An open letter about "Roguelikes," "Roguelites," and disability access in gaming
Saramayaslim
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
First time poster, long, loooong time lurker, but anyway I've got something I feel needs to be said.
Roguelikes and Roguelites are turn based genres, because that's what Rogue is! Roguelikes like Nethack, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Dungeons of Dredmor, Jupiter Hell, Brogue, POWDER, Angband, C:DDA, Caves of Qud, ToME, etc are a great boon of disability access in gaming. They are a great boon of disability access because they allow one to take as much time as they need, they allow for those of us with partial blindness(my situation, and slowly worsening), motor control issues(not quite my situation, but I'm one-armed, so vaguely-kinda?), and other factors to play the game at our own pace without real-time consequences lousing up gameplay experience. I don't have to worry about that kobold getting closer in Nethack, or that tridude in POWDER as time ticks down. I can take my time to examine it, to squint at what I'm seeing, to use my patchy partial vision to go over individual tiles/enemies and parse the data. I dont need to worry about real-time seconds ticking down, I don't need twitch reflexes to be good at something "like" the game "rogue."
A more detailed breakdown can be found by searching the Rock Paper Shotgun database for "playing roguelikes when you can't see"
The trouble is that in recent times it is now very very hard to find genuine actual roguelikes because every dev and the community that backs them uses the term "roguelike" when they mean "arcade."
Check it for yourself if you don't believe me.
Play Survival Crisis Z and Dracula Undead Awakening. Compare them to Vampire Survivors, they're of the same gameplay.(had to get my sighted friends to verify this one tbh)
Play Downwell, then play Icy Tower. There's a striking similarity so blatant even the BLIND can point this out!. One could further make this argument of Jetpack Joyride and Geometry Dash.
Play Atic Atac, then play Binding of Isaac. Again, striking similarity, so blatant even the BLIND can point it out!
Play Metal Slug 3 on a randomizer. You've got exactly the same mechanics you're mal-attributing to the term "roguelike."
Play Daggerfall, or TES: Arena. Delete the game and re-install on death, you've got the same mechanics you're mal-attributing to the term "roguelike"
Shoot, play Rogue, and *GASP*...
save-scum!
Is Rogue somehow "not a roguelike" when you save scum? No that'd be ridiculous, Rogue, the namesake of the genre is of course a roguelike regardless of permadeath status.
We can even take this further:
Have someone play a game of Nethack or Rogue perfectly. They will not engage with permadeath nor the randomness aspect, no matter how hard you argue that those are present. Permadeath and randomisation. Again have someone play a game of Spelunky, or Isaac perfectly, or Hades. Again they wont interact with permadeath or the randomness aspect.
As for roguelite, many people will mal-attribute Rogue Legacy as the creation point of the term "roguelite." Well we have posts from here specifically detailing that roguelites are a sub-genre of roguelikes akin to the Mystery Dungeon franchise, Shiren, things of that nature.
Oddly enough there's also the fact that the earliest dateable reference to the term roguelite I've found is this:
This uses the term roguelike and roguelite interchangeably, and it predates the earliest point we can glean a definition for the word "roguelite."
Lastly a term already exists outside of roguelike/roguelite/roguelike-like or whatever other mangling of reference to Rogue to refer to games like Spelunky, like Dead Cells, Like Downwell, Like Vampire Survivors.
That term being the term "Arcade."
Play Tekken 1 2 or 3's "Arcade mode."(I hear Tekken 4 and onward uses "story mode" to refer to the same thing, but that's a little after my time actively playing real-time stuff) You've got exactly the things you're attributing to the "roguelike" genre, yet no-one calls Tekken a "roguelike..." Further, we actively shouldn't.
The same can be said of any fighting game with an arcade mode. The same can be said of many iterations of Gauntlet. Shoot, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard that steams Gauntlet: Slay Edition has an "arcade mode" that is exactly the thing people are mal-attributing "roguelike" to, yet no one calls any part of G:Slay Edition "roguelike." Again "Further, we actively shouldn't"
Roguelikes and Roguelites are turn based genres, because that's what Rogue is! Roguelikes like Nethack, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Dungeons of Dredmor, Jupiter Hell, Brogue, POWDER, Angband, C:DDA, Caves of Qud, ToME, etc are a great boon of disability access in gaming. They are a great boon of disability access because they allow one to take as much time as they need, they allow for those of us with partial blindness(my situation, and slowly worsening), motor control issues(not quite my situation, but I'm one-armed, so vaguely-kinda?), and other factors to play the game at our own pace without real-time consequences lousing up gameplay experience. I don't have to worry about that kobold getting closer in Nethack, or that tridude in POWDER as time ticks down. I can take my time to examine it, to squint at what I'm seeing, to use my patchy partial vision to go over individual tiles/enemies and parse the data. I dont need to worry about real-time seconds ticking down, I don't need twitch reflexes to be good at something "like" the game "rogue."
