I have to admit it, my experience on this genre is very near to nil.
It can be reduced to quite a few hours of Azure Dreams for the Playstation, never getting to anything similar to an end (do rogue-likes have an end?).
Over the years I’ve been getting this impression that it is among the favourites of many user around here. I really want to know what is it about. What makes a rogue-like?
So please do tell here, discuss among yourself (please do… use passion… pull out eyes… whatever necessary) and I’ll organize lists on this same initial post kinda… resuming the thing.
The lists I’m thinking about would be “Must have/be” for the things it has to have to be a rogue-like; “Could have/be” for aspects that could have but are not a rogue-like maker; “Interesting to have/be, but hardly ever does” for those small special details on this or other game that you really liked or would like to see (I really hope that this last list is not the longest, otherwise… SB).
one of the best design goals coming out of recent not-great roguelites that I’d underline is “don’t be too enamoured of your death loop” – lots of the best roguelikes (like crawl/stone soup) don’t necessarily change anything from run-to-run, and don’t expect you to die repeatedly to get more abilities for your next run, they just teach you to get better and give you more interesting random seeds. having to start over after failing repeatedly and designing a game around an EXP curve are usually a bad a combo.
necrodancer sort of works around this by just expanding the number of things you’re able to get in your future random seed, which is as far as I would recommend taking it (and necrodancer is probably one of the best post-spelunky action roguelikes).
are there any roguelikes where “identify items” is an expertise with like a percentage chance of failing or vague stuff like “it’s probably one of these three”
Golden Krone Hotel has an identity mechanic similar to that. All possible item effects are put into randomized pools of 3 effects each. The first item you use in a given pool could have any of the three effects (which the game reveals to you), but that will narrow down what effects the other items in the pool could have.
I think it’s neat; it encourages more experimentation with item usage because you understand the risks before you use an item (you know if an item could have a bad effect or if it might be an important resource you don’t want to waste).
Some key aspects that most classic roguelikes share is that everything within the game’s mechanics follows a set of universal rules. Like, you can attempt to drink a goblin, or throw a health potion (even though you wouldn’t want to), or attack with a book in your hand. I feel like that’s very important for “real” roguelikes. Also, being turn-based
Yeah, I hate this trend. Most of my satisfaction from playing roguelikes comes from learning and improving; it feels cheap when I can get further due to some meta-game effects. It also makes me second guess things as a player “Is this area supposed to be this hard, or is it balanced around unlockable upgrades I don’t have yet?”
I agree with your thesis (universal rules) but I think your examples are odd. I think Nethack fully embraces that type of design, but then optimal play in Nethack revolves around knowing all the tiny benefits unintuitive actions can have.
No reason a roguelike can’t be streamlined and only present the player with meaningful choices. Crawl has mostly moved away from those kinds of interactions (e.g. throwing potions) and I think it’s a better game for it.
They’re really about the most obvious thing, that the level layout is randomized. Other distinctive genre features fall naturally out of that. E.g. you’re kind of forced on a programming level to create “universal rules” since you can’t hardcode events when the level could be anything.
It’s not even mandatory to go through this process in Necrodancer. It basically has a “campaign mode” optimized for gradually learning the ropes that has these item unlocks as well as start-mid-game unlocks. But the primary game mode, “All Zones”, is not at all affected by the unlocks one way or the other: every item is always available there. So when I installed Necrodancer on my Switch recently I was able to start playing properly right off the bat without going through a rigmarole (which was a huge pain in Shiren DS for example, where it was so so time-consuming to unlock Fei’s dungeon).
Because of this video, I only consider two design patterns necessary to produce Roguelike effects:
One or more aspects of the space which the player traverses is in some way randomized or dynamically generated, so that subsequent attempts will encounter features of the landscape in a different order, or not at all.
The player’s avatar accrues some abilities or statistical benefits to the exclusion of others at the start of play and/or as play progresses, some (or all) of which are lost upon failure or success.
While I’m happy to consider games like Spelunky and Into The Breach a part of this genre, I did play a lot of ADOM in school. I can’t call it a maximalist roguelike anymore because Dwarf Fortress exists, but it’s the first thing I thought of while reading that post by @ferrets. I don’t know how it holds up now that it has graphics and got ported to Steam.
roguelike as a term has ceased to have much meaning but:
using randomized content to force you to work the game’s rules systematically rather than memorizing specific patterns
character growth focused on acquisition and consumption of resources rather than pure stats alone
death causing a restart, emphasizing that the entire game is to be done in one go
many modern rogue"lite" games, such as Rogue Legacy, are designed to be beaten on multiple playthroughs, where you progressively unlock things. these are not to be confused with proper roguelikes.
necrodancer is probably the best modernized example of a roguelike that maintains a lot of what makes the genre compelling without sacrificing it in the name of more traditional rpg unlocking loops. it is not just designed to be played in a single run, it is heavily tuned towards items emphasizing speed vs safety vs “well, this dropped and i hate it but i’m going to use it because i’d be stupid not to,” making it ideal for as a game for multiple playstyles.
a poorly made roguelike often fails to give you strong enough tools, or just boils down to racing stat growths vs the enemies.