In 2009, Felix Stark interviewed me for theasciidungeon.net , a roguelike blog with reviews etc. he had at this time and which was rather promising. Unfortunately, the site seems to be offline now, I can only access a Google cache of that site. The interview got never published, too. So I decided to use it for a blog entry, it might be interesting for some of you. Here we go (I changed some of my answers for this blog entry, to show the current state of development.)
1. Before you started LambdaRogue, why did you want to make a Roguelike?
When I was younger, I had an old home computer, built in former East Germany. It was called KC85/3. I used to create applications and games for the KC for many years, written in BASIC, but as nearly nobody uses or owns such computers anymore (they disappeared as soon as the western C64 came to former GDR), this was only for my own enjoyment.
However, I think it was 1993 or 1994 when I created my first textbased RPG with a random map. It was no roguelike; the rooms were described using generic texts, like in interactive fiction, with an added generic (graphical) view from the player's perspective. It contained some treasure and some monsters.
When I got a real PC some years later, I started several attempts for creating an RPG again. None of them were finished. Then, in 2004, I found a strange, but nice-looking game called "Falcon's Eye" on the Linux distribution which I just played around with. I soon recognized that it was a Nethack interface, and this made me aware of roguelikes.
In 2005 I tried to create a graphical roguelike called "Avadan"; it was supposed to put the player in a space ship, flying from planet to planet, and every planet had a dungeon to explore. This game was programmed in Gambas, this "Visual Basic"-like programming environment for Linux.
Avadan never worked out, but roguelikes had catched me. In 2006 I wanted to learn C++ for Linux. I thought getting an @ walking on a screen would be a nice task. I actually managed this, but I soon decided that C++ is too complicated for me. I then found FreePascal, and with my Gambas knowledge on SDL programming I ported the "walking @" demo to FreePascal. This was in summer 2006, and with that evening (I even remember how the situation looked like) the project "fprl" was born (which simply means "FreePascal RogueLike", and LambdaRogue's main source file is still called fprl.pp.
2.What did you intend to accomplish when you started work on Lambdarogue? What was your final goal?
Goals changed. As I said, the first goal was to get the @ walking. Then I just wanted to create a roguelike and to share it with other roguelike fans. However, my old RPG ambitions were still alive -- I also wanted to create a roguelike to have a random world in which the stories I wanted to tell could take place. In the beginning, however, that story was very diffuse, the random generator was not good, the interface was clumsy and the game had neither FOV nor LOS. Basically, LambdaRogue was very alpha for 2 years. It got a great development push in 2008, though.
3. How close do you think you are to completing LambdaRogue?
Well. We are already in the 1.x branch, so I could stop development any time, because the basics are finished and work as intended. However, I like to add new stuff, so I think it will never be finished, really.
4. Recently you added status and hotkey displays to LR similar to an MMORPG, which seems to have received a mostly positive response. What made you make this change?
I don't know if it really received positive response -- I only know from 2 or 3 players that they like it, but much more people downloaded the game. So might be many who even hate it -- I don't know. 
However, I think MMORPGs often have very efficient and beautiful interfaces. Besides the fact that I like the look of colorful icons depicting magic etc., quickbars are simply easy. What could be an easier way of casting a spell or consuming an item than pressing one of the function keys?
5. LambdaRogue differs from most roguelikes in that it offers a complex and dynamic storyline, as well as many optional quests. Why did you decide on taking the game in this direction as opposed to the traditional RL style of having a single goal?
As I said: I wanted to tell a story, always, and I must admit that random maps are just a way to have a world without the need of creating every area from scratch. However, random maps are difficult, too. It took me until autumn 2008 until the random map generator was at least somewhat usable. The dungeons are still too less interactive and I'm working on it.
I understand, however, that some players don't care about the story and the texts. For these player esp. the beginning in the Temple with the need to actually accept the main quest, instead of directly being put in the dungeons might be annoying; it's rather unusual for roguelikes. So I added the possibility to skip the prologue in 1.5.1 patch.
6. What features would you, as a developer, like to see implemented in future roguelikes?
I like stories, so story-related roguelikes would be great for me. That's why I like Legerdemain. That game even has a printed cluebook you can order and that tells a well-written story.
Then I'd like to see easier interfaces -- and some games move in this direction: for example the menu that appears when you press Enter in recent Angband versions; it helps me a lot, 'cause I don't need to memorize the keys anymore.
Finally, I just wait for "the" next major roguelike, besides Nethack, Angband, Adom and Crawl/DCSS. Sometimes its a pity that most new roguelikes are either 7DRLs (or similar in scope), or become abandoned very soon. Besides Legerdemain, I hope for an Incursion update. JADE might be interesting, too.
7. Do you have any plans for future projects after LR, or side projects during it's continued production?
From time to time, I'd like to develop a turn based space strategy game (I had 2 attempts for this, already, both went rather far, but I don't get the AI right). But the spare time I have for programming, will always go into LambdaRogue, first.
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