A more detailed breakdown can be found by searching the Rock Paper Shotgun database for "playing roguelikes when you can't see"
The trouble is that in recent times it is now very very hard to find genuine actual roguelikes because every dev and the community that backs them uses the term "roguelike" when they mean "arcade."
Check it for yourself if you don't believe me.
Play Survival Crisis Z and Dracula Undead Awakening. Compare them to Vampire Survivors, they're of the same gameplay.(had to get my sighted friends to verify this one tbh)
Play Downwell, then play Icy Tower. There's a striking similarity so blatant even the BLIND can point this out!. One could further make this argument of Jetpack Joyride and Geometry Dash.
Play Atic Atac, then play Binding of Isaac. Again, striking similarity, so blatant even the BLIND can point it out!
Play Metal Slug 3 on a randomizer. You've got exactly the same mechanics you're mal-attributing to the term "roguelike."
Play Daggerfall, or TES: Arena. Delete the game and re-install on death, you've got the same mechanics you're mal-attributing to the term "roguelike"
Shoot, play Rogue, and *GASP*...
save-scum!
Is Rogue somehow "not a roguelike" when you save scum? No that'd be ridiculous, Rogue, the namesake of the genre is of course a roguelike regardless of permadeath status.
We can even take this further:
Have someone play a game of Nethack or Rogue perfectly. They will not engage with permadeath nor the randomness aspect, no matter how hard you argue that those are present. Permadeath and randomisation. Again have someone play a game of Spelunky, or Isaac perfectly, or Hades. Again they wont interact with permadeath or the randomness aspect.
As for roguelite, many people will mal-attribute Rogue Legacy as the creation point of the term "roguelite." Well we have posts from here specifically detailing that roguelites are a sub-genre of roguelikes akin to the Mystery Dungeon franchise, Shiren, things of that nature.
from the 2009 thread "suggest me a DS roguelike."They're Roguelites. If you're familiar with the genre and looking for a challenge look past, but they're good for new players and those that may enjoy the genre but don't consider the "die, restart" nature of it appealing.
Oddly enough there's also the fact that the earliest dateable reference to the term roguelite I've found is this:
2008, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2:Exploring the Time of Darkness or summat thread.Mmm, roguelikes. or rather, roguelites. I just don't have the energy to think about all the things that have to go into planning a dungeon run through a more traditional roguelike game, so the console roguelikes that have simpler systems are quite appealing to me. I played through the main story for the first Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon game, but didn't do much of the post-game stuff... it just didn't grab me like a normal Pokemon game does.
This uses the term roguelike and roguelite interchangeably, and it predates the earliest point we can glean a definition for the word "roguelite."
Lastly a term already exists outside of roguelike/roguelite/roguelike-like or whatever other mangling of reference to Rogue to refer to games like Spelunky, like Dead Cells, Like Downwell, Like Vampire Survivors.
That term being the term "Arcade."
Play Tekken 1 2 or 3's "Arcade mode."(I hear Tekken 4 and onward uses "story mode" to refer to the same thing, but that's a little after my time actively playing real-time stuff) You've got exactly the things you're attributing to the "roguelike" genre, yet no-one calls Tekken a "roguelike..." Further, we actively shouldn't.
The same can be said of any fighting game with an arcade mode. The same can be said of many iterations of Gauntlet. Shoot, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard that steams Gauntlet: Slay Edition has an "arcade mode" that is exactly the thing people are mal-attributing "roguelike" to, yet no one calls any part of G:Slay Edition "roguelike." Again "Further, we actively shouldn't"
+1
Posts
But it's also been ten years since I started tilting at this windmill.
Sorry, you aren't winning this one. Language drift happens.
