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  In this thread, supposedly bi-weekly, a roguelite game will be chosen by popular vote and I will (probably) make as informative a playthrough of it as I can, given the time allowed. Generally one video per game, but possibly more if the game is worth showing off.  Whatever I say it is! In general games that fall into the roguelite genre can (generally) be boiled down to a set of four criteria: - Composed of procedurally generated content - Features perma-death - Focus on non-tile / turn based gameplay. - Is not the game Rogue Obviously this leaves a lot of room for different genres and types of games, so it's sort of a wide umbrella. Spelunky, Binding of Isaac, and Rogue Legacy are three popular examples of the roguelite genre that everyone is probably aware of. There's some contention on whether these games should be called roguelikes or not, or if some are roguelikes and some are roguelites, or other dumb minutia, but I'm calling everything in here a roguelite.  Once I've finished the currently game I'll be selecting 3 roguelites from the big list I've compiled. The thread will get to vote on which one is picked. Once a roguelite is selected the following will happen: - I will make one (or more) videos going as in-depth as I can about that game. - I will try and stream the game as I learn it, so those interested can watch me be bad in realtime. In the previous roguelite thread I burned out both because it turns out a lot of games are bad. This time I'll be updating a bit slower, with hopefully more of a focus on design and quality picks. I'll also only be playing games that are fully released unless they're in a really, really good. I still want to showcase terrible games in some fashion but probably with shorter bonus videos.                              
Party Bug fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Oct 9, 2020 |
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Oct 5, 2019 15:08
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   I love space junk oh boy!!!  Ok for real though what's the different between Roguelites and Roguelikes? Well, one time some people got together at the International Roguelike Development Conference in Berlin and had a discussion about what a roguelike is. They identified 'high value' and 'low value' factors that can help us determine what a roguelike is. Missing some of these criteria doesn't mean the game isn't a roguelike, but it should have most of them: HIGH VALUE FACTORS - Random environment generation: The game world is randomly generated in a way that increases replayability. Appearance and placement of items is random. Appearance of monsters is fixed, their placement is random. Fixed content (plots or puzzles or vaults) removes randomness. - Permadeath You are not expected to win the game with your first character. You start over from the first level when you die. (It is possible to save games but the savefile is deleted upon loading.) The random environment makes this enjoyable rather than punishing. - Turn-based: Each command corresponds to a single action/movement. The game is not sensitive to time, you can take your time to choose your action. - Grid-based The world is represented by a uniform grid of tiles. Monsters (and the player) take up one tile, regardless of size. - Non-modal Movement, battle and other actions take place in the same mode. Every action should be available at any point of the game. Violations to this are ADOM's overworld or Angband's and Crawl's shops. - Complexity The game has enough complexity to allow several solutions to common goals. This is obtained by providing enough item/monster and item/item interactions and is strongly connected to having just one mode. - Resource management: You have to manage your limited resources (e.g. food, healing potions) and find uses for the resources you receive. - Hack'n'slash Even though there can be much more to the game, killing lots of monsters is a very important part of a roguelike. The game is player-vs-world: there are no monster/monster relations (like enmities, or diplomacy). - Exploration and discovery The game requires careful exploration of the dungeon levels and discovery of the usage of unidentified items. This has to be done anew every time the player starts a new game. LOW VALUE FACTORS - Single player character: The player controls a single character. The game is player-centric, the world is viewed through that one character and that character's death is the end of the game. - Monsters are similar to players: Rules that apply to the player apply to monsters as well. They have inventories, equipment, use items, cast spells etc. Tactical challenge You have to learn about the tactics before you can make any significant progress. This process repeats itself, i.e. early game knowledge is not enough to beat the late game. (Due to random environments and permanent death, roguelikes are challenging to new players.) The game's focus is on providing tactical challenges (as opposed to strategically working on the big picture, or solving puzzles). - ASCII display: The traditional display for roguelikes is to represent the tiled world by ASCII characters. - Dungeons: Roguelikes contain dungeons, such as levels composed of rooms and corridors. Numbers The numbers used to describe the character (hit points, attributes etc.) are deliberately shown.  This list was made in 2008. That's over 10 years ago! It's pretty old and I can't speak for everyone but I imagine a lot of people think it's dumb bullshit and terminology should evolve as games evolve. Some people also consider some Roguelites to be Roguelikes if they fall into certain critera. For example, Nuclear Throne and Spelunky have almost nothing in the way of character progression and depend almost entirely on luck and player skill, so those might be considered more Roguelike than, say, Rogue Legacy or Everspace.  I can get behind the arguement that we should just say that Roguelites are Roguelikes and start refering to things as 'Roguelike Platformer' or 'Roguelike FPS'. Or maybe just 'FPS with Roguelike elements'. I guess Rogue would become a RPG with Roguelike Elements in that case. However I think the distinction is still worthwhile to me personally. It can get pretty blurry, but I think grids are stupid and Rogue sucks so the Berlin interpretation helps filter out stuff I don't like. For now the thread continues to go by Roguelite to avoid any of that nonsense.
