Roguelike general discussion - Randomize me captain!

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Grundlejungle

Grundlejungle

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Discuss roguelikes, and give your recommendations!

Q: What is a roguelike?

A subgenre named after the 1980 game Rogue. they feature permadeath, procedural generation, and infinite replayability.



Q: what are some examples of good roguelike games?

A: there's a lot, but I personally recommend:

The binding of Isaac (The legend of Zelda: child abuse)

Balatro (schizophrenic poker)

Enter the gungeon (The legend of Zelda America edition)

Vampire survivors (Castlevania: Dracula's epic seizure)

Stranium imortally ( super Metroid on acid)

Megabonk ( risk of rain meme shooter 4)
 
..... Balatro is a roguelike?
Vampire Survivors is a roguelike?

Huh?

This claim is so wild, I'll need to think about it


EDIT:
Both Balatro and Vampire Survivors are structured around repeat runs, randomized elements, and persistent unlocks. Which is why I would take no big issue labeling them as rogue-lites. But roguelike? Neither of the two games has turn-based grid exploration, just to state the obvious... Surely a roguelike must be mechanically like Rogue.
 
Already a thread:
L

Thread 'Roguelikes and Roguelites General'

So I searched to see if we had a general Roguelike/Roguelite thread, and I couldn't find one. So here we go!

I live under a rock. What's a Roguelike?

Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike

With that out of the way, I'll start by talking about a few roguelikes/lites I've enjoyed recently.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
Get it here (it's free!): http://cddawiki.chezzo.com/cdda_wiki/index.php?title=Download

Want the most in-depth zombie apocalypse survival sim ever? No? Why are you even here. Cataclysm DDA takes place in New England shortly after...
Reactions:Like x 4 Semper Fidelis x 2 Winner x 1 Feels x 1
 
XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG said:
..... Balatro is a roguelike?
Vampire Survivors is a roguelike?

Huh?

This claim is so wild, I'll need to think about it


EDIT:
Both Balatro and Vampire Survivors are structured around repeat runs, randomized elements, and persistent unlocks. Which is why I would take no big issue labeling them as rogue-lites. But roguelike? Neither of the two games has turn-based grid exploration, just to state the obvious... Surely a roguelike must be mechanically like Rogue.
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yeah people kinda forgot that the term roguelite exists and use roguelike for everything that has permadeath and some randomness in it

for actual roguelikes i really really really recommend cogmind
 
Helping Friendly Book said:
Risk of Rain 2. I fucking love Risk of Rain 2. Never played the first, but from what I’ve seen, I don’t think I would’ve liked it. But holy shit, going from ROR 1 to 2 is one of the best gaming glowups I’ve ever seen.
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um... shweety... that's not a rougelike according to the definitions:

XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG said:
structured around repeat runs, randomized elements, and persistent unlocks. Which is why I would take no big issue labeling them as rogue-lites. But roguelike? Neither of the two games has turn-based grid exploration, just to state the obvious... Surely a roguelike must be mechanically like Rogue.
Click to expand...
 
The definition is kinda all over the place so fair enough I suppose.

You've got traditional roguelikes, which is stuff like Nethack or ADOM. No dispute, but some consider them to be rogue-likes.
You've got roguelikes, the weird spot that's mostly just a catch all. Either games purely like rogue, games with randomization + permadeath but no meta upgrades, or just any randomization + permadeath period.
Roguelites is either games with randomization + permadeath, or probably more commonly games randomization + permadeath and meta progression, specifically made intentionally to make the game easier. I believe just including unlockables is not enough to tilt into roguelite territory, even if it unintentionally makes the game harder/easier by diluting the pool.

I guess some roguelike/lite recommendations from me is One Step from Eden, Sol Cesto (despite EA), and Slice and Dice, at least for a little lesser known ones.
 
Maniacal Foreigner said:
I don't understand why any of their games are popular, frankly.
The music's good, but that's about it.
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Hades is popular because it has a plot, a ton of fucking voice work, and the progression system is pretty smooth.
its a roguelike that even your average non-gaming enthusiast women could be interested in because of all the character interactions and dynamics, gay as some of them were.

