Hydaelyn Role-Players

Tangent for Rogue-likes

Meet Rogue.



Rogue is a balls-hard CRPG. It sort of set the tone for... well, the entire rogue-like genre. You might perhaps know one of them better as...

Nethack! Meet Nethack. Note this is not another Rogue screen.



Nethack is a huge, huge game, also randomly generated every time you enter. Permadeath is definitely a thing, and it is entirely possible to begin a game and die before you get two steps due to enemy encounters.

Rogue-lite games like Binding of Isaac or Rogue Legacy (not an accidental name) exist to carry over some of the same concepts: Crushing difficulty, permadeath, gradual learning through failure but allow a user's gameplaying skill to help them out: Someone who is great at Metroidvania-style games will excel at Rogue Legacy and people with twinstick/topdown shooter experience will be aided in Isaac.

Rogue-likes don't give a shit for how good your reflexes are, since they only act when you do. Monsters don't take a step until you move, and combat is a series of dice rolls you have (seemingly limited) control over. You can't out-play a rogue-like as you can a rogue-lite.

I am a grognard.

Spoiler
Roguelike is a subgenre of role-playing video games, characterized by procedural generation of game levels, turn-based gameplay, tile-based graphics, permanent death of the player-character, and typically based on a high fantasy narrative setting. Roguelikes descend from the 1980 game Rogue, particularly mirroring Rogue's character- or sprite-based graphics. From 2000 onwards, new variations of roguelikes incorporating other gameplay genres, thematic elements and graphical styles have become popular, and are sometimes called "roguelike-like", "rogue-lite", or "procedural death labyrinths" to reflect the variation from titles which mimic the gameplay of traditional roguelikes more faithfully.

Key features
The interface of the original Rogue as it looked on an ASCII computer terminal
An example of a more modern user-interface for a roguelike, showing the isometric "Vultures" sprite-based interface for the game Nethack.

The genre of roguelike broadly encompasses the gameplay that was introduced in the text-based game Rogue, which bore out many variations due to its popularity. Rogue's ruleset itself has influences from Dungeons & Dragons. Because of the expansion of numerous variations on the roguelike theme, the gameplay elements characterizing the roguelike genre were explicitly defined at the International Roguelike Development Conference 2008; these factors encompass what is known as the "Berlin Interpretation".[1][2] Some of the "high value factors" used in this definition include:

Roguelike games randomly generate tile-based dungeon levels,[3] though they may include static levels as well. Generated layouts typically incorporate rooms connected by corridors, some of which may be preset to some degree (e.g., monster lairs or treasuries). Open areas or natural features, such as rivers, may also occur.

The identity of magical items varies across games. Newly discovered objects only offer a vague physical description that is randomized between games, with purposes and capabilities left unstated. For example, a "bubbly" potion might heal wounds one game, then poison the player character in the next. Items are often subject to alteration, acquiring specific traits, such as a curse, or direct player modification.

The combat system is turn-based instead of real-time. Gameplay is usually step-based, where player actions are performed serially and take a variable measure of in-game time to complete. Game processes (e.g., monster movement and interaction, progressive effects such as poisoning or starvation) advance based on the passage of time dictated by these actions.

Most are single-player games. On multi-user systems, leaderboards are often shared between players. Some roguelikes allow traces of former player characters to appear in later game sessions in the form of ghosts or grave markings. Some games such as NetHack even have the player's former characters reappear as enemies within the dungeon. Multi-player derivatives such as TomeNET, MAngband, and Crossfire do exist and are playable online.

Roguelikes traditionally implement permadeath. Once a character dies, the player must begin a new game. A "save game" feature will only provide suspension of gameplay and not a limitlessly recoverable state; the stored session is deleted upon resumption or character death. Players can circumvent this by backing up stored game data ("save scumming"), an act that is usually considered cheating.

USGamer mentions "stamina decay" as another feature. It comes in the form of hunger and the player's character constantly needs to find food to survive. This can prevent an exploit where they repeatedly pass turns to regenerate their character health or try to gain experience points by continuously killing weak enemies by staying at low level dungeons.[4]

Skip ahead!

Growth in Western markets (2002–onward)

Though new classical roguelike variants would continue to be developed within the Western market, the genre languished as more advanced personal computers capable of improved graphics capabilities and games that utilized these features became popular.[29] However, some of these new graphical games drew influence for roguelike concepts, notably action role-playing games like Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo (1996). Blizzard acknowledged that games like Nethack, Telengard and other roguelikes influenced the design of Diablo, including the nature of randomly generated dungeons and loot.[30] New roguelikes that adhere to core Berlin Interpretation rules are still being developed, including Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (2006), Dungeons of Dredmor (2011), and Dwarf Fortress (2006), the latter also seen as a major contribution to Minecraft.[4][31]

Instead, roguelikes saw a resurgence in Western markets through independent developers after 2000. Efforts were made by indie developers to incorporate roguelike elements into non-traditional titles, with one of the earliest examples being Strange Adventures in Infinite Space (2002) and its sequel Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space (2005) by Digital Eel, both space exploration games that included randomly generated planets and encounters. Digital Eel based their work on rogulikes like Nethack but wanted to provide a shorter experience that would be easier to replay.[32]

Spelunky (2008) is also considered to be a major contribution to the growth of indie-developed roguelikes.[4] The game combined the procedural level generation and permadeath concepts of roguelikes with platformer game mechanics. The game was commented on by developers as being a means of creating "deep" gameplay in which the game could be replayed over and over again, with the randomly-generated situations driving the need for the player to develop novel, emergent strategies on the fly; developer Jason Rohrer stated that Spelunky "totally revamped my thinking about single-player videogame design".[33] Similar genre-combining games would follow, including The Binding of Isaac (2011), FTL: Faster Than Light (2012), and Rogue Legacy (2012) were all roguelike-based games that received critical praise, and their success has led to a more modern resurgence in roguelikes since.[34][35][4]

The newfound success in roguelikes is considered part of a larger trend in those that play both board and computer games, looking for "rich play experiences", as described by 100 Rogues developer Keith Burgun, that more popular titles may not always offer.[34] David Bamguart of Gaslight Games stated that there is a thrill of the risk inherent in roguelikes with random generation and permadeath, helping the player become more invested in the fate of their player-character: "The deadly precariousness inherent to the unknown environments of roguelikes gives that investment a great deal of meaning."[36] Additionally, many of these newer roguelikes strive to address the apparent high difficulty and ruthlessness that traditional roguelikes were known for, and newer players will be able to find more help through user-generated game guides and walkthroughs made possible through wide Internet accessibility.[36]

Particularly for smaller indie developers, the nature of the procedural-generated world allows teams to deliver many hours worth of game content without having to spend resources and development time on fleshing out detailed worlds.[34][35] This also allows developers to devote more time in building out complex gameplay features and their interacting systems that are part of the enjoyment of roguelike games.[36]

With the expansion of both classical roguelikes and modern roguelike-like titles, there has been more interest in developing roguelikes. The 7 Day Roguelike challenge (7DRL) was born out of a USENET newsgroup in 2005 for roguelike developers, informally challenging them to create the core of a novel roguelike within 7 days to be submitted for judging and play by the public. The competition has continued annually each year, since growing from 5-6 entries in 2005 to over 130 in 2014.[37][38]