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

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

My personal definition of 'roguelike' is a game that is turn based, with perma-death and procedural generation, and ideally is also grid-based. A 'traditional roguelike,' to me, is more a specific set of games (Angband, NetHack, etc.), rather than a genre, but if you did want to use 'traditional roguelike' as a genre, it'd have all of the above, plus be a fantasy dungeon-crawler RPG. I also do think roguelikes and rogue-lites are meaningfully distinct, or atleast should be, even if most people don't consider them to be. Rogue-lites can be very fun games, but when I want a roguelike, I want a roguelike, not a fast-paced bullet hell whatever. The best roguelikes I've played thus far are Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (CDDA), and Cogmind. Plus I've been thinking of picking up Jupiter Hell and Dead Cells when I can, though AFAIK Dead Cells is more of a rogue-lite than a roguelike.

My favorite is Caves Of Qud. The amount of freedom in character build and progression options is just unlike anything else I've tried. Also the very distinguishable graphics make it more interesting to me, because "games don't need to be pretty to be crazy fun".

I discovered it thanks to Sseth. His other recommended roguelike games (Synthetik, NEO Scavenger, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead) are all great in their own way.

Hades and cult of the Lamb are great

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.

I like the more roguelite type of games. I like that each run is different whether that means procedural generation of the map or just the starting weapons and pickups change throughout a run. Some of my favorite are the following:

• Dead Cells
• Inscryption - card game meets roguelite
• Cult of the Lamb - city builder meets roguelite
• Peglin - Peggle meets roguelite
• Dicey Dungeons - Roguelite deck builder
• Vampire Survivors - Dead simple game. Only one control!

I could probably come up with more and these aren't in any particular order, but these are some standouts to me.

IMO it's not really a genre, since gameplay can vary so widely. It's more like a template for a progression system that can be applied to many different genres.

I like the more platformer style rogue-lites, a couple favorites that haven't been mentioned yet are 20XX (rogue-lite tribute/spiritual successor to Mega Man X) and Rogue Legacy (first rogue-lite I ever played, perhaps not as hard as others). For top-down ones I had a bit of fun with Wizard of Legend as well. Never have beaten a roguelike/-lite, but I've gotten a decent way into each of the above.

How come nobody mention The binding of Isaac???

NetHack. With the ASCII graphics. And not because I'm hardcore, I'm actually really bad at it. And I hate the item identification mechanic. But there's something magical about this game. It feels alive, and the ASCII graphics give it a mystery that can't be matched by visual spectacles. Idk it's hard to explain, it's like a love hate relationship

My top three are FTL, Hades, Enter the Gungeon

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.

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.

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.

I really enjoyed Everspace. Space-shooter roguelite.

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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.

FTL: Faster than Light, and Into the Breach.

Both are fantastic and made by subset games. FTL the better of the two imo, but that's personal preference.

CDDA, Dwarf Fortress, and FTL all had a huge impact on the genera of Rougelike or free-form games, and all 3 have slight variations in the degrees of free-form game play which is very welcome.

Most rougelikes I enjoy have a set ending, that being death, or rarely triumph, and playing after either isn't possible or just not the point for me.

As for the most memorable moment? To set the stage, I was 13, playing FTL blind. I had made a few runs before it, but I had just reached sector 8, the federation base and the last stand for the federation against the rebels.

I had fought the flagship once before, so I knew it was a big-fuckoff flagship with multiple weapon systems, but I had died really quick.

I had my faithful burst lasers, Artemis missiles, and beam, and was charged and ready to take this ship down. And it was a slog of a fight, I lost a lot of ship HP, and was in the red from the flagship missile launcher.

But it died, as my final shot landed, I rejoiced as its left wing broke apart, until I realized the noise and flash of FTL. It escaped. It had multiple stages.

I resolved to chase it down and desteoy the ship once and for all, victory or death! I died to the supercharged drones in about 2 mins flat.

It was then I learned, you don't win FTL, you just do a little better every run. It still kills me on the harder starts with Captains Edition on.

When he was alive, TotalBiscut made an excellent video on it which does it far more justice than I can in text here.

Do you find there to be a meaningful difference between the usage of “roguelike” and “roguelite” nowadays? Which do you prefer?

The difference between roguelike and roguelite is quite significant. I play almost exclusively roguelites but have never touched a single roguelike

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

I don´t think most roguelites actually have an end because of the "just one more run" gameplay loop. After the run is before the run if you ask me

What have been some of your best runs across all roguelike games? What’s been memorable?

The most memorable run I ever had was in FTL: We killed the flagship while using no shields and no cloak in hard mode, advanced edition. I had tailored a special build for the challenge and it worked out! A lot of people on r/ftl didn´t even know it was possible until then- good times!

What are some of your favorite examples of roguelikelite games?

