Run, Die, Repeat: How Roguelike Games Helped Us Get Through 2020 | Hacker News Reader

Run, Die, Repeat: How Roguelike Games Helped Us Get Through 2020

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Currently playing Hades and I don't really get the hype but I have only played for a few hours. The fact that decisions cannot be rolled back (when you go to the store and buy a gift from a God you cannot cancel if no options are interesting, when you enter in a new room you cannot go back to the previous room to try an alternative room) is removing a lot of strategy IMO, it feels like Rogue Legacy where you get more and more powerful from one run to another leading to a mandatory victory. But this might be like this just at the beginning.

I love The Binding of Isaac which always starts from 0 + your knowledge of the game. One thing I learned during lockdown is that this game is totally awesome when played in single-player mode with another person on PC. Using one or two keyboards, one player controls Isaac and bombs/active items while the other shoots. The tension of Isaac (going fast can lead you somewhere, choosing certain items can lead you somewhere) goes really well with playing with someone, I really recommend it.

Another great roguelike that can be experienced with another player is Faster Than Light. The option to pause when fighting another spaceship makes it more approachable for players with less experience.

you get more and more powerful from one run to another leading to a mandatory victory. But this might be like this just at the beginning.

It's pretty much like this. Except for the fact that once you've stopped getting killed by those pesky Redacteds it brings in the Pact of Punishment, which gives you a bunch of ways to choose to make the game harder in return for new boss rewards - otherwise killing a boss you've already killed just gives you more Darkness, which you're pretty much done needing at that point.

Also a lot of the hype for Hades is the huge amount of conversation - sit back, relax, let the gods talk, enjoy their thoughtful readings of lines written by a native English speaker who isn't trying to emulate the bad translations of the games of their youth.

Hades is an excellent game, but on the "roguelike-ness" scale, it scores pretty low. The permanent buffs make your character damn strong relative to your first run.

My personal fave is Nuclear Throne. It's not particularly polished, not does it have oodles of content, but the gunfeel is second to none, and the lethality is very high. Once you're deep into a run, you're a walking avatar of destruction, a glass cannon made out of guns, and I love it to death.

Just started playing Hades and Dead Cells tonight and not overwhelmingly impressed so far TBH. Hades feels just like Bastion or Transistor, and not at all rogue-like. It’s an arcade game.

Enter the Dungeon seems more polished than Nuclear Throne, though it is also more difficult.

Enter the Gungeon being called more difficult than Nuclear Throne is a new one to me. But yes, it's vastly more polished than Throne.

Some people think that "roguelike" is a good term for games with no permanent progress, with "roguelite" being the alternative for games like Hades. These people don't say these terms out loud to anyone, they just post on the internet about it, so they haven't realized why the distinction hasn't exactly caught on. Regardless, most people who have played games on both sides of this split can tell that it makes no sense to wish that a game on one side was more like the games on the other side; they're just different sub-genres. It's like saying that Spelunky has interesting platforming mechanics, but you wish you had a lives system and hand-authored level design. It would just be a different game, made by someone else.

In Hades, the majority of the emphasis is on the story and characters, which a lot of people seem to have connected with. This isn't a surprise if you look at the devs' previous games (Bastion, Transistor, Pyre). From that perspective, making a game most people who play won't finish would be a bad decision; upgrading your character enough to eventually win is completely intended, it's how you are meant to reach the end of the story.

I've been hooked on Noita these days. A pixel-based physics simulator, like Powder Toy from long ago, with spellcasting and a ton of secrets. One run, I can focus on incrementally improving a wand that shoots a simple bolt like a machine gun. The next run, I'm tunneling through the ground and popping up like the monsters from Tremors.

Dying repeatedly means I'm forced to cobble together different strategies. I had a run where I save-scummed, mostly to see parts of the game I couldn't reach at my skill level. But relying on the same build for boring, and I haven't save-scummed since.

If you are looking for a super-hardcore, very tough to beat roguelike, but with great lore and world-building, check out Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (DCSS): https://crawl.develz.org/

You can play online but I play the 'tiles' version locally, the interface is better. To have any chances of beating the game, you must check out the wiki for guides and looking up monsters: http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Crawl_Wiki

Plus, it's open source.

DCSS is a great game. I wouldn't say it has much in the way of lore or world building. One thing that DCSS does very very well is it gives you a wide range of starting combos that are NOT equally balanced. Some are much easier/harder/nuanced than others. That's fun.

I’m admittedly not hardcore enough for most rogue-ish games (Spelunky 2 absolutely wrecks me), but Hades hits the sweet spot for me. The progression over time is nice, but having a wide range of control — e.g. weapon choice and, essentially, god power up choice — is even more welcoming. What’s nice is that a run in which you cede control is just as fun and addicting. And the endgame mechanic of difficulty modifiers is surprisingly robust. Not just options to increase enemies/damage by n%, but a few options that drastically change enemy abilties. My biggest complaint is that the game could use more variety and randomness, but 100+ runs of entertainment is pretty solid value.