I rolled my eyes at plenty, but even I was a bit touched by the regular ending (gotten by beating dear old dad 7 times) and the "True" ending.

Maybe it was the music or how it felt like Zag had overcome the impossible by getting the mom and dad back together.

 
Maniacal Foreigner said:
I don't understand why any of their games are popular, frankly.
The music's good, but that's about it.
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I like Bastion, its very snappy, the just-frame parry and charge mechanics are really satisfying to consistently pull off and take up some of that mental bandwidth while also needing to focus on all the different enemies around you of which there's plenty of variety leading to multiple levels of target prioritization, there's plenty of build variety and totems enhance all of that multitasking.

My problem with Hades is that you tend to very quickly snowball with screen clearing combos which melts away any reason to play. Also the "pick 1 of 3 powerups" thing is really getting tiring in roguelites because its a concession to the RNG and lets you more consistently get powerful upgrades instead of things that offer alternate playstyles. It's very rare in any of these games that out of 3 choices there'll be no good choices.
 
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Scarthew said:
I like Bastion, its very snappy, the just-frame parry and charge mechanics are really satisfying to consistently pull off and take up some of that mental bandwidth while also needing to focus on all the different enemies around you of which there's plenty of variety leading to multiple levels of target prioritization, there's plenty of build variety and totems enhance all of that multitasking.
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I just remember the narrator being really fucking annoying, one of the early examples of that awful modern "let me talk right into the mic so you can hear every smack from my wet ass mouth" style of voice acting.
 
Path of Achra's a good entry point to more traditional roguelikes. It's not a perfect 1:1 roguelike, but it does show you what to actually expect. Granted some race/class/god combinations are much better than others...
 
The term "roguelike" is another brick in the "words don't mean shit anymore" wall.

The fact any game with slight randomness, and calling a playthrough a "run," is considered a "roguelike" is such ass. At this point, Buckshot Roulette is a roguelike because random shells, random items, and you have "runs." Project Zomboid is a roguelike because the houses and zombies are randomized, and you're expected to die w/ losing progress between characters. Fucking Civilization can be called a roguelike because the planet is randomized and you have to restart your civ every new game. The same thing is happening with other categories with "metroidvania" starting to mean anything where you have to go left before you go right, oh, and you get upgrades. By the same metric, all Zeldas are metroidvanias now, and it's so fucking lame.

Once Balatro and Roulette Balatro was called a "roguelike" I knew it was over.
Yeah, I'm mad.
 
I am also mad. Required watching for everyone butchering the term:

Balatro is funny to me since it already belongs to a quite clear category: a deck building game. Check out Dominion for a good example.
 
in hell in hell in hell i said:
I am also mad. Required watching for everyone butchering the term:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-13LUfagQhY
Balatro is funny to me since it already belongs to a quite clear category: a deck building game. Check out Dominion for a good example.
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Based af video with the most salient point being in line with your post: if there's a genre that something fits in more than "roguelike" then that's what it is, and it only contains elements of a roguelike; HOWEVER, that does not make it a "roguelike." As it says, if someone likes Binding of Isaac and you suggest they play FTL because they're both "roguelikes" then that's retarded and "roguelike" has little to no meaning. It's major focus on "nothing moves until I move" is a good example of a criteria that roguelikes should focus on.

Now to actually discuss roguelikes and not just bitch about the term, the one's I'm cycling through recently have been:
1) Elin (mainly waiting for updates in-between mapping for Intravenous 2 and doing Noita runs)
2) Quasimorph (about to hit 1.0 release and the class updates w/ QoL improvements are dope)
3) Jupiter Hell (why is it so hard ;_; also they just released Jupiter Hell Classic that's supposed to be closer to DoomRL)

One problem I have with hoping back and forth between Elin and other games is I end up forgetting the random shit I was working on of training up my town's people/guards/allies and trying to breed the most ridiculous crops to boost up my stats. I know there's nothing actually rushing me to breed the dankest sweet potatoes on Tyris, or focus so much on food, but it's hard shaking the "you're not playing as optimal for your stat increases" every time I pick it back up. I'm tempted to let my two towns just function on their own and breed the crops for a full year while I go off and settle another town, but I can't shake that constant food optimization.
 
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