I don't think you're right on this one, the term arcade is falling more and more into use on things that previously would have had the roguelike tag mal-applied to. Look at Spelunky 2, look at Rogue Legacy 2, Exit the Gungeon.
Language drift happens yes, but it also drifts the other way too. No one called any of the Diablos "roguelike," yet between 2000-2005 there were pockets of people who would say "I know this is controversial but I would consider diablo a roguelike." We no longer see that.
Shoot, the sequel to the game that started the mal-application of roguelike to real-time things on steam doesn't even have roguelike in the top 10 tags. Things are getting fixed, bigger arguments with heavier weight just need to be used.
If some arcade games are roguelikes, then so be it. Most generally aren't, enough so that trying to use the word "arcade" to describe a real-time roguelike would be a bad use of the term.
Golepdrgs for short.
But this is a lost cause. Vanishingly few people under the age of thirty have any idea the word roguelike ever had any other meaning. The word has been coopted and overused to the point of meaninglessness. It sucks, but it is what it is.
Point blank, real roguelikes are still being made, and they deserve their spotlight.
And the player count of all of those put together probably is less than Rogue Legacy 2. Not that they're bad at all, just... who has heard of them to bring them into the conversation?
The thing that I like about classic roguelikes is the resource management and flexibility, the way to take the randomness of the dungeon and make it work for you. I'm not nearly as big a fan of modern 'lites' like FTL where you're a lot more restricted and it just feels like random events happening to you. But, FTL is way more popular, so cest la vie. I should take a look to find some more modern roguelikes and not just play Dredmor again.
We’re now swimming I them and more keep getting made.
Similarly, I think the term roguelike has really become focused on the permadeath element, often with the chance of unlocking things for future runs. Some of the other features of the genre (like turn based gameplay) are now side features. What used to be a "true" roguelike would probably now end up being called a Topdown Turn-based Roguelike and that seems ok to me - at least the buyer knows what to expect.
None of these are particularly well-known or part of the larger industry discussion, so while they do technically exist they don't really contribute to the audience's mindshare of what it means to be a roguelike.
Like, if you enjoy these kinds of games and want to share them with more people then by all means, but trying to forcibly wrestle the definition of a word back into what you want it to mean ain't the way to do it. Words don't change meaning based on passionate expressions of logical arguments, that just isn't how language works.
The word used to mean one thing, now it means something else (or something less specific maybe), and unless/until the type of "real" roguelike (btw there's no such thing as a "real" [noun] when the noun is a non-specific descriptor) regains a meaningful cultural influence it's not gonna swing the way you want.
It really sounds like you're just upset that a type of game you like isn't very popular anymore. Which hey, I get it! But like...them's the breaks sometimes.
I agree generally, but I also see the point where the opposite is true; if I wanted a game that evoked a classic roguelike experience and someone recommended Rogue Legacy or Spelunky, I'd also be pretty annoyed. They're more accurately classic or even arcade platformers with roguelike and persistent elements. It's where roguelite was intended to come in and fill the gap, but roguelike is much more commonly used as a catch-all.
Here are some that (according to Wikipedia) fit the more classic definition, and which I've heard of: The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series, Shiren the Wanderer, ZHP Unlosing Ranger (this only because I worked on its localization), Dungeons of Dredmor (I think?), Guided Fate Paradox (again, because I worked on it), Etrian Mystery Dungeon (only because I know what Etrian is). And...that's it. Wiki had a good few more listed, but I haven't heard of any of them and most of them don't even have their own wiki entries.
One of those groups has clearly had a bigger influence on the modern definition of a roguelike - it just means something different now, because the most popular games that receive that label today are something different, for better or worse. Would it be nice if there were more distinction between rougelikes and roguelites? Sure. But the fact is, old-school roguelikes have become pretty irrelevant in the larger gaming landscape, so it's not really a surprise that their more popular cousins have taken over the label. And the idea of a true "arcade" game is so outdated at this point that it's not really like to come back outside of a very specific few types of games. You're more likely to see genre combos - roguelike platformer, roguelike survival game, etc. Labels are only useful when they're relevant, and the classic definition of a roguelike just...isn't, for the most part.