One thing that Hades’s success affirms for me is the importance of story and world-building for players who aren’t just looking for hardcore mechanics and challenge. Klei (makers of Don’t Starve and Mark of the Ninja) created what I think is one of the pinnacles of turn-based strategy in Invisible, Inc [0]. It’s like X-COM except with a single, small squad and no (tactical) RNG. But its fatal flaw was that it ended anti-climactically after 3 in-game days, and Klei’s reasoning was “well it’s meant to be replayed, and you shouldn’t get too attached to your team”

Each successful run in Hades can also feel short and anti-climactic, but Supergiant beautifully overcomes that with persistent story/dialogue state. Even when the action feels stale I was still happy to grind to move the story and subplots forward.

[0] https://www.klei.com/games/invisible-inc

For a trip down memory lane—-for some of us old farts—-or just to play a “new” retro game, check out Nox Archaist [1].

What is Nox Archaist? Nox Archaist is a new RPG for the classic Apple II platform, playable on Apple II hardware, Windows, and MacOS. It is an evolution of the classic fantasy games of the 1980s like Ultima, Bards Tale, and Wizardry.

[1] https://www.6502workshop.com/p/nox-archaist.html

I hope the trend ends soon. I know the games are great, eg Hades looks and plays fantastic. But the mechanic just isn't doing it for me. And it's increasingly difficult to find indie games in genres like platforming and light RPG that aren't roguelite. If Diablo 1 had been made today, hardcore mode would be mandatory...

Roguelites force you to improve and meet the demands of the game in a way that few other games can boast. Most other difficult single-player games, you can get by through attrition, forcing your way through a difficult section via a mountain of lost lives and increasingly precise muscle memory tailored to that exact scenario.

With roguelites, you can't do that -- or at least, not nearly to the same degree. With the level layout and enemy setup changing every time you play, you have to think things through, and improve yourself at the system level, rather than brute force mastering one corridor at a time.

In a way, it's not entirely unlike multiplayer games; you can never fully memorize what to do, as the details keep changing.

I would say the problem is the exact opposite - most rogielikes (Hades included) are basically impossible the first time you play them, you need to grind a whole bunch of currency to get permanent buffs.

I actually like rogue-likes, as long as they don't have the ability to buy permanent buffs, but that seems to be the current standard.

Permanent buffs, especially substantial ones, seem more like the exception than the rule to me. Nuclear Throne has no permanent buffs until you at least clear your first run, and even then it's fairly minor. Enter the Gungeon lets you unlock new guns to show up on future runs -- that kind of thing is very common, but ostensibly they're supposed to be sidegrades -- but I don't remember getting flatly stronger. And while I only played Slay the Spire once, I got a clear on that first try.

That said, there are a shitton of roguelikes out there these days, and I've only sunk substantial time into a relative handful, so maybe I'm wrong.

Ehh, the average unlocked item in games like Gungeon might be "sidegrades" but your character's power level is generally driven not by the average item, but by the single best item you found. And for that reason, unlocking a small number of exceptionally good items does tend to make the game much, much easier. Gungeon has quite a few things to unlock that greatly trivialize the game, e.g. Clone.

There are lots of non rogue-lite platformers coming out all the time (perhaps everyday), but not as many big, get a ton of press, critically acclaimed ones. Indie devs have backed away from the genre a little bit because production values and quality expectations are really high, and it's very crowded. Anyway if you want to try a new platformer from 2020 that's not rogue-lite I suggest looking at

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Super Meatboy Forever

Batbarian: Testament of the Primordials

Adventures of Chris

The Pedestrian

Shady Part of Me

Fwiw I never liked roguelikes but absolutely love Hades. Both for the way they handle progression and the story.

Rogues make a lot of sense for indie shops because the content scales better. A level which takes 15 minutes to beat can be reused over and over and over for the same amount of dev time.

Not to worry - I'm just now getting into them, which alone guarantees they're no longer cool.

Anybody that hasn't tried it yet just go on and buy Hades. It's a really great game that hooks you in.

It's interesting to me how Hades incorporates a lot of the aesthetic and techniques from free-to-play games, but within a paid game. The result is incredibly addictive. It's a constant stream of vivid animation and sound, coupled with the gradual accumulation of different currencies and collectables that makes you always feel like you're making some forward progress.

At times it can feel almost a bit _too_ slick and addictive. Like it's manipulating the reward centres of your brain bit too perfectly. Fortunately, what saves it from feeling hollow is the quality of the writing and the story. I'm just glad I've started playing it over the Christmas holiday, because all the times I've stayed up until 3am wouldn't be good if I had to get up for work the next day.

