Can someone explain "roguelike"?

[Floymin]

I've seen descriptions like "ramped up difficulty" and "start over with skills you picked up last time". What I get from that is Dead Rising. Is that even close?

[Sixtyfivekills]

No?

Dead Rising has toilets where you save your progress in case you screw up, dying isn't intentional part of the gameplay.

[MinionJoe]

Roguelike, adj, like the game Rogue (1980).

[AD]

There was an old game called "rogue" featuring permadeath, randomly generated levels and probably a bunch of stuff I forgot. Games that also have those features are called "rougelike". It has nothing to do with "ramped up difficulty" or "start over with skills you picked up last time". The former may be a consequence of permadeath but isn't a requirement and the latter is a more recent innovation, but not part of the definition of a rougelike.

[Thlormby]

When you die in the game you have to start over, there is no saving

[Dracoco OwO]

Publicado originalmente por Benny:

When you die in the game you have to start over, there is no saving

Roguelite is like that except not really, you still keep stuff but lose some progress i think.

[𝕎𝔸𝕃𝕋𝔼ℝ]

Depends. In a true roguelike game, you pretty much have to start all over again if you die. No checkpoints, no nothing. Progress sort of comes through experience, trial & error. In some other roguelike games you can progress through unlocking a skill tree & what not.

[nightnight]

Roguelike is like rogue legacy except you have 0 progression. No keeping upgrades, items, castle upgrades. So just think like that (that game is a roguelite).

[Albemouff]

An example with a game i know well would be Rogue Legacy : procedural levels generated at each playthrough, and each time you die you start with a new character that have different traits. The stuff you unlocked with gold is saved.

[Phirestar]

Roguelike is a genre of game based on the 1985 game, "Rogue", which was an ASCII-style dungeon crawling RPG that utilized procedurally generated dungeons, a turn-based combat system where the world is laid out in a tile-grid with the player and NPCs moving around and attacking on those tiles, and permadeath system which wiped all progress upon the player's death.

As time went on, more and more games seeked to imitate this style, mixing in their own ideas. Over time many aspects of the original definition[www.roguebasin.com] became less significant, with the ASCII text graphics being replaced with rudimentary art assets, and permadeath being substituted as an optional game-mode (typically called "Roguelike mode" in newer games).

There is also "roguelite", which is the group of games that the majority of people will be familiar with when they hear the word roguelike. The core differences between the two genres is that roguelites have abandoned the old style of gameplay - specifically the turn-based, grid-based combat, and the RPG aspect - in favor of blending in other genres, along with introducing some permanent progress between runs, usually in the form of unlocking new tools or gear that will appear in your next attempt. It started with the original Spelunky, back in 2008, which combined the replayability and challenge of the procedural generation and permadeath elements of roguelikes with 2D platforming, and later with Rogue Legacy implementing upgrades that could be acquired after death.

It's also important to acknowledge that roguelites are ultimately dungeon crawlers at heart. Many people will simply describe roguelites as having procedural generation and permadeath alone, but that definition is too vague and bleed into other genres, such as survival games like Minecraft (on Hardcore mode) and Don't Starve. Nearly all roguelites follow the same template of having a set of predefined dungeons, with their own specific names, themes, enemy types, music, and so on, that are simply built in a modular form every run to ensure that players cannot simply memorize the maps.


Some examples of roguelikes include:

• Angband
  
• Nethack
  
• Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (or CDDA)
  
• Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (or DCSS)
  
• Ancient Domains of Mystery (or ADOM)
  
• Tales of Maj'Eyal
  
• Dungeons of Dredmor
  
• Caves of Qud
  
• Tangledeep
  
• Stoneshard

Some examples of roguelites include:

• The Binding of Isaac
  
• Nuclear Throne
  
• Risk of Rain
  
• Darkest Dungeon
  
• Dungeon of the Endless
  
• Crypt of the Necrodancer
  
• Enter the Gungeon
  
• Slay the Spire
  
• Dead Cells
  
• Hades

[MikeBob2013]

The Real McCoy™
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1443430/Rogue/ (In case anyone's interested: 'Roguelikes' are like this. )

[Electric Cupcake]

Castle of the Winds is the one I've played the most. Though being able to save scum maybe disqualifies it.

[Devsman]

Roguelike is the genre that is designed around making sure you lose a lot and receive maximum punishment for it.

They randomize everything so there's no guarantee that winning, even with perfect play, is even possible.

They give you more upgrades the more you lose (to a point) so they can design the game so that it unavoidably kicks your ass a certain number of times before you can stand a real chance.

They unrecoverably end your run (aka delete your save) on every death, so that you receive maximum punishment for losing when it's not even necessarily your fault (see above).

If you're the kind of player who gets frustrated, they're really not for you, lol.

[Yasahi]

Nethack and ADOM, fun times! They're great even today since the graphics don't really age.