. It’s impossible to even type text into any modern device without AI auto correcting you or making suggestions

2. AI is factored into tons of tools. Before the current AI boom, intellisense was basically AI and coding assistance

3. Lots of opinions here but would love to cling to moderated rulings. AI is a useful sounding board, creative collaborative partner, and all in source of knowledge.

4. Most google searches even are an AI generated response.

So the question is, will people be penalized or even disqualified if they’re using AI during the challenge?

thanks.

lsdcomputer121 days ago

It's definitely possible to write code without AI. It's not that hard to turn off for a project. I use VS Code for a lot of my projects and there are options in the settings to turn off Auto Suggestion or Copilot. You could do it temporarily.

A program that I have been in love with is Micro that runs in the terminal. It's a lot easier and more accessible than nano (the default text editor that opens up when you edit files in the terminal) and way more accessible than vim/neovim. It has normal ctrl+s, ctrl-c, ctrl-v, etc functionality. You can use the mouse to select text, and it looks quite pretty. It also comes built in with syntax highlighting and code styling for programming languages. I've been using it more than VS Code actually (and about as much as Obsidian for note taking). It's way easier to not get distracted by a million plugins or other things lol.

I'm a participant and not helping run the challenge or anything, but I would assume most people would frown on having AI assistance somewhat. Though I may be wrong. I like using AI for prototyping or even generating things for me sometimes. Thing is with AI you can have a roguelike finish in less than 7 hours. I've had Claude and chatGPT generate some for me that are not even that bad. Usually for picking apart pieces and learning.

I feel the challenge is for people that can are making their own roguelike. Seems it would defeat the purpose if you vibe coded a roguelike for this challenge or had something else do the heavy lifting. But like I said I don't know and I read nothing explicit in the rules. I know that I'm not going to. It's not a gam jam contest so much as a personal challenge to see if we can. That is how I'm taking it. It's a challenge for me as a developer to see what I can accomplish. I'm learning as much as I can and playing a ton of roguelikes to get ready. I'm mean I'm always playing roguelikes but I'm devoting more time than usual.

I've only done the tcod tutorial so far and I'm not even sure if I'll be able to finish anything. Anyway, that's just my rant-y opinion.

degustafSubmitted121 days ago

I asked about this on the discord a couple of weeks ago. The asnwer I got was basically that a vibe coded game probably wouldn’t do well against the rest of the pack

joeyismusic120 days ago (2 edits)

The hosts have said they encourage participants to plan ahead, start the design docs, sort out your assets, use libraries… etc.

I’ve done just that. I have a game concept and have used AI to do things like take sprites in a sprite sheet and create meta data about the sprites. Etc.

But the game itself is still my idea, my concept, and how I want it to play out is something I’ve architected alone. All that’s left is to wait for the start date and get to work

I can imagine people think of vibe coding a game to be someone letting AI decide all of this. In my case, it’s not.

But absolute proof would be to just stream all your work to verify you made the game. I’m trying to figure out WHAT part of this process is the most respected. Is it physically writing the code by hand like by line? Is it the game design? Is it both?

Removing AI from the equation, the supportive nature of allowing libraries even begs this question. I mean with rot.js, you can have a game in like 50-100 lines.

Darren GreyJam HostSubmitted120 days ago(+4)

There are no restrictions. At the end of the day you make a game for your own satisfaction and it's up to you what you enjoy. We do have a ratings piece conducted at the end but how it's made doesn't factor into ratings.

jmlaitJam HostSubmitted120 days ago(+1)

Darren as usual provides the concise and correct answer, I can now answer my own thoughts on this matter...

We try to frame this as the "Seven Day Roguelike Challenge" rather than "Contest" to underline that it isn't something to compete at. Despite this, we've faced slop submissions before AI was a thing. Quite a few seem to think great fame occurs by entering the challenge. Fortunately they mostly submit the first few hours making it simpler to weed, but this is why we have any submission criterion at all.

Speaking personally, I don't mind if your @ on a map is boring and derivative if you "made" it.

At the end of the day we want to encourage intrinsic rewards. As Darren says, your own satisfaction is the goal.

lsdcomputer has nailed the spirit. They want the challenge of making their own roguelike. For them, vibe coding defeats the entire point - they might as well just download nethack and call it a day. Another coder might feel using libtcod is too much a crutch; so for them they had better eschew that. But that doesn't mean lsdcomputer should avoid libtcod!

But you do ask the interesting question: what part is the part that earns "respect". Despite the risk that I'm now externalizing rewards, I'll try to answer that from my personal viewpoint.

The reason I advocate allowing libraries, allowing using existing assets, and not having a "theme", is because I'm not seeking "game design" or "lines of code" or "pretty jpegs". I'm seeking Art.

The very first Seven Day Roguelike, Dungeon Monkey, was created as just that: Performative Art.

And I think that is the part of the process that I most respect. The artistic process. Art really has two stages. One part is your internal vision, what is living in yourself you wish to express. The second is the external embodiment of that vision. This is the artifact you present at the end of the seven days, for us to fail to interpret to your satisfaction. The artistic process is trying to build that artifact - this has an "Embodied Intelligence" component. When people say that a stone talks to them and tells them what should be carved from it; I don't believe there is actually some spirit in the stone talking. But I do believe that is the correct way to describe the situation.

Over the seven days as you build a game; the game will talk to you. As you talk to it. So having your hands on the game; writing dialog text; colouring pixels; typing semicolons; all that is often an essential part of the process of the game coming to exist. That often forms the equivalent of the brush strokes of the painter, which lead to the reflection that allows the many micro decisions required to take shape to bring what is in your mind into the world. Because, if you took a brain scan of me before the 7DRL starts and assume the final game is sitting latent in that space; it isn't; it does result from a dialogue rather than a dictation.

Unfortunately I don't recall the name, but there was one 7DRL I played that had quite a few simple but clever reframings of the genre. I source dove it out of curiousity and was a quite surprised to see they author had "merely" walked through the libtcod tutorial. But in the act of doing so they had stamped it with their art and their story.

Fortunately ASCII is respected in Roguelikes; so there is no need to consider image generation. I'd strongly recommend not fighting with prompts over what your creatures should look like when a simple glyph would suffice - spend that energy in the creature description.

As for vibe coding; I'd believe you can make a great roguelike vibe-coding. I don't believe it would be "easier" to do so, however.

So, no, there are no restrictions.

joeyismusic120 days ago(+1)

Aha! Beautiful answer. I am excited to make art. Thank you.

kfischer_okarin116 days ago

Not sure if I can find time this time to participate. But I just wanted to say thank you so much for your nuanced and thoughtful staetement.

I’m glad there’s still game jams out here that don’t adopt the knee-jerk reactions against anything that smells remotely like AI.

slashieHostSubmitted118 days ago (1 edit) (+3)

it's all in the challenge's rationale:
7DRL Challenges are NOT about being a fast coder, but rather proving you can release a finished, playable roguelike to the world.

I believe this is still a challenge today, even if you use AI tools.

itch.io

7DRL Challenge 2026

AI assisted development