FTL - Faster Than Light: The first roguelite I played, it converted me and is my all time favorite video game across genres. I have 1400h+ in it and still play it sometimes. The combination of unforgiving gameplay and real time with pause, that keeps you constantly under pressure but also gives you unlimited time to think about your next actions makes it unique for me. I enjoy the complexity of the game when it comes to builds, its retro aesthetics and the "race through space" atmosphere

NOVA DRIFT: My most played game right now. When Asteroids, arpg and roguelite had an amphetamine fueled orgy this baby was the result. NOVA DRIFT is all about fast gameplay and quick reflexes. I love how NOVA DRIFT gets me "in the zone" every single run. It is so much fun when the game throws wave after wave at you while you are constantly dodging, killing and leveling up with crazy speed while power ups keep popping up every few seconds. The highly stylized neon art style looks great

HADES: I guess you know it already. If you don´t - try it

Children of MORTA - Family Trails mode: Best roguelite, arpg, dungeon crawler imo. This game distills everything I like from arpgs like Diablo2 and PoE - drastically simplifies the formula without sacrificing it´s soul and then makes a roguelite out of it. It also has very beautiful pixel graphics and is great fun in couch co-op runs

DEAD🔥CELLS: King of the Metroidvania subgenre and for good reason. Waiting for a nice package sale of all DLC until I start playing again

NUCLEAR THRONE: Crack in videogame form, played best with lots of caffeine

STEREDENN: A (really well made!) R-Type/Darius Twin clone roguelite

NEON CHROME: Top down cyberpunk shooter

NINE PARCHMENTS - Hardcore difficulty: If you enjoy playing roguelites in couch co-op sessions, I very much recommend this one

Darkest Dungeon: Do you enjoy feeling depressed, haunted and anxious - all at the same time? Do you also like turn based combat? Then this is the perfect game for you

I have been playing UnderMine. The game plays a lot like The Binding of Isaac, but has a few differences like the meta profession after every run where you can unlock new upgrades and you can rescue people inside the mine that are vendors and the like.

The game scratched an inch I had for a new roguelite since I haven't played one in awhile.

My only contribution to this conversation is that not only does steam seem to have no fucking clue what a rogue like is, but that it certainly can't tell the difference between the two. So many games are in both of those lists, and many more shouldn't have the tag. Which sucks cuz I own most of the ACTUAL rogue-likes/lites on steam and am still looking for more

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

Nobody here is talking about Risk Of Rain 2. This shit is really perfect if you have a "Goopy Goblin Gamer Brain ™". Non-stop action and item combination is just wild.

I've been playing some Noita lately. Really interesting concept of mixing and matching spells to create some wonky combos. The reality falls a bit short, though, as a lot of early combos are useless or detrimental and you have no way of knowing unless you test them out. You also don't unlock new stuff unless you test them out. That can lead to a lot of runs being wasted, you end up playing the early game too much, and it gets a bit repetitive. Fortunately, there are mods that make it a bit less obtuse and more approachable.

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.

Dawncaster is a fun deckbuilder one, better than Slay the Spire to me.

SFD is a fun tactics one that I just started playing.

I haven’t really liked any Roguelikes, and that includes all-star Hades.

It mostly just feels like repeating the same thing. In some cases, eventually and with much skill you can gather a build that actually changes the dynamics of the game a bit - but until then, it usually just functions as a brutally hard version of some genre you’d normally enjoy, where every little mistake you’d shrug off now becomes a long-term debilitation you have to worry about.

Hades’ assist modes weren’t even giving progress fast enough - it requires you to die many times before giving you anything that might actually improve your odds at any of the boss fights.

So far, the only Roguelike I’ve enjoyed is Backpack Hero. It’s on the easier side, and plays very much in promotion of getting you your OP build options with relatively little time spent.

I found myself really invested in Into the Breach because canonically every run you do is a different timeline so you have to fight just as hard each time and it un incentivises just restarting because you would be abandoning the humans to a grisly death. The mechanic where you can bring one pilot with you is great too.

Speaking of subset games, FTL and especially the mod FTL Multiverse have been very fun.

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 started playing roguelikes with flash Binding of Isaac I bought for 99p in a steam sale, pre-Wrath of the Lamb. I'm still playing Rebirth and its expansions well over a decade later. I'd describe it as the perfect game. Why it shines as opposed where other great roguelites don't is because of how the items interact with each other. The interaction is key. It's still pure joy to walk into a room and absolutely melt everything in a second because of a synergy you've never seen. And now I think about it, what really makes the roguelike genre a favourite of mine is where every run is a challenge from the game: break me. I'd point at Noita as another game with this philosophy. Being given a random selection of tools and trying to cobble them together into something unstoppable.

My top three, in no particular order, are:

• Hades
• Dead Cells
• Skul: The Hero Slayer

I've been having a lot of fun in Halls of Torment lately. The updates and patch notes are promising for an early access game.

Then I play a TON of Slay the Spire.

My top picks are Synthetik, Dead Cells and Nova Drift

Dungeon crawl stone soup. Vampire summoner or octopus berserker?

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.

Hades is potentially my favourite game of all time. For me to absolutely nails this style of game by perfectly weaving in a compelling narrative to the rogue mechanic. It's also gorgeous with the most ridiculously tight gameplay.

Honourable mention to Enter the Gungeon, haven't seen that mentioned yet. Very fun game.

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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.

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.

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.

I enjoyed Hades more than FTL and Sts, because of the story progression between runs. Seems like I prefer roguelite than. I'm wondering, if Vampire Survivors is still in this genre with it's 30 min gameplay loop.

Rimworld is life.

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