Michael Micasso releases ROGUEMEK demo with five-day runs and hand-drawn tiles

• ROGUEMEK has a playable demo built with original hand-drawn DOS-style pixel tiles, according to the launch announcement.
• Each run lasts at most five in-game days, with competitive scoring described in the demo details.
• Players can watch the top 30 runs through the replayable leaderboard.

Micasso built ROGUEMEK as a diversion for bored website visitors; he says it became the site's main attraction. The interface uses his own MEKMODE.otf font, and he is considering SNES-style save passwords.

ROGUEMEK is free to play on Micasso's new website, which launched alongside the turn-based roguelike.

The five-day cap sits over four features he listed at launch:

• Gear grinding
• Random events
• Secrets to discover
• An infinite map

Pressing G opens the leaderboard, where players can replay the top 30 runs and see the character class used at each rank.

The replayable leaderboard is the demo's best trick.

Micasso, the Indonesian visual artist behind MEK.txt, dates ROGUEMEK's development to 2025 on his Ko-fi profile. He says he makes the game alone in his free time.

His son contributed repeated QA runs, in-game ideas and designs, with the pair also brainstorming on paper.

The trailer uses Sen6ble's “The Fairy.” In his music credit, Micasso repeated the musician's note that “no generative AI was used,” specifically referring to the track.

Roughly three hours after launch, Micasso reported 262 players. His dashboard's 500 journeys-ended counter covered 90 days; the count for that day was 219.

He subsequently published “First 6 Hours of Demo Version Launch” in the game's dedicated devlog, listing three known bugs:

• Firebolt visual glitch
• Can't see cursor
• Missing dropped items

Login-free persistence was still being discussed in the replies about a bestiary. Micasso floated three possibilities:

• Bind the bestiary log to an IP address or leaderboard name.
• Use browser cache as a fallback.
• Encode a save state in a 16-to-32-digit password, inspired by old SNES save systems.

Micasso plans an endless exploration mode focused on uncovering secrets rather than chasing high scores. These runs would generate no score and stay off the leaderboard.

He also explained that existing monster rewards vary with difficulty, rarity and progression through the day/night cycle.

Micasso previewed the next build, v0.12, with five equipment variants:

• Standard
• Broken
• Superior
• Cursed
• Enchanted