Hello all, this is the first post in a series of posts I’ll be making weekly to drum up some diverse discussion relating to all different aspects of gaming. I figured I would start with what I know, and so the first topic is thus: roguelike games. (If you think any of the below description is wrong or misleading, let me know - that’s part of the discussion!)
The name of this genre is derived from the game Rogue, released in 1980. The exact definition of a roguelike has been a topic of discussion for a long time, but the core tenets are usually agreed upon to be random/procedural generation and permanent death (no saving and continuing a run, you have to start over). Many roguelikes have an additional increased focus on collecting items and assembling a “build” over the course of a run. A “pure” roguelike is often claimed to have no meta-progression (that is, no procedural unlocks) and focus more on the journey than the destination - seeing how far you can get, or how high a score you can achieve, rather than reaching a distinct victory condition (not that these games don’t have victory conditions, but that it isn’t the end-all-be-all). The secondary term “roguelite” is often brought out to describe games that deviate from this. Additionally, the term “traditional roguelike” is sometimes employed to indicate a more strict adherence to the older style of this genre, with grid-based dungeon crawling and high complexity. Ultimately, as with a lot of genres, pinning down a 100% ironclad definition is near impossible, but most people that like this type of game could tell you the general “vibe” at a glance.
Here are some questions and subtopics that I encourage people to discuss:
- What are some of your favorite examples of roguelike games?
- What roguelike games do you think stand out in terms of defying the conventions of the genre?
- Do you find there to be a meaningful difference between the usage of “roguelike” and “roguelite” nowadays? Which do you prefer? Where does the “traditional roguelike” fit into this?
- Do you continue to play roguelike games after reaching the “end” / reaching 100% completion? Why, or why not?
- What other genre do you most often enjoy seeing paired with roguelike?
- Is any game with procedural generation and a run-based structure a roguelike, or is there more to it? Where do you personally draw the line?
- What have been some of your best runs across all roguelike games? What’s been memorable?
- Are there any upcoming roguelike games you’re excited for?
Also feel free to bring up anything you like related to the topic! If you have suggestions for future discussion topics, leave them in the suggestion thread.
Additional Resources
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Roguebasin, a wiki dedicated to roguelikes (specifically traditional roguelikes)
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List of all Weekly Discussion Topics(this is the first one, be patient!)
I played Rogue a lot back in the day. Also Hack a bit.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a fantastic roguelike. I’ve been playing it for years. The developer is great about updating it and adding new content and adjusting the mechanics. There is a community for Pixel Dungeon over at !PixelDungeon@lemmy.world
Before I get into curmudgeon mode, I want to plug my two favorite roguelikes:
- Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Zombie/sci-fi apocalypse survival roguelike with a bonkers level of depth to it. It’s very actively developed, and the devs are constantly adding more stuff to it. They also have their own lemmy instance at cdda.social.
- Doom Roguelike - Perfectly encapsulates the early Doom games in roguelike form. This one is on the opposite end of the complexity spectrum from CDDA. Much simpler gameplay, though still highly tactical and challenging when you crank the difficulty up. The same author has created a spiritual successor, Jupiter Hell. I haven’t logged enough hours for it to supplant DoomRL’s position yet, but I do have to say that the atmosphere of it is fucking amazing.
With that out of the way, let’s move on to “old man yells at Rogue Legacy”:
The term “roguelike” has been stretched to the point of uselessness, often for marketing purposes. This necessitated the introduction of the term “traditional roguelike” for those of us that still want to discuss actual roguelikes. Binding of Isaac, Dwarf Fortess (fortress mode), Dead Cells, and Slay the Spire are all excellent games, but they’re not roguelikes in any useful sense. If I’m looking for games that are “like Rogue”, none of those are good suggestions. Moria, Nethack, Pixel Dungeon, DCSS, and DoomRL are.
Cataclysm: DDA occupies a bit of a weird space here. It fits within the technical definition of a traditional roguelike, but the overall experience is more of a departure from Rogue than other traditional roguelikes are. It’s almost more akin to Minecraft or Terraria, in that you face dangers to gather resources to create items to face bigger dangers to gather more exotic resources to create more powerful items… and so on. I sometimes refer to this type of roguelike as “neotraditional”, in order to acknowledge this departure.
