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The Weekly Discussion Topic - Roguelikes - 28-07-2023

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.

115 comments

  • 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

    • Proper link structure for a Lemmy community is !PixelDungeon@lemmy.world - this should work!

      And I also have played SPD quite a lot. Despite it being free, I tossed the developer a couple dollars - they've been doing great work with it, a whole new class was added not too long ago. I'm only now picking it up again after some time, and I've only beaten the game with 2/5 characters, so I got a lot to learn to get good at it again.

      • Thank you! Fixed my link.

        It's a tough game. I managed to beat it with all 5 characters, but that took a while. Now I'm working on beating it with all 9 challenges enabled. I'm dying so much 😭

  • 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.

    • The trouble with "gamelike" as a descriptor is really well illustrated here. People will always disagree on how alike the games have to be for it to fit or what particular things it needs to do the same to match, while others will argue that something they play feels like game so it is now gamelike.

      Early roguelike games took something rogue did first (repeating often procedural gameplay that at least mostly resets on death) and often ignored other aspects. Arguing about what exact criteria necessary or sufficient to make a game roguelike is like arguing whether a song counts as "punk" or "pop" or "metal". Different people will feel like it does or doesn't fit into any particular category for one or another reason, but ultimately the categories exist because some people put things in them and that's it.

  • Against the Storm is a pretty interesting roguelike I played recently. In each "run" you build a small town. It's kinda like Banished or SimCity.

    I'm not playing it anymore, but I thought the concept was cool.

    • I picked this up, played it for about twenty hours. I definitely enjoyed my time, but I could clearly feel how most of the game loop was just scraping by until you could fully pop off at the end - I liked that, but I grew a bit weary of the initial setup on each run.

  • Maybe it's just me (and there are many popular ones I haven't tried, because money), but I've always liked the idea but found actual implementations of it unsatisfying.

    The average low viability of the systems (and that a good hand is unlikely) feels too much like real life, and even games with the most options (like Shattered) don't offer enough flexibility to deal with the annoying elements of the game that could be entirely removed while still remaining difficult. (commonly, anything related to: inventory management, hunger, currency/resources, equipment restrictions/pitfalls/unavailability. That's not including ineffective positive elements)

    I have won Shattered at least 5 times and still feel that way, I lose many more times and it does seem that the biggest factor in winning is what the game gives me.

  • Unreal World is probably one of the more interesting roguelikes I've ever seen but never played. Also, a lot of people talk about Dwarf Fortress, but don't mention the adventure mode which is a more standard roguelike adventure, but still very interesting because of the stuff that can happen and how powerful you can get.

  • Thanks for the explanation!

    The roguelike I keep coming back to these days is Dome Keeper. Resource mining + fighting monsters + casual play duration is a combo I find hard to beat at the moment.

  • It's one of my favorite genres because they're the perfect games to play in-between other things. I would play a long campaign game and take breaks by playing a roguelike. If I have to leave the house in 30 minutes or so I'd play a round of a roguelike since there's no long-term attachment. It's just great to fill in the gaps.

    Despite being kind of an overdone genre I think there are pretty few games that really nailed it. A lot of them tend to feel repetitive or have issues like being too luck-based. While Hades is pretty close to a 10/10 I think we can agree it's a bit repetitive going through the same rooms and fighting the same enemies every run.

    My favorites are Binding of Isaac, Risk of Rain 2, Enter the Gungeon, Monster Train. There's a ton of other good ones but these are the S-tier ones for me.

  • I think most of the games I've liked lately are roguelites:

    • Bullets Per Minute
    • Crypt of the Necrodancer
    • Plate-Up
    • Unrailed
    • Noita
    • Risk of Rain 2

    Except for BPM and Noita, I'd recommend all of these as excellent coop games too. Here are some summary descriptions:

    Bullets Per Minute:

    • first-person shooter dungeon crawler
    • awesome rock soundtrack with a steady beat
    • you have to shoot and reload to the beat

    Crypt of the Necrodancer:

    • top-down 2d dungeon crawler
    • awesome electronic soundtrack with a steady beat
    • you have to attack and move to the beat

    Plate-Up:

    • top-down 2d restaurant simulator
    • episodic gameplay where you try to make it through each day by serving all the customers
    • if any customer waits too long, you lose
    • inevitably gets crazy and chaotic, perfect for a group looking for a hectic and fun coop game
    • devs are based, epic mod support

    Unrailed:

    • top-down 2d rail-building game
    • you start with a train on some rails, with the train always moving forwards
    • the goal is to continuously place rails in front of the train, otherwise you lose
    • similarly to Plate-Up, incredibly chaotic energy, very fun

    Noita:

    • sidescrolling dungeon crawler
    • you mainly fight enemies using wands and spells
    • wands on their own are effectively just a bunch of empty slots; you decide which spells go in them, and in which order
    • this may or may not eventually result in game-breaking shenanigans (or suicidal shenanigans, or both)
    • there are a lot of secrets. like the entire game is a meta-narrative about discovering secrets. question everything.
    • you will die. a lot. half the time to your own wacky spells. this is the way.

    Risk of Rain 2:

    • 3rd-person shooter (some characters are primarily melee, but whatever lol)
    • game consists of a series of stages, each of which has a bunch of enemies, a bunch of chests with items, and a boss you must defeat to progress further
    • also has a decent few secrets. Not on the same scale as Noita, but still quite a few

    • Noita is a game I keep coming back to, it has mod support and SO much to discover by exploring. It's a good palette cleanser and just a good bit of fun when I need something for a bit between other games.

