> The term “Roguelike” is not a well-defined term.
Ctrl+F "Berlin" no results. The author didn't even discover the Berlin interpretation in their research, which suggests there was none. Roguelike is a well-defined term, though there are multiple competing definitions. This article presents none of them.
> Roguelikes are about complexity.
Oh ok, I guess all RTS and 4X games are roguelikes now. Let's also include flight simulators and management tycoon games because they're complex too, right?
> Roguelikes are about using an unpredictable toolkit with complex interactions in order to overcome unpredictable challenges.
I.e. roguelikes are video games. Somebody call the press.
> Super Smash Bros Brawl multiplayer is like a Roguelike!
Yeah we've pretty much just abandoned all definitions at this point. All games are now roguelikes, according to this article.
The author obviously did a lot of research, explained roguelikes' roots, and has an interesting take on something that a lot of the great roguelikes have in common. It was a good read.
Also, if you read to the end of the article, they aren't saying to use their definition of roguelike, since the name is already taken.
Exactly. I'm not sure what the person you replied to is talking about. This article is clearly well researched because it covers many classic games on the timeline of roguelike history, from Dwarf Fortress to Civilization 5 to Super Smash Bros.
I've never cared much for the berlin interpretation (it focuses too much on the specific mechanics rather than the more abstract design principles than one would naturally associate with a genre), but this article's definition definitely bends far too strongly into its abstractions... to the point that almost every game is defined under his new term, and games that no one would put together... are put together.
IMO a roguelike's defining feature is the "fairness" of its simulation (most of the world's rules are equally applied to all its denizens.. though some may be more equal than others with custom spells/abilities/etc), in combination with the inevitable ADnD dungeon-crawling and RPG elements. The grid-based, turn-based, modality, procedural generation, etc of the berlin are too pointed to be relevant IMO.
Though procedural generation is a little interesting because I feel like it inevitably falls out of any game targeting a "fair" simulation -- how much good is a hand-rolled map design if you can't also hand-design the mechanics and interactions with the entities in the map? So it naturally lends itself to ceding control over the world generation itself.. and of course if your rules are fair and sane enough that the player can use them with their uncontrolled and arbitrary strategies and combinations.. then they're probably good enough to randomly smash together by the machine. So the monsters gain their flexibility, and everything just works -- so why not. The only issue is leaving the AI flexible enough to deal with the fact. And permadeath kind of just falls out of the procedural generation mechanics as well
Thus its not that roguelikes are an endless interaction with complexity.. its that the game-universe itself operates more closely to a proper simulation of the universe (not a detailed sim, mind you, but not a sim that simply revolves around the player(s) ala megaman), and complexity of the interactions are a natural outcome. And then differentiating between say a colony-sim (DF), a 4X and a roguelike is largely on the basis of the scale at which the player interacts with the simulation (colony, country, individual, respectively). [Note: you also have actual simulators, but they're clearly a different kind of interaction -- In DF the simulation is in the backseat, whereas in EURO TRUCK SIMULATOR 2 the simulation is the main point]
Of course you could probably differentiate even more within that.. but there are so few games that actually make a real effort at any kind of "fair" simulation that the game name alone is sufficient. Which is also why Noita feels like it belongs with the other roguelikes, despite violating most of the berlin interpreation -- it implements a "fair" simulation.
Classical roguelikes, just like classical RPGs, aren't "fair". The most obvious way is that the hero gains levels (or other powers). Even if monsters can gain technically gain levels as they can in some roguelikes, they practically never do, and even if they can pick up a wand, they can't optimize it like you do in Noita. You are the hero, you are the active agent, other creatures in the world can only respond to you in very limited ways within the same basic ruleset.
Tarn Adams of Dwarf Fortress fame once made a game as a bit of a joke, where the enemies were more actively adversarial, though. As soon as they became aware that you'd entered, they would hide all the treasure and equip all the loot themselves. It was fair to the monsters I guess, but it could be very unfair from the perspective of "developer providing a fair challenge to the player".
Dwarf Fortress is, in adventure mode, famous for being relatively "fair in simulation" rather than "fair in gameplay". Many roguelikes, including the old ones, are perfectly fine with e.g. level scaling, which is hard to justify in simulation-fairness terms.
Richard Bartle referred to this simulationist dynamic as "physics" when describing MUD and it successors, but unfortunately that term is also now overloaded with a just-barely-related approach common in modern design.
Yeah, I'm with you on this one. "Roguelike" was, for more than twenty years, essentially defined as a game that is turn based and grid based in the vein of Rogue, centered around traversing procgen levels and usually with permadeath and dungeon crawling as key focuses. It wasn't until game journalism sites and their fans started going "um... roglik is when hard..." that use shifted, and the current use describes basically nothing.
I think the Berlin interpretation puts too much weight on periphery aspects of the genre, but this shit is just ridiculous. If you use the standards these people do to define Roguelike with anything more popular, it becomes plainly obvious how absurd it is. You could call the Warhammer 40K tabletop a Doomlike because it has chainsaws, demons, the ability to be customized, scifi guns, the firing of said scifi guns and space marines, despite not even being a first person shooter or a video game.
I started playing Project Zomboid, and for me as I learned it, Zomboid is rogue-like. Not sure if that is true, but I always equate it with permadeath. Not really sure how I picked that up.
