Writing Games features GoMud, a modern engine for building text-based worlds

Creator Dylan “Volte6” Squires shares how a fast, open-source toolkit grew from weekend project to community platform

Online - July 21, 2025-- Writing Games, a site dedicated to the culture and craft of text-based roleplaying games, has published a new interview with Dylan “Volte6” Squires, creator of GoMud: a lightweight, modern engine for building and hosting multiplayer text games.

Dylan AKA Volte6 talks about the work behind GoMud, the multi-user dungeon engine built on Go.

Built in Go, GoMud emphasizes speed, simplicity, and accessibility. It compiles quickly, runs anywhere, and ships with its own browser client, style system, and automapper - letting builders focus on creating worlds instead of fighting configuration files. Squires describes the project as “a fast, modern, and easy-to-use MUD engine meant to help builders quickly set up their own worlds.”

Originally a personal project, GoMud has since become open-source, with contributions from an active developer community. The interview explores Squires’ path from hobbyist coder to project maintainer, the importance of user feedback, and the lessons learned from letting go of perfectionism.

“What stuck with me was Dylan’s attitude toward building things - start simple, get it working, and learn from what breaks,” said Andruid, creator of Writing Games. “It’s a good reminder that progress beats perfection every time.”

The full interview, “GoMud: a lightweight engine for building text-based worlds,” is available on Writing Games.

Progress beats perfection.