  • I don’t know if it’s my favourite, but Crypt of the Necrodancer is a roguelike/lite is one I still play at least once a week since I bought it in 2017, and it’s not one I see mentioned that often.

    I never gravitate towards roguelikes tbh, but I ADORE rhythm games. Necrodancer really hooked me in with it’s variation on the rhythm gameplay loop, adding complexity that doesn’t seem arbitrary or frustratingly difficult (at least to me). Playing through the game with the different characters you unlock has yet to get boring after almost 6 years.

    And of course, the absolute BANGER of a soundtrack helps a lot (thank you Danny Baranowsky and team). The remixed Zelda soundtrack they did for Cadence of Hyrule is also amazing, and I would sell every organ I have to be one of the 20 people with a vinyl press of it.

    I’ve played the other roguelikes everyone likes (Slay the Spire, Gungeon, Isaac, Hades, etc) but nothing has really stuck to me as much as vanilla Necrodancer.

  • I love roguelites and the genre melding you can do with them. I've been searching for one that competes with Risk of Rain 2 for me. I've played all the big ones but none have had the same staying power.

    The biggest bummer for me is Dead Cells. For most of the run, I slaughter. First two original bosses I can pretty consistently no-hit. Then I get to the hand of the king and die in about 5 seconds every. Single. Time. It's 100% a skill issue but I feel it just asks so much of me compared to the rest of the game on the same difficulty, and I'm only on boss cell 1. I've even gone I to the training mode vs him and his tells paired with my time to respond just have not clicked.

    There's also Enter the Gungeon. I also have struggled with it but actively plan to get back into it to work through it.

    Lastly, shutout to Dicey Dungeons. It's lesser known and I think everyone should play it.

  • I'll go ahead and start off with responding to some of the points:

    What are some of your favorite examples of roguelike games?

    All-time favorites have to be Slay the Spire and Hades. StS was one of the cornerstones of deckbuilding roguelikes while still remaining one of the sleekest of all of them; mechanics fit together perfectly, with each loss leaving you working out how you screwed up rather than cursing the game for unfairness. Hades I like for entirely different reasons - it absolutely oozes style, with excellent presentation in terms of art direction, music, and copious dialogue. The rougelike nature of the game is woven directly into its narrative in a way I find very satisfying.

    Enter the Gungeon should also be noted as one of the few games I've 100%ed. Although it has some flaws, the sheer amount of combinatory item synergies (both actual mechanical synergies noted by the UI and otherwise) gives it great replay value while not ballooning to absurd levels ala The Binding of Isaac (which, while still great, can be daunting in its scope).

    Do you continue to play roguelike games after reaching the “end” / reaching 100% completion? Why, or why not?

    Personally no, unless there is some sort of prestige mechanic that adds new challenges on successive runs (though one may consider beating all prestige levels part of 100%ing); I am still grinding out Ascension levels on both Slay the Spire and Monster Train. I find satisfaction in finishing a game that actually has a win state, and often lose interest after it's been achieved. Enter the Gungeon was one of the few exceptions to this, although by the time I had truly finished the game I was already very close to the full 100%.

    Are there any upcoming roguelike games you’re excited for?

    Hades II, for obvious reasons of course. Other smaller titles on my radar include Wizard with a Gun, whose demo I played and (while rough around the edges) had an engaging and swift core gameplay loop with metaprogression (though one must question the fuzzy distinction between a roguelike and a run-based game in general, or if there is one at all) and Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, a tiny but funny little deckbuilding roguelike that smashes together a lot of different card games and concepts for a wacky time.

    • I have hundreds of hours in Slay the Spire of both IOS and Steam. Phenomenal game.

      I struggled with getting past the first boss in Hades but I loved the art direction, story, and voice acting. I will probably give Hades II a try as I am sure there are a lot of improvements.

      • Steam tells me I've clocked 297 hours into StS. I've only barely reached I think A17 or 18 with Silent, ~A15 with Defect, and only 1-2 for the other two. Still got a ways to go!

        If you really like StS, I can recommend Downfall, a fan expansion for the game on Steam. It is not as polished, and the mechanics aren't quite as tightly wound, but it offers a whole lot of very novel new mechanics and characters as well as an entire new mode where you play as a Boss working your way downward instead of the reverse.

  • Hades is probably one of my most played ones of recent time.

    This has become one of my favourite genres and I own a good number of them.

    I’d like to mention Dreamscaper and One Step from Eden as notable ones.

    Monster Train as well because of how unique it is.

  • Is Remnant 2 a roguelike? Pretty sure it is.

    Fantastic game, played it a fair bit since launch so I know most of the encounters in the N'Erud place, so I join random players in the other areas hoping to learn those encounters and get some sweet, sweet plunder.

  • No Rogue Legacy love? I played the heck out of that one on both PC and PS4. The 2nd one is good as well, but it hasn't grabbed me quite like the first.

  • Rimworld is life.

    • Does it count? It has the hallmarks of procedural generation and technically has distinct "runs" (though a single run can last dozens of hours, I know from experience). It just seems too "grand scope" for me to consider it a roguelike, I suppose.

115 comments