Because in the wake of story driven games taking up almost the entire single-player market, "try this part again" has become so much of a default assumption that its exclusion would inevitably become a focus point. And the other big element, a strong element of randomness, that's really just secondary to permadeath, because permadeath without random would be a tragically repetitive slog (unless you make memorization the entire point) and random without save/retry would be kind of wasteful, as players would rather proceed even further than restart. When you don't aim for replayability, the xkcd random number implementation ("4") would be as good as any.
"Permadeath without random" is a fundamental feature of STG design, and I think we're about ten years out from some overbudgeted influencer deciding to call those "roguelikes" and it sticking.
A glance at any dictionary will show a plethora of words that have multiple incompatible definitions. Some, like cleave, are even their own antonym. Nevertheless each sense of the word is well defined.
The issue isn’t a lack of well-definedness, but rather one of confusion.
Nethack is fine, but it's a blatantly unfair game with many obtuse mechanics that is close to impossible to win without either knowledge from external sources or run-ending trial and error.
I'd argue that Cogmind, or Brogue CE, or Caves of Qud possess more of the Rogue soul than Nethack does.
Losing is fun, and rougelikes are the quintescential version of this. Sounds like you need to git gud.
Cogmind is pretty fun and enjoyable, but Brogue is missing large swaths of content compared to other rougelikes (though I do love it given that it pioneered Dijkstra maps!), Caves of Qud has a static map and is thus significantly less emergent than other rougelikes. I couldn't even keep myself interested enough to get far, despite enjoying the SSeth video about it.
You should have recommended Cataclysm, DDA - a game which also has "obtuse and unfair" mechanics and "is close to impossible to win(or do well in) without either knowledge from external sources or run-ending trial and error."
Losing is fun. Nethack contains a number of opportunities for "cheap" deaths that a new player (even one who has experience with other titles in the genre) can't necessarily reasonably be expected to anticipate. This is widely considered to be poor game design, even by many roguelike developers.
A lot of (most?) modern roguelikes are a much better at conveying information to the player. Rift Wizard, for example, is built around a magic system exponentially more deep and complicated than anything in Nethack, yet is still possible for a (very) careful and through player to win on their first run.
NetHack lost it soul in the 3.x era as soon as they patched out iceboxing Rodney, merged in a bunch of SLASH('EM) stuff, added the Elemental Planes, etc. It's all stuff that optimizes for memorized, spoilered, scripted player behavior, and against general learning of a consistent world model.
Brogue carries the Hack torch better and is willing to try much more radical changes to bare that soul, to borrow your metaphor.
I'm also of the view that plain old Rogue (e.g. from 4.3 BSD, or the Epyx ports) is still immensely playable today. Why settle for imitators?
"It's all stuff that optimizes for memorized, spoilered, scripted player behavior, and against general learning of a consistent world model."
To be frank, I never got that far in Nethack. But I know what you mean, I experienced it already in TES games. After you "learn" various paths to success, the game stops being fun.
NetHack's strong side is the early to mid game where you are limited in resources. Not dying by using all the resources that are available to you in the numerous ways that the game supports.
That's why self-imposed limitations (so called conducts) like never use wishes or prayers are popular with advanced players.
Topic is pretty dead horse at this stage, it's from 2011 which makes it slightly more reasonable. The raw tonnage of gaming discourse since then is astonishing.
Dark Souls - probably one of the most discussed-to-death games ever - hadn't even come out yet, for instance.
Not even a single Skyrim "I took an arrow to the knee" meme
There is something to be said about all video game genres being wrongly named.
I mean when you look at some romance written in first person, that takes place in Victorian era, you don't call it a First Person Victorian novel. You call it a romance novel.
Art is usually named after feelings it evokes and less on the actual techniques used.
Maybe puzzle/idle games are only games that actually have descriptive names. You play a puzzle game because you want to solve a difficult problem. You play a shooter because you want some carefree violence.
In lieu of that, Roguelikes definition misses the mark completely.
You can have a Roguelikes experience without any of the stuff defined in Rougelike Berlin definition. Noita is real-time; Elona/Caves of Qud allows save and load; Elona has little procedural generation outside wilderness and random events;
For what it's worth, I was absolutely aware of the Berlin interpretation and was giving it about as much attention as I think it deserves. In my opinion the Berlin interpretation is not a sane definition of a roguelike, it's a point-by-point description of what the common roguelike of the day was. It's a ridiculous gatekeepy way to design a genre; just imagine the definitions we would have got if "first-person shooter" had been defined in the wake of Doom ("a first-person shooter involves using a set of six to twelve weapons, bound to the number keys, to kill demons") or in the wake of Battlefield ("a first-person shooter involves large team battles with matchmaking and gradual unlocks of sidegrades, which can be bypassed by paying real money").
But the point of that post wasn't to attack the Berlin interpretation, rightfully or not, it was to trace the outlines of a concept that I think a lot of people aren't isolating. The existence of the Berlin interpretation - which was a lot more popular back then - was, and to some extent still is, blinding people to the interesting parts of the genre. The interesting part of an FPS is not the exact number of weapons available; the interesting part of a real-time strategy game is not the fact that units move smoothly, and not on a grid; the interesting part of a roguelike is not whether it's made with ASCII art. It's an implementation detail.
