Making Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup with 253 cooks and no head chef

Brogue was created by one person. Rogue was created by two. Dwarf Fortress? Two people. Caves of Qud – three people. Desktop Dungeons: five. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup has had two hundred and fifty three contributors. Of these, fifty have been core developers. In the sixteen-year history of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, there has never been a lead. No design lead, no engineering lead, no art lead, no producer.

I spoke with David Ploog (dpeg) and Corin Buchanan-Howard (Lasty), two of the most prominent developers on the team, about how and why they make a game with such a sprawl of people. How many are working on the game right now? “That’s impossible to answer, I’m afraid,” David told me, laughing. Corin said, “almost certainly less than twenty, almost certainly more than five.”

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