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Comment by cupofpython | Hacker News Reader

Dead Cells is a popular recent one. Hades classifies as well I believe.

A ~roguelike~ rogue-lite is something where you start from the beginning repeatedly, and each "run" or playthrough you change the game state somehow (varies by game) so that the next run is easier / you have more in-game options for progression. Almost always with randomized game features available each run.

It's worth noting that "rogue-like" is a description for the Game Play Loop, not the look / feel of the game. A roguelike can be top-down, side scroller, 2d, 3D, etc.

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> each "run" or playthrough you change the game state somehow (varies by game) so that the next run is easier / you have more in-game options for progression.

You've fallen for the hostile takeover. Roguelike used to mean the exact opposite of that: Each run starts from scratch, independent of all previous runs. Some roguelikes, that is, games like Rogue [0], implemented "player ghosts", monsters based on previously dead player characters, but that's the only persistent progression in a roguelike.

It saddens me that the term has been hijacked by modern indie developers to pretend to mean just about any game that has any amount of randomness in it. Dead Cells is not a roguelike. Hades is not a roguelike. They are action RPGs more like Diablo. Diablo, by the way, is also not a roguelike.

WHAT IS A ROGUELIKE?

As the name suggests, it is a game like Rogue. The genre hasn't evolved a better name yet, kind of how first-person shooters were originally called "Doom clones". So what was Rogue like? First and foremost it was a turn-based tactics game, where you had an unbounded amount of time to ponder your next move. It had highly randomized content, you'd have to make do with what you found. It was a dungeon crawling, exploration, turn-based tactical combat game with permadeath and no persistence of progression. You lose, you start all over.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game)

I was going off of how the rogue-like tag is currently used in game marketplaces, like Steam. You are technically correct, I learned something new, and I updated - but as far as seeing the phrase in the wild and trying to predict what to expect, my comment stands.

Hades and Dead Cells are certainly not like diablo. the core game loop is to lose and try again, not build up a strong character over the course of a single playthrough as is typically expected of action-rpgs.

It seems like the definition of rogue-like has expanded due to popularity of the genre (as things do) and you have a purist attitude that rejects the new compromises. Rather than create contention over something you cant control, it might be better to highlight permadeath and no persistence as a subtype of rogue-likes for which the original game falls under.

And yes, it probably does need a better general-purpose name but unfortunately the thing it describes is rather abstract so idk what a concise self-evident phrase could be for it

Most games labelled as rogue-like on Steam do not feature a persistent progression. Examples are Slay the Spire and Spelunky.

Saying that it's a feature of the genre is definitely wrong.

>Saying that it's a feature of the genre is definitely wrong.

good thing I am not saying that then

The point is that if you see "roguelike" then those features could be there, not that they necessarily will be there. We are talking about a genre, which is a pretty general thing

An FPS could have grenades, but it might not. And including grenades does not suddenly mean it is no longer an FPS.

Steam does list Dead Cells as both a roguelike and a roguelite. So yeah, you literally will find these features in this genre.

This is your characterization:

> each "run" or playthrough you change the game state somehow (varies by game) so that the next run is easier / you have more in-game options for progression.

You didn't say they could have that, you said they did. You can change your comment in a way that it would be correct, yes.

I could describe dogs as "brown animals", then you'd say that's not usually true. I could reply that some modern dogs are brown now so I'm not always wrong, but describing dogs as "brown animals" is definitely an incorrect definition.

I had already edited my comment before you made this reply to specify "rogue-lite" at the beginning of that sentence. I was emphasizing to you that you should not be surprised to find such features in games labelled rogue-like. not sometimes, but most of the time.

I searched for rogue-likes a few years back, played some, enjoyed and continue to enjoy the genre, and commented based on my experience. Pretty much every game I came across had game-state changes. You referenced slay the spire. you unlock new cards and classes in that game, giving you more in-game options for progression as I said.

> It saddens me that the term has been hijacked by modern indie developers to pretend to mean just about any game that has any amount of randomness in it

I think you are misunderstanding where people come from with this: it's not the randomness; it's games where when you lose, you start over from the beginning - not the last save/checkpoint/whatever. What this indicates is that, in the broader gaming scene, this is the defining characteristic of Rogue(likes), not the permadeath.

And in that sense, something like Hades or Everspace or FTL or whatever absolutely fits the bill, even if on your next run - from the beginning - even if you are very slightly stronger the second [third, fourth, hundredth] time around.