My attempt in that post, made kind of hamfistedly as anyone would say about something they wrote over a decade ago, was to get at the interesting parts of a roguelike and try to draw a loose outline around them.
If I were to write this today, I'd spend a lot of time talking about the XCOM 2 expansion pack, which I think made some fascinating steps towards being this kind of game. Yes, specifically the expansion pack.
In the base game, you can more-or-less plot out your build order before you start the game; you can know what will show up at every step, you can know when you'll get certain items, you can roughly predict when you'll get certain abilities (modulo soldiers dying, of course), there's no unpredictability.
In the expansion pack, though, they throw a bunch of random events at you that can seriously influence your build order. Maybe you get double-speed research, for a single research item, that you must either cash in immediately or abandon; this can mean you're encouraged to pick somewhat-random equipment. You can also be given the opportunity to buy weird unique items that are permanent upgrades to, again, somewhat-random equipment, so maybe in one game shotguns are really good and in another game it's sniper rifles that get the random bonus. Again, this can change your strategy significantly. And finally the big enemy monsters have random traits - they're weak to things, strong to other things, and all of this is re-rolled every game.
This isn't an enormous amount of variation. But it's significant, and this is the thing that I'm pointing at; situations where the player is left thinking "wait, hold on, how do I navigate this? how can I put these bonuses and penalties together into something really awesome for me?"
Thanks for the follow-up on the article. Agreed on mechanics vs feel. Although to some degree they are tied together, two games can have the same mechanics but one end up missing the "magic sauce" that made the other great.
I am like all over the place, and as far as I know, the only person who uses this username. So yeah, it was probably me, and I definitely post (and have posted) on a Codex-related community :)
Then you should've titled your article "What is it about roguelikes?", not attack the alleged misnaming of the genre which exists precisely to gatekeep a subculture that has a very clear origin point: Rogue. Another word for gatekeeping is curation. That's a good thing. We don't want a free-for-all no-rules anyone-can-call-their-game-whatever to draw attention to it.
I played Rogue around 1998. It was unique. When a game goes "I'm like Rogue", i.e. roguelike, I expect it to be like Rogue. I'm over ASCII art and like to play Civilization and Super Smash Bros, but none of these have anything to do with the naming of the genre that Rogue birthed. Cherry-picking gameplay elements, design mechanisms, or even feel from that genre does not automatically grant you right to start redefining a term that means something, even if you don't know what it means (and you clearly don't).
In summary, your original article would be received more positively by people like me if it said "let's invent a new name for a genre that covers some of the stuff about roguelikes and other games that fall within these parameters."
The argument I'm making here is that the genre has expanded to include a lot of stuff that isn't carbon-copies of Rogue, and that we should come up with a new name for that. If you want to then use the name "Roguelike" to mean "games identical to Rogue" then have at it.
That sounds great, but it's not the genre that's misnamed; It's the games that aren't like Rogue that are miscategorized. What you've said is that the genre has a problem and should be renamed. It's not the genre's problem that some people can't categorize their games properly.
Not much logic or observation in this journal rant, but the fact that it reached the HN frontpage shows a (welcome!) renewed interest in the ideas of the roguelike game.
If you are interested in the topic a quick google will yeild lots of good articles. I found this list of elements useful to organize my thinking:
Hm, considering X-COM, the only missing important piece is 5. Non-modal. Hack-n-slash and grid/turn-based are not inherent to the X-COM genre, and are broken only in geoscape anyway.
There's also a bunch of low-value factors there: 2. Enemies are similar to players, 3. Tactical challenge, and perhaps 6. Numbers.
This is something that hasn't clicked for me before.
I think this restart ability counts the same way as saving/loading.
I have forgotten that "iron man" mode is not universal, but indeed, some games are not balanced enough by default to play without saving and loading (UFO: Aftermath would have been very nice otherwise).
So yes, the save/load facility is rather normal and a departure from roguelikes.
I think "ironman mode" deserves a separate discussion, because there is such a wide gap between games where it's merely a higher stakes setting and games where recovery from setbacks is a core element, and not just as a lofty goal ("wouldn't it be nice if people played that way?") but made so interesting that players actually play that way, and not just a tiny fraction of the most masochistic.
That difference is best illustrated comparing Crusader Kings and its seemingly similar sibling Europa Universalis: (I'm talking about recent incarnations, I don't know CK1 or EU[123]) CK is full of rebound mechanics that work for both bad decisions and for RNG setbacks, whereas EU is mostly straight-forward 4X where any bit of falling behind ruthlessly compounds.
For me, roguelike = procedural generation + permadeath, that's all. Some people call these games "roguelites", and have a much stricter definition for "roguelike", but I still consider it one of the best defined genre.
Procedural generation and permadeath are a perfect combination. Permadeath is a powerful mechanic, but by itself, it is very frustrating, because if you die, it forces you start over and redo everything you have done. Procedural generation solves the problem by making every game unique. We probably can add a form of character building and progression to the definition, otherwise death would be meaningless and it would be more like a traditional arcade game.
