My takeaway is that it’s only original Rogue fans that care about the delineation of the terms. Is there a modern (i.e. post 2000s game) that matches the definition of a roguelike as given in the article?
This article doesn’t interpret the Berlin interpretation correctly. The things the article says are “must haves” are actually just “high value factors” as the post says.
This list can be used to determine how roguelike a game is. Missing some points does not mean the game is not a roguelike. Likewise, possessing some points does not mean the game is a roguelike.
So while some of these are deemed important to roguelike, it can be a roguelike without all of those things.
Now personally I think the debate over the genre is silly, and I don’t think the Berlin interpretation is really accurate anymore. But to be fair to it, it does not say a game has to have everything on that list. Spelunky is a roguelike. Idc what anyone says. Just because it isn’t turn/grid based doesn’t mean it isn’t a roguelike. It has most all the other high value factors, and a handful of the low value factors as well.
Sorry, but the people using the original definition are definitely the minority now. It’s just how language evolves, niche terms that get popular get generalized. Developers aren’t misusing the term because original rogue likes are just that popular, they’re misusing the term because the vast majority of their audience misuse the term and couldn’t give less of a shit about the original definition.
Is there a modern (i.e. post 2000s game) that matches the definition of a roguelike as given in the article?
I think Caves Of Qud qualifies. But “real” roguelikes are few and far between these days, so it’s no surprise to me that the term has expanded to cover more. Otherwise it would’ve become essentially obsolete.
Caves of Qud, Ancient Domains of Mystery, Tales of Maj'Eyal, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, and Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode are all examples of modern games that meet the definition of a "traditional roguelike" - which is the term Steam uses to categorise games that are actually like Rogue, as opposed to games that just have permadeath and procgen.
However, dorks like the guy who wrote this article need to understand that language evolves. Roguelike doesn't mean the same thing today as it did 30 years ago. There's no problem whatsoever with games like Slay the Spire, Dead Souls and FTL being called roguelikes - you can see in an instant that these games don't meet the definition of the traditional roguelike. The claim that this terminology is confusing or frustrating is just not true.
It's fine if a game is categorised more specifically, the problem is people getting upset that something is a Roguelite and not a Roguelike.
It doesn't matter, no genre is better than the other, your game isn't by default worse because it's a Roguelite and isn't by default better because it's a Roguelike, it's just a genre definition to help people find similar games.
I get that some might think they are too similar, but in that case we should just keep Roguelike and then define Roguelite games in a different way. At the moment a problem is games that have the 'run' gameplay, but nothing else like Rogue and then call themselves Roguelikes, but that's like having a bonfire checkpoint system in a visual novel and calling it Soulslike.
As someone who is VERY aware of the over-specificitty of The Berlin Interpretation:
Generally speaking, nobody is saying a roguelike is worse. Just like DOOM is not worse than Operation Flashpoint because it is not a milsim. It just has to do with having criteria to indicate what games people might like if they liked others. And while there are a lot of borderline cases*, generally speaking, roguelikes and roguelites are very much built differently. Roguelites are very much built around “failure is progress” in the sense that, quite often, you actually need to fail a few times to unlock the endgame.
So when people are saying a game is “the wrong genre”… it can get annoying. It isn’t saying that Hades is worse than Stoneshard** but more that they are very different kinds of games.
*: For example, Tales of Maj’Eyal is NOT a roguelike. Maybe you don’t care about the aesthetics (I sure don’t) but stuff like the transmog bag and the unlockable classes and “races” very much disqualify it. But there is a reason it is one of the most loved games among the “roguelike” crowd. It is one of the best modernizations of the formula to ever be made.
Mmm yeah, The Berlin Interpretation is way too specific, things like the graphics/grid etc. If some game fits more than half the factors, perhaps that should be considered 'like' enough? But I do understand why people can get anal about some games being categorised as Roguelike when they are infact not very similar at all.
I think it boils down to genre being misused in general, there's games with large open spaces called Open World, when they are not really, games that are called MMO when they are not. RPG games that are not actually RPG etc etc etc. Rogue fans just made a bigger deal out of it.