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Oct 5, 2019 15:11
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I always thought the distinction between roguelikes and roguelites was that you get to keep various powerups that you've earned in the latter, whereas in the former you start over fresh after every death. How common is that viewpoint?
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Oct 5, 2019 16:18
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I always went with Likes having turn-based actions like Rogue, with different graphics. Lites are actiony games with rogue elements. It has little to do with Rogue since it plays so different. Void Bastards is a great lite game. Scalding Coffee fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Oct 5, 2019 |
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Oct 5, 2019 16:44
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ultrafilter posted:I always thought the distinction between roguelikes and roguelites was that you get to keep various powerups that you've earned in the latter, whereas in the former you start over fresh after every death. How common is that viewpoint? Player ghosts in DCSS, Graves and ascension kits in Nethack. They do exist in roguelikes. Theres degrees of it. In Lites at one end you have Rogue Legacy where your previous runs HEAVILY factor into your newest one and the meta-progression is core to the gameplay loop, where you wont feasibly be able to complete the game without it, and on the other end is something like Noita, where there is no meta progression and each run is completely distinct from all others. This part of the conversation is going to be pedantic by nature since theres so many different ways it has been done. Best shelve it imo. (I was going to categorize them but gently caress it theres too many axes and variables) Rigged Death Trap fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Oct 5, 2019 |
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Oct 5, 2019 17:22
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Maybe I'm weird, but I never saw the point in distinguishing "roguelites" from "roguelikes". To me, Roguelike is like a modifier you put onto an existing type of game, rather than a genre in itself. So classic roguelikes are roguelike dungeon crawlers, but you can have roguelike platformers, or roguelike tactics, or roguelike looter-shooters such as this. Core to a roguelike, to me, means you do a series of runs of randomly-generated challenges where if you die (or fail in whatever way is analogous to dying) you can't restore a previous state. Anything that doesn't have those things isn't a roguelike (or a roguelite if that's your preferred nomenclature), I think that's pretty definite. Anything that does have those things is at least arguable.
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Oct 5, 2019 17:36
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The thread is back! I ended up buying a ton of the ones you showed off in the last thread so I'm hoping to see some more hidden gems in this one
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Oct 5, 2019 19:22
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Chalk up a sale of Void Bastards from that first video, because I watched it and immediately went "this game is totally my jam, let's do this".
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Oct 5, 2019 21:23
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Void bastards is a very fun game but regrettably short. Looks like they added some content though recently
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Oct 6, 2019 01:52
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Heat Signature and Streets of Rogue remain my favorites. Heat Signature is much more "balanced" in that it remains challenging but Streets of Rogue lets you build super overpowered characters and rampage around in a really interesting and reactive world, and the fact that the city sort of exists and things happen with no or limited intervention is really cool and something I love about these types of games.
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Oct 6, 2019 02:35
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Nice, I enjoyed the last thread you did. Looking forward to seeing more weird rear end roguelites that fall through the cracks.
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Oct 6, 2019 18:57
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Thanks for doing more of these. The first thread was wonderful.
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Oct 8, 2019 23:44
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 Click this thing! ^ Thanks for the warm reception, hopefully we'll get another year out of this thread before I'm once again crushed under the weight of the RNG. The updates aren't usually going to be this fast but I've already been playing Void Bastards for a while so I don't really need time to dig into it. I'll also be making a bonus post about roguelite progression systems later. For now...  It's time to choose the next game! Voting will close on Saturday the 12th, midnight PST. Our three randomly generated options are:  Riptale is a challenging 2D roguelike action game aiming to make sword combat be as bloody and impactful as possible. The player collects gems that allow them to execute different attacks in the order of their choosing. All this results in a symphony of combos that fill the screen with blood and guts.  A challenging action RPG with deep souls-like combat and rogue-like elements. Explore a dreadful dungeon and fight smart enemies that will plan and collaborate between themselves to defeat you.  Phantom Rose is a roguelike deckbuilding card game where your cards are not permanent. Build a deck of spells to defeat the phantoms and make careful decisions while you explore as each death is permanent. Slay the Spire but an anime. Tenebrais posted:Core to a roguelike, to me, means you do a series of runs of randomly-generated challenges where if you die (or fail in whatever way is analogous to dying) you can't restore a previous state. Anything that doesn't have those things isn't a roguelike (or a roguelite if that's your preferred nomenclature), I think that's pretty definite. Anything that does have those things is at least arguable. The electronic old men in Berlin thought they knew BUT ONLY I KNOW.