There are other aspects to traditional roguelikes: turn-based, dungeon crawlers, resource management, hack-and-slash, etc... But none of these aspect synergize as well as procedural generation and permadeath, that's why I consider it the true defining feature.
I think on Steam games that take clear inspiration from Rogue (so top down, turn based, maybe ASCII based) are tagged Traditional Roguelikes. I personally like the Roguelike/Roguelite split you outlined but I can understand why people get confused by the names. I agree that permadeath + procedural generation is such an amazing mechanic combo that it needs to have its own name to easily be described when you present it into new base mechanics or game form.
Roguelites unlike Roguelikes (the lite and like parts are self-explanatory), have some progression outside the permadeath runs. The Binding of Isaac, Dead Cells, Hades... are all roguelites, due to having this permanent progression (unlocking new items, skills, increased statistics...) that carry on to new runs. Roguelikes don't have a progression outside of individual runs, so each run is a fresh start.
People who are unfamiliar with the terms just end up using them interchangeably.
Classical roguelikes have bones/ghosts mechanic, which is progression-lite.
Multiplayer DCSS servers even have multiplayer bones - you can meet and fight ghosts of other players' deaths.
I have always interpreted bones/ghosts as using previous runs as an additional source of level-generation data, rather than a progression mechanic. In the game, it is realistic that other adventurers would have attempted what you are attempting (and died trying). The game could fill in this assumption by randomly generating ghosts and loot, but real-world data is more interesting and nuanced. For example, one of my favorite components of the nethack bones system is seeing the cause of death of the ghosts I run into. Again, 'cause of death' could be reproduced with some random generation, but it wouldn't be as good.
Anyway, I only play nethack on public servers or using the nethack hearse tool, so I don't 'progress' by using my own bones files. Maybe if you play purely locally, you can view your own bones files as a form of progression.
Mechanically speaking, bones can also only get you so far. You have to first get to them to take advantage (and you can't control if they'll actually show up or not), but... then you already got as far as the bones did, and are presumably roughly equally equipped. Usually only 1-2 items orthogonal to your current loadout are useful (e.g. you wished for good armor this game, but a good weapon in the bones game). Also, the bones failed, so on average you are probably better off than they were.
(That's assuming you don't do some degenerate play like get a bunch of loot, run back to level 2, and die purposefully. At that point you might as well savescum.)
In most games bones also represent a significant risk. The ghosts fight you, the items come cursed, etc.
People yelling about how it needs to be a turn based dungeon crawling RPG to count as a roguelike are like those dudes still mad about how eSports aren’t even actual sports.
> For me, roguelike = procedural generation + permadeath
So any game with a random map lacking a progress-system is rogue-like? Like Civilization, Sim City, Star Craft? No limit on the genre or type of interaction?
> Some people call these games "roguelites"
Rogue-lites have a progress-system that grows outside the sessions. So every run has meaning beyond the run itself.
None of those have permadeath even close to their core, and a tacked-on "ironman mode" does not change that. Star craft was even centered around an authored linear story campaign.
The thing is, in many cases "Roguelike" is not a helpful description. It's like calling Megaman an "R-Type-like" because it's a side scroller with a beam-up weapon. The things that make Megaman what it is, have nothing in common with R-Type even though they share a couple of game mechanics.
I got really confused when people called Spelunky a roguelike. If my friend called on the phone and asked me what Spelunky was like, I'd say "A Rick Dangerous style platformer with procedurally generated levels" - and he'd have a pretty good idea of what I meant. If I said "It's a roguelike" he'd probably think I was talking about Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, or ADOM or something.
I think this is even somewhat uncontroversial, just that considered as such it's pretty shallow. Lots of 7DRL entries take minesweeper elements, and Shiren 5 includes minesweeper levels called "Explosion Rocks" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nAXgSiKotQ) in the same way many traditional roguelikes have sokoban levels.
Procedural generation + permadeath includes Tetris and Solitaire.
I just try and avoid the whole word nowadays. The Berlin interpretation was a fairly decent guideline when there were just a bunch of turn-based tile-based dungeon crawlers with randomized levels, many of them with text-based graphics and/or developed under early free software models. Then Diablo came along, brought a real time aspect into it.
Personally, I think the procedural generation aspect is overrated when it comes to the genre definition. Say you fork Rogue and hardcode the level layouts, item and enemy placements and so on. It would probably be an inferior game, but still in the same genre of game, I think. At least the game would change less than if you made it real time or somehow removed the grid lock.
I tend to say something like "turn-based dungeon crawler". This way I can talk about games that are like Nethack or DCSS without having to clarify I don't mean platformers, twin stick shooters or -- god forbid -- deck building games of all things. I like action games just fine, often more than turn-based dungeon crawlers, but the itch they scratch is a different one.
The Berlin Interpretation significantly postdates Diablo II and was written by people deeply familiar with the breadth of the traditional roguelike genre, from the direct Hack and Angband descendents, to lesser-known PC crawls like Telengard and Castle of the Winds, to the non-English descendants via Fushigi no Dungeon. You can (probably should!) argue with its definition but the suggestion that Diablo upended it is silly.
> I tend to say something like "turn-based dungeon crawler".
Like Wizardry, Eye of the Beholder, and MegaTen, got it. (Wait...)