Spelunky, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Gungeon, Isaac, Don't Starve, Risk of Rain, Rogue Legacy, are all some other thing. Don't Starve being alone as some sort of survival game, whilst the others are all the same genre.
and I don't disagree with you on the first two, but I have a hunch the OP would balk at classifying them as "real" roguelikes for other reasons (though that's just a guess). I'm just going off of how wiki decided to classify them, because if there's one thing wiki nerds love it's breaking stuff down into labels and classifications
Rogue Tactics and Rogue Action.
Do we have a thread for this that may or may not be games descended from Rogue? I wanna know if Jupiter Hell is good. Played a lot of DOOMlike back in the day.
???
I don't see how.
You tape 'run' down and grab a shotgun off a dead shopkeeper.
Which is basically as removed from Nethack as you can get.
..
You definitely don't mess with the level 2 shopkeeper in Nethack.
I gotta say, Necrodancer really doesn't fit in with the rest of that list and absolutely feels like a "classic" roguelike to me. If a game being turn based is critical to having the roguelike label for you, you should know that there is a character you can play that changes the game into a turn based system that no longer uses the rhythm timing gameplay. And Cadence of Hyrule on the switch lets you turn fixed-beat mode from the start which does that for the entire game.
Even as someone who plays and appreciates classical roguelikes and continues to seek out obscure new games in that style, I'm mostly pretty permissive with how the term is used. I'm known to put my foot down on occasion (Rogue Legacy is not a roguelike by any coherent definition), but I'm generally okay with e.g. Binding of Isaac's lineage being called roguelikes even if I don't find most of them to be terribly interesting. It's not like the grognards were doing any better at defining the term (if you want a laugh, look up the Berlin Interpretation sometime; it's basically a whole lot of words just to say "a game is a roguelike if it is Nethack").
Anyway, people looking for a modern-made roguelike in the classical style should go check out Golden Krone Hotel. It's very neat and does a great job of striking a balance between simplicity and depth.
Oh! That’s made me remember that they call them Mystery Dungeons in Japan. That’s catchy.
Shiren is great! Not a lot of the later entries into the genre go hard on the "you live or die almost entirely on smart management and application of your consumables" approach to game design, which helps Shiren stand out to this day.
I don't think the original Shiren the Wanderer ever got a post-DS rerelease, but The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is on Switch now at least.
I've dabbled in non-Shiren Mystery Dungeon games on occasion, and although they can be fun, I don't think I've found any that are as legit as Shiren.
UnReal World is the probably the biggest roguelike that I haven't touched yet. I definitely need to do that sometime soon.
It's super fun! The developer is kind of awesome and spends his spring/summer doing cool primitive survival stuff in Finland, aaand the long dark cold months inside figuring out ways to program it into the game. Heh I remember playing it in like 2002 being like "Wow, it would be great to have a 3D game like this where you have to survive and craft stuff and try not to die in the cold, but ahhh no one else wants that...", and here we are with everything being a survival game in 2023.
But it still has its place -- the sense of time/space you get with a roguelike makes it stand out. You actually spend hours (in game time) tracking an elk across miles of distance, worrying about the setting sun and your potential slow starvation if you miss out.
I'm pretty sure Necrodancer still requires you to finish the level within the song's timeframe.
Cadence, I've never gone looking for the best-less mode, and that game would still fail the generative gameplay part of the experience anyway, which is probably the other key part of being a roguelike IMO.
The bard character that I was referencing, and which is a default unlock, does disable the song timer and causes the music to loop. You have to use the stairs or fall in a pit to advance.
I don't follow your bit about generative gameplay though. Is it because Cadence isn't random enough? I've played a few different seeds and there is a pretty significant difference between them. Much more than just say playing a Zelda or Castlevania game with a randomizer on.
The Switch rerelease leans pretty heavily into being a roguelite, at least for the main game. There's a really common item that if you have it in your inventory when you die it warps you out with all of your stuff, so it's really easy to build up overpowered equipment. There are some purer modes available, though.
-The main story dungeon, which you can scum the bajeezus out of with pots and the warehouse if you want to, but is reasonable to complete from a naked start if that's what you enjoy.
-One or two post game dungeons where you're expected to grind up a stupidly powerful sword before you even attempt it (I always skip these).
-Several side dungeons which forcibly start you with nothing.
The last I played of it, Tower of Fortune seemed to basically work the same way, although admittedly I've yet to get around to beating it.
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I didn't realise Cadence randomly generated the map.