Before anyone accuses me of being prescriptivist, sometimes prescriptivism is important. I’m not for haranguing people over every terminological deviation, but some terms are unique and useful, and we should try not to muddy them. “Begs the question” and “reactionary” come to mind. “Roguelike” was one, but it’s pretty far gone at this point.
NetHack. With the ASCII graphics. And not because I’m hardcore, I’m actually really bad at it. And I hate the item identification mechanic. But there’s something magical about this game. It feels alive, and the ASCII graphics give it a mystery that can’t be matched by visual spectacles. Idk it’s hard to explain, it’s like a love hate relationship
My personal definition of ‘roguelike’ is a game that is turn based, with perma-death and procedural generation, and ideally is also grid-based. A ‘traditional roguelike,’ to me, is more a specific set of games (Angband, NetHack, etc.), rather than a genre, but if you did want to use ‘traditional roguelike’ as a genre, it’d have all of the above, plus be a fantasy dungeon-crawler RPG. I also do think roguelikes and rogue-lites are meaningfully distinct, or atleast should be, even if most people don’t consider them to be. Rogue-lites can be very fun games, but when I want a roguelike, I want a roguelike, not a fast-paced bullet hell whatever. The best roguelikes I’ve played thus far are Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (CDDA), and Cogmind. Plus I’ve been thinking of picking up Jupiter Hell and Dead Cells when I can, though AFAIK Dead Cells is more of a rogue-lite than a roguelike.
I have been playing UnderMine. The game plays a lot like The Binding of Isaac, but has a few differences like the meta profession after every run where you can unlock new upgrades and you can rescue people inside the mine that are vendors and the like.
The game scratched an inch I had for a new roguelite since I haven’t played one in awhile.
I like the more roguelite type of games. I like that each run is different whether that means procedural generation of the map or just the starting weapons and pickups change throughout a run. Some of my favorite are the following:
- Dead Cells
- Inscryption - card game meets roguelite
- Cult of the Lamb - city builder meets roguelite
- Peglin - Peggle meets roguelite
- Dicey Dungeons - Roguelite deck builder
- Vampire Survivors - Dead simple game. Only one control!
I could probably come up with more and these aren’t in any particular order, but these are some standouts to me.
Inscryption is somethin special. It’s both a solid deckbuilding roguelite, a deconstruction of a deckbuilding roguelite, and a classic “don’t look up anything about this game just play it” game.
I’m a sucker for “don’t look up anything about this game just play it” game, so they just earned a sale thanks to you
FTL: Faster than Light, and Into the Breach.
Both are fantastic and made by subset games. FTL the better of the two imo, but that’s personal preference.
CDDA, Dwarf Fortress, and FTL all had a huge impact on the genera of Rougelike or free-form games, and all 3 have slight variations in the degrees of free-form game play which is very welcome.
Most rougelikes I enjoy have a set ending, that being death, or rarely triumph, and playing after either isn’t possible or just not the point for me.
As for the most memorable moment? To set the stage, I was 13, playing FTL blind. I had made a few runs before it, but I had just reached sector 8, the federation base and the last stand for the federation against the rebels.
I had fought the flagship once before, so I knew it was a big-fuckoff flagship with multiple weapon systems, but I had died really quick.
I had my faithful burst lasers, Artemis missiles, and beam, and was charged and ready to take this ship down. And it was a slog of a fight, I lost a lot of ship HP, and was in the red from the flagship missile launcher.
But it died, as my final shot landed, I rejoiced as its left wing broke apart, until I realized the noise and flash of FTL. It escaped. It had multiple stages.
I resolved to chase it down and desteoy the ship once and for all, victory or death! I died to the supercharged drones in about 2 mins flat.
It was then I learned, you don’t win FTL, you just do a little better every run. It still kills me on the harder starts with Captains Edition on.
When he was alive, TotalBiscut made an excellent video on it which does it far more justice than I can in text here.
When he was alive, TotalBiscut made an excellent video on it which does it far more justice than I can in text here.
Ahh, the classic “Oh God, everything is on fire” video. Sold me on the game, too.
My only contribution to this conversation is that not only does steam seem to have no fucking clue what a rogue like is, but that it certainly can’t tell the difference between the two. So many games are in both of those lists, and many more shouldn’t have the tag. Which sucks cuz I own most of the ACTUAL rogue-likes/lites on steam and am still looking for more
I think this is one of the big pitfalls of community prescribed tagging. Lord knows the Psychological Horror tag must be a mess.
Lol yeah I didn’t even realize they were user added!