I was under the impression that BI was a few years older than it is, so thanks for making me check. Actually, the fact it was made so recently and by people so familiar with the diversity of the genre makes me less forgiving of its weird specifics and priorities.
I do not and never did think Diablo single-handedly upended the definition, but I do believe it (and its sequel):
1) Took so many of its design elements from roguelikes that in the context of its time, it was not unreasonable to consider it a new take on that genre's formula
2) Was a major, if not definitive influence on many of the roguelites that would follow afterwards
Actually, if Hades and Angband were both called "diablolikes" instead, there would probably be much less fighting over it. ("Less" not implying none. Genres can always be fought over and naming genres after specific works rarely works well anyway)
As for Wizardry, EotB, Megami Tensei, I genuinely think they look closer to a quintessential roguelike than a lot of roguelites do. If those are the smart-ass edge cases, I'm pretty happy with my wording. I didn't even intend the description to be synonymous with roguelike, but "turn based dungeon crawler" seems to include almost all games I consider to be true roguelikes and less games I don't consider roguelikes than the most actual attempted definitions of roguelike I've seen around.
If it turns out that first-person dungeon RPGs with combat-specific interface are actually an especially prevalent subset of the turn-based dungeon crawler category, I might have to start differentiating the ones with top down perspective or non-modal gameplay. So far I haven't found that to be an issue.
Those two are just design principles and I completely agree that they are great together. However, those two don't form a genre. The classic roguelikes e.g. rogue, nethack, brogue, dcss, doomrl etc. very clearly are a genre. They're very similar yet all do their own thing and do interesting things in the confines of the genre. Modern roguelikes aren't a genre because there's so many variations that it's meaningless. Risk of Rain 2, Dead Cells, Hand of Fate, Binding of Isaac, Ziggurat. They're all roguelikes apparently. But they all play so differently. What's the point? It's like saying Contra, Super Mario Bros, Battletoads are all in the same genre because if you die a couple times you have to start from the beginning.
The unlocking of tools or advantages isn't present in rogue, BOSS ( http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php/BOSS ), larn, Moria, or Angband. It is only slightly present in Nethack via bones levels.
I would contend that any definition of a rougelike that excludes rogue is overly specific.
The article is highly misleading. Emergent gameplay is a key component but not the only component of roguelikes. There's already a term for what the article proposes. It's called systemic games. See this talk by Aleissia Laidacker [1] and also this fantastic GMTK video on systemic games [2].
Never knew the term roguelike or similar until way after the fact, but I really enjoyed Castle of the Winds[1] when I stumbled upon it as a kid. Countless hours sunk into that game, and now I want to take another stab... Thankfully the author has released it into the public domain[2], awesome!
Now to see if I can get it running on 64-bit Windows[3], it being a 16-bit Windows game.
As someone who is an indie dev loosely making a roguelite (that is more Slay the spire/ pokemon nuzlocke combo) I purposely avoid calling it a roguelike anywhere because some people are obsessively focused on keeping its traditional definition, which is probably linked to the Berlin interpretation definition of a roguelike.
I think in general the term is changing, and in terms of how languages naturally shift it is an interesting case, but I also do not envy the author for the e-mails they are about to get.
I don't think there is a need to change the usual interpretation established through the genre's past. There is a bigger audience inspired by the genre and some of them seek to appropriate the roguelike word for another role which better suits their views, but should they be allowed that?
Deviating the meaning of words is not a good habit of our society, especially when not even done for a noble cause. If the intent behind is better conformity to a wider audience, then it is a tyranny of the majority.
Inevitably, it leads to a simple question: what is wrong with just accepting the "Roguelite" word and living on with it?
> I’ve defined a new genre of game. What do you think it should be called?
My well-meaning tip: concentrate on building your game, and just forget about the genre.
In the case that your game has so much impact that it actually becomes the basis of a new genre, the new genre will probably be named after your game, which is great.
But if your game does not end up spawning it's very own genre - well then there will be no need for a name.
Honestly, don't waste any thought and effort on the genre, but pour all of that into your game instead.
I would be more forgiving to hand over the term "roguelike" to roguelites and other PGC-based games if I had a term to replace it. The problem is - what's a better term than "roguelike" to mean "more like Rogue than the other things which are (sometimes only very slightly) like Rogue"?
"Classical roguelike" usually means "direct descendent of Hack/Angband/Larn/Moria" (Rogue itself produced very few descendents, I think). "Traditional" excludes several interesting categories which are uncontroversially roguelikes: games not part of the current 'body of practice' like Dungeon Hack; radically different PCG approaches like 868-HACK; and the Japanese design lineage in e.g. Shiren or Baroque which uses a very different approach to progression dynamics than today's roguelites.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadCtrl+F "Berlin" no results. The author didn't even discover the Berlin interpretation in their research, which suggests there was none. Roguelike is a well-defined term, though there are multiple competing definitions. This article presents none of them.
> Roguelikes are about complexity.
Oh ok, I guess all RTS and 4X games are roguelikes now. Let's also include flight simulators and management tycoon games because they're complex too, right?
> Roguelikes are about using an unpredictable toolkit with complex interactions in order to overcome unpredictable challenges.
I.e. roguelikes are video games. Somebody call the press.
> Super Smash Bros Brawl multiplayer is like a Roguelike!