I understand that there are still some purists out there who work themselves into a tizzy over splitting these hairs. But it's okay for there to be subgenres. It's okay for colloquial terms like this to have fuzziness to them.

> I think you are misunderstanding where people come from with this: it's not the randomness; it's games where when you lose, you start over from the beginning - not the last save/checkpoint/whatever. What this indicates is that, in the broader gaming scene, this is the defining characteristic of Rogue(likes), not the permadeath.

Starting over when you die is exactly how games worked since the arcade days. It only becomes meaningful in a roguelike when coupled with randomness; otherwise you're just replaying the same game over and over again (which is like, exactly the reason Rogue and its likes exist - a different adventure every time).

> from the beginning - even if you are very slightly stronger the second [third, fourth, hundredth] time around.

If you're stronger than before then it isn't the beginning, is it? It's a continuation. It's a save file. Rogue deletes your save file when you die.

>Starting over when you die is exactly how games worked since the arcade days

So then from a purist viewpoint, starting over from the beginning is not a defining characteristic of a rogue-like. A randomized playthrough is. which means Minecraft is a rogue-like

I think what happened is that some general qualities of early games maintained persistence to modern day gaming in the rogue-like genre (starting over, permadeath) alongside rogues unique features (randomized adventure) because they complimented each other well. So the takeaway for the genre now ends up being those more general qualities, because they've disappeared from everywhere else. they might not be specific to rogue at the time of rogues creation, but rogue-like was effectively hijacked from the beginning.

I only found rogue-likes because i was looking for games with permadeath, for example.

> which means Minecraft is a rogue-like

No, it means you don't understand what a roguelike is. (and since you've been fooled, I don't blame you)

> rogue-like was effectively hijacked from the beginning.

Not at all. Rogue came out around 1980, and birthed the genre almost immediately. Hack was released in 1982. NetHack in 1987. Angband in 1990. Ancient Domains of Mystery in 1994. Linley's Dungeon Crawl in 1997. DoomRL since 2002. In 2008, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup ranked as the #1 roguelike. Brogue started in 2009. Caves of Qud in 2015. And Cogmind has been in development before 2017. These are just the ones I know about, but they clearly represent a descent from Rogue. Play any of them and it's obvious what they have in common - not just randomization and permadeath but also turn-based tactics.

If my memory serves me right, it was Spelunky in 2008 that was really the first game to "borrow concepts from roguelikes" and place them in a decidedly non-roguelike context. Note that Spelunky never advertized itself as a roguelike. It is now tagged as such by users on Steam, but even its creator knew it wasn't in the genre.

I don't know who or why was inspired to start misusing the term roguelike so heavily since then, but it's become a plague.

>Play any of them and it's obvious what they have in common - not just randomization and permadeath but also turn-based tactics.

the minecraft comment was tongue in cheek because you used contradictory wording between your comments. You asserted that the randomization was key to what made rogue different and not the permadeath because all games had permadeath and restart at the beginning mechanics.

If I understand you correctly now, you are asserting that it is a specific set of seemingly generic features that make up the rogue-like genre and that lacking any of them kicks the game out of the genre.

>It is now tagged as such by users on Steam

This is kind of the point I am getting at. There is something captured by rogue-like that is missing from other games enough for users to begin appropriating it out of necessity. "Its a rogue-like except ...." eventually becomes "rogue-like". So if you want to preserve the rogue-like tag, a new tag still needs to be adopted for the kind of game where you start at the beginning repeatedly without the other requirements needing to be met. "rogue-lite" is already kind of the leading effort to patch the problem, but honestly as a tag it makes no goddamn sense without the history lesson.. it's piggy backing off rogue-like which implies some sort of equivalency

I wish games had their specific mechanics tagged in much higher resolution in general tbh

> Hades classifies as well I believe. ... each "run" or playthrough you change the game state somehow (varies by game) so that the next run is easier / you have more in-game options for progression.

Usually this is how the community differentiates between "roguelikes" (i.e., like the original Rogue[1] - with no persistence between runs), and "roguelites" where there is some amount of carryover, like in Hades.

Of course, like any time you have a bunch of dorks arguing about nomenclature, there are a bunch of grey-area examples that people fight over as if it matters more than it actually does.

Anyway, tangent: Hades fucking rules.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game)

Oh cool, I wasn't aware of that distinction

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