Whats the difference between "Roguelite" and Roguelike"

[REDSHADOW]

I didnt know there was a difference and thought it was odd

[Start_Running]

The difference between Peopsi and DIet-Pepsi.
ROguelike is pretty much close to the original philosophy of ROgue styule games. Perma death, little to no carry over between death, difficulty completely random. Meant tyo test skill and your ability to roll with the dice.

Rogue-Lite usually involves allowing something to carry forward between each play through so even a failed run nets you some gain. The philosopghy is more about persistence and grinding.

[Noergelbert]

Roguelikes are turn-based

[JimDeadlock]

Can-of-worms alert lol

[ReBoot]

None. There's TECHNICALLY a difference anal-retentive forum posters love emphasizing, but it's feasible to use "rogue like" and be done with it.

[ElvisDeadly]

I always thought the main difference was just that roguelites aren't as difficult?

But like all tags they are user generated so they mean different things to different people, especially in this case.

As Reboot says, they are essentially the same as far as a lot of players would notice. Any game tagged Roguelite could just be tagged Roguelike

[Baosas]

Roguelite = a mix of randomized and fixed elements, roguelike = (almost) everything is randomized, aside from fundamental game mechanics.

[Phirestar]

The main difference (the one that matters, really) is that roguelikes mirror Rogue's gameplay, in that they are turn-based and grid-based. In those games, you are able to take as much time as you want to plan out your next move(s), because enemies only move once you've performed an action.

There are a lot of other elements that make up roguelikes, including the two main components of roguelites (procedural generation & permadeath), but even those rules have been bent in recent times.

• Games like Tales of Maj'Eyal give you extra lives for progressing far enough, or a non-permadeath mode in Tangledeep in which money and experience points are lost upon death.
  
• Tangledeep also features meta-progression (normally associated with roguelites). In the starting town, there is a bank that can be used to store gear found in the dungeon, which carries through death on Heroic mode (the intended way to play). The items that're stored will enable the player to get back to the floor in which it was found faster, without making the player any stronger than before.

Also, there is now a "traditional roguelike" tag on Steam that lets you find them more easily. (Personally, I think we need to do away with the whole "roguelike/roguelite" system and come up with a more effective name for all the non-roguelike games.)

[REDSHADOW]

Originally posted by Phirestar:

(Personally, I think we need to do away with the whole "roguelike/roguelite" system and come up with a more effective name for all the non-roguelike games.)

How about "one-death-kill" as in "one death kills your save fill"

[Phirestar]

Originally posted by REDSHADOW:

Originally posted by Phirestar:

(Personally, I think we need to do away with the whole "roguelike/roguelite" system and come up with a more effective name for all the non-roguelike games.)

How about "one-death-kill" as in "one death kills your save fill"

That doesn't sound good, I have to be honest.


One suggestion that I found in a YouTube video by Adam Millard is to name it the "modular" genre. A word that roughly means "assembled from parts", it does an okay job of describing the games.

Roguelites aren't truly "random" generation, but are instead (usually) comprised of a series of premade rooms that're fitted together like puzzle pieces. Each section of a floor is a hand-crafted component - fitted with specific entrances / exits, certain hazards, and often times an exact set of enemy spawns - and the procedural generation comes in when the game takes those assets and builds a dungeon layout. Taking into consideration certain parameters, in the process: rooms spawn in certain locations, connect in specific places, cannot overlap on one another, etc.

It is kind of an iffy term to use, though, since some games don't really build their maps this way. The Risk of Rain titles have entire levels built as a single entity, and the game simply chooses between a couple of different ones to have the player spawn into.

[Meneluma]

The traditional definition is:
Roguelike=Game that does fully commit to being like Rogue, the game that resulted in the naming for the genre. That is a turn based, procedurally generated dungeon crawler, with permadeath.
Roguelite=Any other game that has procedurally generated levels at some amount of permadeath.

Though with the influx of these games, and the emergence of lite roguelites, the line shifted to what I'd say is the biggest difference now, which could be called the modern definition:
-Roguelites have a meta progression system where even if you die you can still buy upgrades to eventually become stronger and have stats carry you through the game, or have a shortcut to skip levels, or bring in bonus gear.
-Roguelikes can only be beaten as is with no meta progression to carry you.