Yeah we've pretty much just abandoned all definitions at this point. All games are now roguelikes, according to this article.
Also, if you read to the end of the article, they aren't saying to use their definition of roguelike, since the name is already taken.
…wait.
IMO a roguelike's defining feature is the "fairness" of its simulation (most of the world's rules are equally applied to all its denizens.. though some may be more equal than others with custom spells/abilities/etc), in combination with the inevitable ADnD dungeon-crawling and RPG elements. The grid-based, turn-based, modality, procedural generation, etc of the berlin are too pointed to be relevant IMO.
Though procedural generation is a little interesting because I feel like it inevitably falls out of any game targeting a "fair" simulation -- how much good is a hand-rolled map design if you can't also hand-design the mechanics and interactions with the entities in the map? So it naturally lends itself to ceding control over the world generation itself.. and of course if your rules are fair and sane enough that the player can use them with their uncontrolled and arbitrary strategies and combinations.. then they're probably good enough to randomly smash together by the machine. So the monsters gain their flexibility, and everything just works -- so why not. The only issue is leaving the AI flexible enough to deal with the fact. And permadeath kind of just falls out of the procedural generation mechanics as well
Thus its not that roguelikes are an endless interaction with complexity.. its that the game-universe itself operates more closely to a proper simulation of the universe (not a detailed sim, mind you, but not a sim that simply revolves around the player(s) ala megaman), and complexity of the interactions are a natural outcome. And then differentiating between say a colony-sim (DF), a 4X and a roguelike is largely on the basis of the scale at which the player interacts with the simulation (colony, country, individual, respectively). [Note: you also have actual simulators, but they're clearly a different kind of interaction -- In DF the simulation is in the backseat, whereas in EURO TRUCK SIMULATOR 2 the simulation is the main point]
Of course you could probably differentiate even more within that.. but there are so few games that actually make a real effort at any kind of "fair" simulation that the game name alone is sufficient. Which is also why Noita feels like it belongs with the other roguelikes, despite violating most of the berlin interpreation -- it implements a "fair" simulation.
There's probably a better term for "fair".
Tarn Adams of Dwarf Fortress fame once made a game as a bit of a joke, where the enemies were more actively adversarial, though. As soon as they became aware that you'd entered, they would hide all the treasure and equip all the loot themselves. It was fair to the monsters I guess, but it could be very unfair from the perspective of "developer providing a fair challenge to the player".
Dwarf Fortress is, in adventure mode, famous for being relatively "fair in simulation" rather than "fair in gameplay". Many roguelikes, including the old ones, are perfectly fine with e.g. level scaling, which is hard to justify in simulation-fairness terms.
I think the Berlin interpretation puts too much weight on periphery aspects of the genre, but this shit is just ridiculous. If you use the standards these people do to define Roguelike with anything more popular, it becomes plainly obvious how absurd it is. You could call the Warhammer 40K tabletop a Doomlike because it has chainsaws, demons, the ability to be customized, scifi guns, the firing of said scifi guns and space marines, despite not even being a first person shooter or a video game.
Isn't multiple competing definitions the opposite of well-defined? How overlapping are those definitions?
The issue isn’t a lack of well-definedness, but rather one of confusion.
Try Nethack and see if you "get" it. If you do, congratulations! You now know know what a roguelike is.
All fans of the genre should try nethack at least a few times.
I'd argue that Cogmind, or Brogue CE, or Caves of Qud possess more of the Rogue soul than Nethack does.
Cogmind is pretty fun and enjoyable, but Brogue is missing large swaths of content compared to other rougelikes (though I do love it given that it pioneered Dijkstra maps!), Caves of Qud has a static map and is thus significantly less emergent than other rougelikes. I couldn't even keep myself interested enough to get far, despite enjoying the SSeth video about it.
You should have recommended Cataclysm, DDA - a game which also has "obtuse and unfair" mechanics and "is close to impossible to win(or do well in) without either knowledge from external sources or run-ending trial and error."
A lot of (most?) modern roguelikes are a much better at conveying information to the player. Rift Wizard, for example, is built around a magic system exponentially more deep and complicated than anything in Nethack, yet is still possible for a (very) careful and through player to win on their first run.
Brogue carries the Hack torch better and is willing to try much more radical changes to bare that soul, to borrow your metaphor.
I'm also of the view that plain old Rogue (e.g. from 4.3 BSD, or the Epyx ports) is still immensely playable today. Why settle for imitators?
To be frank, I never got that far in Nethack. But I know what you mean, I experienced it already in TES games. After you "learn" various paths to success, the game stops being fun.
That's why self-imposed limitations (so called conducts) like never use wishes or prayers are popular with advanced players.
Dark Souls - probably one of the most discussed-to-death games ever - hadn't even come out yet, for instance.
Not even a single Skyrim "I took an arrow to the knee" meme
I mean when you look at some romance written in first person, that takes place in Victorian era, you don't call it a First Person Victorian novel. You call it a romance novel.
Art is usually named after feelings it evokes and less on the actual techniques used.
Maybe puzzle/idle games are only games that actually have descriptive names. You play a puzzle game because you want to solve a difficult problem. You play a shooter because you want some carefree violence.