Well, a lot of that boils down to actually “putting in the effort” to have sane-ish distinctions (the bar is low). You’ll see similar arguments from the milsim crowd, for example. Same with a lot of flight sims where there are generally pretty well understood criteria for the different subtypes (even if it is a mess to find a way to refer to stuff like “Lock-On” that is not “arcadey”…). This isn’t “Well, it has a level up animation so I guess it is an RPG”. This is “It meets criteria X, Y, and Z so it is a roguelike. It meets only x and y, so it is a roguelike. Why do you keep bringing up Operation Flashpoint?”
Contrast that with something like FPSes where you can vaguely distinguish the different eras but there is a lot more bleedover to the point of (fucking stupid and borderline offensive name aside…) not actually being sure if DOOM 2016 is a “boomer shooter” because of the design decisions… even though DOOM is the gold standard for both 2016 and stuff like Dusk (actually Quake was, but DOOM markets better).
Like, I assume most of the crowd are too young to remember but there were actually REALLY big arguments over “MMO” back in the day. Maybe we all remember the question of “So… is Destiny an MMO?”. But there were a LOT of arguments over Guild Wars 1. Because it looked like an MMO and it even progressed like an MMO but… it was Diablo 2 with a fancy skin for the IRC chat room between instances. And a lot of people (kind of rightfully…) blame Guild Wars 1 for the mess that has resulted in “Diablo 4 is my favorite MMO”.
Which, getting back to Roguelikes/lites… as long as you listen to WHY something is not a roguelike, it is a really good distinction. If the reason involves progression mechanics then you almost immediately know if you care. And if it becomes one about aesthetics, you know nobody, not even the person bringing it up, really cares.
Genre terms exist to prime expectations for players.
What a ridiculously self-centered claim. Genre terms (and other categorizations) exist because language users use them to make things easier to communicate about. I can only imagine the author of the article going: “Well, actually a tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable” when talking to a chef about gazpacho, or “a penguin is not technically a bird because it doesn’t fly” when someone says that a penguin is their favorite bird.
MFer needs to learn about cognitive categorization, prototype theory, etc. It doesn’t need to be 100% the same within a category — then the category is too specific and is absolutely useless — it just needs to be similar enough that most people (that aren’t necessarily experts in the subject) understand what you’re getting at.
I’ve stopped using the word “roguelite” because most people who play roguelites just call them “roguelikes” and adding “lite” to the end makes it feel like those games are “lite” versions of roguelikes.
When I play Nethack, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Cogmind, Brogue, etc. I call them “classic roguelikes” or “traditional roguelikes” which feels a lot more precise than having a distinction between “like” and “lite” and it also feels a lot less combative to “roguelites”. It feels like the term roguelite exists mostly to just correct people who incorrectly use “roguelike” and be like “unm, actually that’s not a roguelike 🧐 only my game is a roguelike 🤣”
Most people call roguelite games “roguelikes”; it should be on the fewer people who play traditional roguelikes to change what they call their oddly specific genre.
Also, for those who have never played a traditional roguelike, I highly recommend Brogue. It’s free and has much easier controls than most other old roguelikes, and the graphics are also pretty good for ASCII.
The need to gatekeep a genre which - by now - I reckon has far more entries that don’t match the definition of a traditional/classic rogue-like game just seems unnecessary.
Giving a qualifier to ‘roguelike’ to delineate the classic versus more flexible/modern style makes more sense.
If everyone treated it like you do, this wouldn’t be an issue at all. But these days everything with permadeath gets the roguelike label and that makes it hard to find the traditional roguelikes if you don’t already know about them.
Is it any easier to find roguelites instead of roguelikes, or vice versa? The terms are so similar, and everyone has a different definition, that any nuance when tag searching is lost. I respectfully disagree, I feel like anyone asking where to find traditional roguelikes knows where to find them better than finding roguelikes instead of roguelites, etc etc.
This should be higher up. Roguelite is a dead term imo. Language has evolved such that roguelike and roguelite are basically the same. The nuances change between every person you ask. So the debate is completely pointless. Just call them all roguelikes, and if you are referring to the traditional ones, call them as such. Traditional, classic, true, whatever.