I haven't thought about that but I agree. The randomness of boons and hammers forces your to play again and again to get more rewards and combinations!

Thank God you pay only once for this game and it doesn't have in game currency!

Hades is fantastic. Fun game and great music. FYI the soundtrack is available on Spotify or for sale. (I have no affiliation with the Hades folks, i just like what they do)

I also really enjoy The Binding of Isaac AB+. Item interaction is amazing. I have it for Switch, though I have considered picking it up for PC as well so I can use the mods.

Well I have to confess that I've bought all tracks of the soundtrack in-game using diamonds :) It's really a great OST.

I have heard about binding of Isaac however I haven't tried it. It feels a little low quality because of its graphics...

I can see how the graphics could be a turn off. I have found it to be a fantastic game. Item interaction is really fun. loads of combos.

For some additional, solid Roguelites, I present:

Risk of Rain 2

Gunfire Reborn

Both games last about an hour - Risk of Rain games can last a lot longer.

Items are unlockable and appear in later runs. Both 3d. RoR2 is 1.0, Gunfire Reborn is EA, but feels complete enough for 50+ hours, to me; but, I like the genre.

What a game RoR 2 is. Only truly beaten when you have become a god on the hardest difficulty and every level of enemies and boss explode within a second.

Only truly beaten when you can do all artifacts enabled on Monsoon. Mwa ha ha ha ha!

Apparently the devs didn’t complete the first level? Or maybe only completed the first level?

RoR2's multiplayer is very solid and a total blast too.

Hollow Knight isn't really a rogue on the difficulties it was designed for. That aside, I like rogues. Specifically I like starting games out. Assessing one's starting positioning and creating a long term strategy is fun. It's a lot like board games. It also asks you to learn generalized strategies that work well, vs. other games which, when there's no consequence for loss. In a rogue, you need to play in a style that is consistently effective. In a traditional game, you might as well trend towards a high variance strat instead, that's kind of dumb but might just work.

I'm growing weary of progression systems though. Darkest Dungeon, Enter the Gungeon, and 20XX are a few titles I've played in the past year where I got annoyed at feeling like endgame content was designed for having certain permanent upgrades and didn't really want to grind them out. A lot of these games have an inflection point at the very end where the difficulty ramps up suddenly. Playing through the first 90% of a game many times is a bit dull after a while. Especially if you feel like practicing early levels does nothing for efficacy later on.

I just recently built my first PC and the amount of games available to play was pretty overwhelming

It's also really hard to know which genres you like when you basically start from scratch. After about 1.5 years, I can't get enough of the narrative-driven games.

I'm thinking I need to try out some more roguelikes for trial and error. I have 50m logged into Hades and it's pretty good, but idk really doesn't seem like my thing. But at first I thought I wouldn't love platformers at all, then I played the first Ori and finished it, now have 9 hours in Hollow knight and just started Celeste.

It's been a fun journey, gonna look into the reccs posted here and see if roguelike is my thing

https://i.imgur.com/IuLB3k5.png this is my ranked list of games on a site i've been working on

I’ve been having good fun playing Minecraft Dungeons with my older kid on the switch, it’s very accessible (3 lives, teammate healing/revival, keep your items etc) but I think it still qualifies as a roguelike.

I've been having loads of fun on FIFA 21. Once you lose a game, the only way to try it again is to start the match from scratch which really encourages you to get better at the game instead of memorizing the layout and enemy placements.

We need more games like Minecraft Legends. Truly, we need another Gauntlet game and Minecraft Legends looks like the closest game to it I’ve seen in probably a decade.

And the Gauntlet game that came out under that title didn’t feel the same, to me.

You can rerun quests indefinitely, so you've effectively got infinite lives; I'm not sure I'd qualify Dungeons as roguelike. I play it with my kid too, but admit that I'm a bit of a purist where it comes to the definition of roguelikes -- IMO, hardcore is mandatory.

Pixel Dungeon is the most played, and best game on my phone. Wouldn't say that I like it, but if it was a pleasant experience, it wouldn't be a roguelike.

I also enjoyed Delver, but I'm not sure if it's still in development

http://delvergame.com/

That looks neat! I'll have to give it a shot. Though I must say, one reason I'm particularly enamored with Pixel Dungeon is that I can read the source -- much as I hate Java, I can read it. Like Rogue, Nethack, etc., I don't see reading the source as cheating... but as a fundamental aspect of play.

FTL and Rimworld (not really roguelike) to me...

Angband (http://rephial.org/) is my drug.

Wow, this is the first time I’ve seen NPR’s text-only site and it’s a delight to read!

Why rogue_like_, why nit rogue itself? Or nethack, for that matter?

Spelunky 2 is my game of the year for sure

Caveblazers did a similar job for me.

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