In lieu of that, Roguelikes definition misses the mark completely.
You can have a Roguelikes experience without any of the stuff defined in Rougelike Berlin definition. Noita is real-time; Elona/Caves of Qud allows save and load; Elona has little procedural generation outside wilderness and random events;
For what it's worth, I was absolutely aware of the Berlin interpretation and was giving it about as much attention as I think it deserves. In my opinion the Berlin interpretation is not a sane definition of a roguelike, it's a point-by-point description of what the common roguelike of the day was. It's a ridiculous gatekeepy way to design a genre; just imagine the definitions we would have got if "first-person shooter" had been defined in the wake of Doom ("a first-person shooter involves using a set of six to twelve weapons, bound to the number keys, to kill demons") or in the wake of Battlefield ("a first-person shooter involves large team battles with matchmaking and gradual unlocks of sidegrades, which can be bypassed by paying real money").
But the point of that post wasn't to attack the Berlin interpretation, rightfully or not, it was to trace the outlines of a concept that I think a lot of people aren't isolating. The existence of the Berlin interpretation - which was a lot more popular back then - was, and to some extent still is, blinding people to the interesting parts of the genre. The interesting part of an FPS is not the exact number of weapons available; the interesting part of a real-time strategy game is not the fact that units move smoothly, and not on a grid; the interesting part of a roguelike is not whether it's made with ASCII art. It's an implementation detail.
My attempt in that post, made kind of hamfistedly as anyone would say about something they wrote over a decade ago, was to get at the interesting parts of a roguelike and try to draw a loose outline around them.
If I were to write this today, I'd spend a lot of time talking about the XCOM 2 expansion pack, which I think made some fascinating steps towards being this kind of game. Yes, specifically the expansion pack.
In the base game, you can more-or-less plot out your build order before you start the game; you can know what will show up at every step, you can know when you'll get certain items, you can roughly predict when you'll get certain abilities (modulo soldiers dying, of course), there's no unpredictability.
In the expansion pack, though, they throw a bunch of random events at you that can seriously influence your build order. Maybe you get double-speed research, for a single research item, that you must either cash in immediately or abandon; this can mean you're encouraged to pick somewhat-random equipment. You can also be given the opportunity to buy weird unique items that are permanent upgrades to, again, somewhat-random equipment, so maybe in one game shotguns are really good and in another game it's sniper rifles that get the random bonus. Again, this can change your strategy significantly. And finally the big enemy monsters have random traits - they're weak to things, strong to other things, and all of this is re-rolled every game.
This isn't an enormous amount of variation. But it's significant, and this is the thing that I'm pointing at; situations where the player is left thinking "wait, hold on, how do I navigate this? how can I put these bonuses and penalties together into something really awesome for me?"
I played Rogue around 1998. It was unique. When a game goes "I'm like Rogue", i.e. roguelike, I expect it to be like Rogue. I'm over ASCII art and like to play Civilization and Super Smash Bros, but none of these have anything to do with the naming of the genre that Rogue birthed. Cherry-picking gameplay elements, design mechanisms, or even feel from that genre does not automatically grant you right to start redefining a term that means something, even if you don't know what it means (and you clearly don't).
In summary, your original article would be received more positively by people like me if it said "let's invent a new name for a genre that covers some of the stuff about roguelikes and other games that fall within these parameters."
If you are interested in the topic a quick google will yeild lots of good articles. I found this list of elements useful to organize my thinking:
Rogue Like:
High-value factors
1. Random environment generation
2. Permadeath
3. Turn-based
4. Grid-based
5. Non-modal
6. Complexity
7. Resource management
8. Hack n slash
9. Exploration or discovery
Low-value factors
1. Single-player character
2. Monsters are similar to players
3. Tactical challenge
4. ASCII display
5. Dungeons
6. Numbers
Via: https://www.nerdmuch.com/roguelike-vs-roguelite/
There's also a bunch of low-value factors there: 2. Enemies are similar to players, 3. Tactical challenge, and perhaps 6. Numbers.
This is something that hasn't clicked for me before.
An optional "iron man" mode (I think recent games utilizing the XCOM brand have it?) is something that deserves to be discussed separately.
I have forgotten that "iron man" mode is not universal, but indeed, some games are not balanced enough by default to play without saving and loading (UFO: Aftermath would have been very nice otherwise).
So yes, the save/load facility is rather normal and a departure from roguelikes.
That difference is best illustrated comparing Crusader Kings and its seemingly similar sibling Europa Universalis: (I'm talking about recent incarnations, I don't know CK1 or EU[123]) CK is full of rebound mechanics that work for both bad decisions and for RNG setbacks, whereas EU is mostly straight-forward 4X where any bit of falling behind ruthlessly compounds.
edit: is that LiveJournal? Its still around and hijacks the back button?
Procedural generation and permadeath are a perfect combination. Permadeath is a powerful mechanic, but by itself, it is very frustrating, because if you die, it forces you start over and redo everything you have done. Procedural generation solves the problem by making every game unique. We probably can add a form of character building and progression to the definition, otherwise death would be meaningless and it would be more like a traditional arcade game.
There are other aspects to traditional roguelikes: turn-based, dungeon crawlers, resource management, hack-and-slash, etc... But none of these aspect synergize as well as procedural generation and permadeath, that's why I consider it the true defining feature.