Personally, I like games that are actually similar to Rogue, because they’re basically puzzle games, but long-form and less strict.
I do also enjoy the games that are less similar to Rogue, as with a permadeath mechanic, they still usually present a puzzle (rapid rise in difficulty vs. finding the right strategy to keep up with it), but aside from that, they’re generally just less puzzley.
So, personally I do find the distinction useful. But to make it extra clear, I usually just say “traditional roguelike” when I mean a game actually similar to Rogue…
I’m convinced that your average hardline “Roguelike means strictly ‘like Rogue’” player would even leave Mystery Dungeon games off the list. It’s such a useless genre definition if you can only point to a handful of games that would even meet its criteria.
Ultimately it’s a term that has long exceeded its original use case. Maybe to some it feels like calling certain modern shooters “Doom clones” again, but it’s just not generally useful as terminology if the only games it “should” define are reskins of Rogue.
Roguelikes come from the age of boomers and gen x, are hard as nails, very complex, have a cursed tome of documentation and take months to reach victory, if at all.
Roguelikes are a pretty specific genre of game that generally feature procedurally generated levels, permadeath, no meta progression, tile-based gameplay, hunger systems, randomized loot appearances, etc. Nethack is probably the best known example of a true roguelike.
Roguelights are a wide variety of games that feature some of the features of true roguelike but not all of them, most commonly procedural generation and permadeath, but most of them feature meta progression.
Honestly if you’ve ever played a true roguelike, the difference is immediately apparent. They’re usually not very similar at all. There’s just a very good chance that you’ve never played one, they’re not exactly wildly popular.
And just to stress: if a game features meta progression it is not a true roguelike. In true roguelikes, you start from zero every time.
This is how I’ve seen it. I only like the Lights usually because I enjoy meta progression. I feel like it makes the difference for me to feel like I’m not just wasting my time. I should also mention I’m pretty terrible at games so the meta progression helps me make progress where other games I’d be stuck too often.
I generally prefer rogue likes these days for the variety, but I do think meta progression can also make it feel like wasting your time in a different way. The game becomes gated by wasting enough time to unlock the rest, and doing so can feel more like an inevitability than an accomplishment.
I get that side of it. I honestly rarely play any games these days looking for feeling like a sense of accomplishment. I just play for an escape more than that.
I also enjoy some grindy games. So the meta progression can fit that for me. But I certainly agree it isn’t for everyone. That is what makes gaming so great. Usually something out there for everyone and it would get pretty boring if they were all the same.
That’s a good question, actually. I’ve played a fair bit of FTL and I do think it hews very close to the spirit of a true roguelike, since starting a game with the same ship is always the same experience. I do think meta unlocks change the way you play the game a bit, though, since you may target unlocks and achievements over victory. I’d ultimately put it on the “light” side, but I agree that the game skirts the line.
I haven’t played slay the spire, but I’m thinking of games like Binding of Isaac with a lot of unlocks, and I’d say that those change the game experience quite a bit depending on what you have unlocked.
Have you played the Multiverse mod? It’s the only mod I’ve tipped my toes into, there’s just so much content! My current run I started a few weeks ago on a Ghost Cruiser, and I just picked it back up and somehow now have a crew of full Mantis and no ghosts on node 4.
Yes I played it, the amount of content is impressive. However I only went deep enough to kill the standard Flagship a few times (on hard difficulty, which felt easier compared to AE) and did not find any of the secret endings.
It’s not really gatekeeping to say that not every game that features procedural generation is part of a very old and well-defined genre. Something like Rogue Legacy or Hades are pretty obviously not in the same genre as nethack, angband, or adom.
I don’t really agree with that - just because the playstyle is different doesn’t mean the genre is different.
Besides, individual games have multiple genres. You can have a turn-based roguelike, platformer roguelike, action roguelike, etc. The term roguelike has come to define the common elements of procedural generation + permadeath. Anything else is a secondary genre tag.
My point is that the line between the two is so blurry that I’m not convinced there’s an actual distinction other than elitism. Genre doesn’t mean “every game is exactly the same” having a wide variety in mechanics is a good thing. I don’t think having permanent upgrades outside the dungeon, for instance, is enough to make a game a different genre.
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