People who are unfamiliar with the terms just end up using them interchangeably.
Anyway, I only play nethack on public servers or using the nethack hearse tool, so I don't 'progress' by using my own bones files. Maybe if you play purely locally, you can view your own bones files as a form of progression.
(That's assuming you don't do some degenerate play like get a bunch of loot, run back to level 2, and die purposefully. At that point you might as well savescum.)
In most games bones also represent a significant risk. The ghosts fight you, the items come cursed, etc.
People yelling about how it needs to be a turn based dungeon crawling RPG to count as a roguelike are like those dudes still mad about how eSports aren’t even actual sports.
So any game with a random map lacking a progress-system is rogue-like? Like Civilization, Sim City, Star Craft? No limit on the genre or type of interaction?
> Some people call these games "roguelites"
Rogue-lites have a progress-system that grows outside the sessions. So every run has meaning beyond the run itself.
Those games don't have permadeath. Permadeath means you can't recover from mistakes by loading a save file.
I got really confused when people called Spelunky a roguelike. If my friend called on the phone and asked me what Spelunky was like, I'd say "A Rick Dangerous style platformer with procedurally generated levels" - and he'd have a pretty good idea of what I meant. If I said "It's a roguelike" he'd probably think I was talking about Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, or ADOM or something.
By this definition, Minesweeper is a Roguelike. :-)
Minesweeper ticks a lot of the Berlin interpretation boxes.
I just try and avoid the whole word nowadays. The Berlin interpretation was a fairly decent guideline when there were just a bunch of turn-based tile-based dungeon crawlers with randomized levels, many of them with text-based graphics and/or developed under early free software models. Then Diablo came along, brought a real time aspect into it.
Personally, I think the procedural generation aspect is overrated when it comes to the genre definition. Say you fork Rogue and hardcode the level layouts, item and enemy placements and so on. It would probably be an inferior game, but still in the same genre of game, I think. At least the game would change less than if you made it real time or somehow removed the grid lock.
I tend to say something like "turn-based dungeon crawler". This way I can talk about games that are like Nethack or DCSS without having to clarify I don't mean platformers, twin stick shooters or -- god forbid -- deck building games of all things. I like action games just fine, often more than turn-based dungeon crawlers, but the itch they scratch is a different one.
> I tend to say something like "turn-based dungeon crawler".
Like Wizardry, Eye of the Beholder, and MegaTen, got it. (Wait...)
I was under the impression that BI was a few years older than it is, so thanks for making me check. Actually, the fact it was made so recently and by people so familiar with the diversity of the genre makes me less forgiving of its weird specifics and priorities.
I do not and never did think Diablo single-handedly upended the definition, but I do believe it (and its sequel):
1) Took so many of its design elements from roguelikes that in the context of its time, it was not unreasonable to consider it a new take on that genre's formula
2) Was a major, if not definitive influence on many of the roguelites that would follow afterwards
Actually, if Hades and Angband were both called "diablolikes" instead, there would probably be much less fighting over it. ("Less" not implying none. Genres can always be fought over and naming genres after specific works rarely works well anyway)
As for Wizardry, EotB, Megami Tensei, I genuinely think they look closer to a quintessential roguelike than a lot of roguelites do. If those are the smart-ass edge cases, I'm pretty happy with my wording. I didn't even intend the description to be synonymous with roguelike, but "turn based dungeon crawler" seems to include almost all games I consider to be true roguelikes and less games I don't consider roguelikes than the most actual attempted definitions of roguelike I've seen around.
If it turns out that first-person dungeon RPGs with combat-specific interface are actually an especially prevalent subset of the turn-based dungeon crawler category, I might have to start differentiating the ones with top down perspective or non-modal gameplay. So far I haven't found that to be an issue.
Loop Hero, FTL, etc are examples
I would contend that any definition of a rougelike that excludes rogue is overly specific.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gelpn4mksXQ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnpAAX9CkIc
Now to see if I can get it running on 64-bit Windows[3], it being a 16-bit Windows game.
[1]: https://www.mobygames.com/game/castle-of-the-winds
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_the_Winds
[3]: https://github.com/otya128/winevdm
I think in general the term is changing, and in terms of how languages naturally shift it is an interesting case, but I also do not envy the author for the e-mails they are about to get.
My well-meaning tip: concentrate on building your game, and just forget about the genre.
In the case that your game has so much impact that it actually becomes the basis of a new genre, the new genre will probably be named after your game, which is great.
But if your game does not end up spawning it's very own genre - well then there will be no need for a name.
Honestly, don't waste any thought and effort on the genre, but pour all of that into your game instead.
https://blog.roguetemple.com/what-is-a-traditional-roguelike...
1. Permanent consequences
2. Character centric
3. Procedural content
4. Turn-based
Check out some of the entries from past years, along with their “how roguelike is it?” scoring.
https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2021
OP's blog post is from 10 years so I can't blame them. But today "Roguelike" is usually something slightly different.
A roguelike these days is a game that has (at least some) procedurally generated content and permadeath without meta progression.
A roguelike purist would call these roguelites.
Definitions change over time, often you can't do anything about that. But I would expect those two not to deviate too much in the future (hopefully).