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Oct 9, 2019 17:37
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Of those three I think Riptale looks the most novel. The others feel like things we've seen plenty of times before
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Oct 9, 2019 18:08
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Riptide gets my vote too
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Oct 9, 2019 19:01
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Phantom Rose, mostly because I'm kind of interested in picking it up but would like a sampler of it before committing.
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Oct 9, 2019 19:46
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I kind want to see Mana Spark. Sure its been done before, but is it done well?
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Oct 9, 2019 20:26
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Phantom Rose, because that is ridiculous levels of anime and I want to see how far they take it.
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Oct 9, 2019 21:38
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I vote for Mana Spark. Also, does anyone have a link to the previous thread?
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Oct 10, 2019 00:28
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ultrafilter posted:I vote for Mana Spark. Also, does anyone have a link to the previous thread? Here you go. Looks like it'll be fun to revisit. Speaking of revisiting, Party Bug, did you ever get a change to try Wizard of Legend after its updates?
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Oct 10, 2019 00:44
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Phantom Rose
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Oct 10, 2019 01:35
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Tenebrais posted:Maybe I'm weird, but I never saw the point in distinguishing "roguelites" from "roguelikes". To me, Roguelike is like a modifier you put onto an existing type of game, rather than a genre in itself. So classic roguelikes are roguelike dungeon crawlers, but you can have roguelike platformers, or roguelike tactics, or roguelike looter-shooters such as this. Without getting into the semantics debate, I think the debate itself is spurred on by the facts that Roguelike was a well established genre unto itself long before the emergence of the RogueX phenomenon. One well past its height of popularity (they're ASCII graphics because they're designed to be played on a terminal) and largely maintained by a bunch of masochists, which means those involved are the kind of people to have very strong opinions on the matter.
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Oct 10, 2019 06:45
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ItBreathes posted:Without getting into the semantics debate, I think the debate itself is spurred on by the facts that Roguelike was a well established genre unto itself long before the emergence of the RogueX phenomenon. One well past its height of popularity (they're ASCII graphics because they're designed to be played on a terminal) and largely maintained by a bunch of masochists, which means those involved are the kind of people to have very strong opinions on the matter. As a roguelike fan let's just say we saw what happened to the term "adventure game" and the nicheness of the genre just means it matters more to keep the term for it, otherwise it becomes impossible to find them in stores to buy a new Caves of Qud or such when literally every game gets the tag and it become meaningless
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Oct 10, 2019 08:28
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Tuxedo Ted posted:Speaking of revisiting, Party Bug, did you ever get a change to try Wizard of Legend after its updates? WoL is pretty good though, I'm considering putting it back on the big list and revisiting it proper.
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Oct 10, 2019 19:59
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ItBreathes posted:Without getting into the semantics debate, I think the debate itself is spurred on by the facts that Roguelike was a well established genre unto itself long before the emergence of the RogueX phenomenon. One well past its height of popularity (they're ASCII graphics because they're designed to be played on a terminal) and largely maintained by a bunch of masochists, which means those involved are the kind of people to have very strong opinions on the matter. Yeah, this is why I think of the old-fashioned ASCII dungeon crawler as a "Classic Roguelike". There's a very strong model for the original genre, and it deserves definition. But modern nomenclature has got away from it. There's been a lot of experimentation around that core appeal of an unpredictable challenge, and the genre that emerged from it needs a name too; Roguelike just happens to have stuck. Certainly stuck hard enough that anyone trying to say it needs a different name are stuck using a derivative of it. The thoughts about progression systems in the video are worth a good dive, I look forward to the bonus post on it. Too much meta-progression and you start to lose the element of "repeated attempts". In games like Darkest Dungeon or Heat Signature, are you taking many attempts at a randomly-generated game, or are you playing a single game where each level is procedural? And does the latter betray the idea of a roguelike? In Void Bastards, is your character the various grunts sent in to shoot mutants on derelict ships, or is it the STEV and all its amassed resources - and thus, do you ever actually die? Raising these questions is in the nature of experimenting with a genre.
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Oct 10, 2019 21:09
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 Stream over. This game is very anime and pretty different than Slay the Spire. Proper video will come in a week or two. You can check out the VOD here. Party Bug fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Oct 13, 2019 |
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Oct 13, 2019 21:59
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You might want to have a look at Crying SUns, it recently came out and is pretty good from what I've played. Its got decent writing and some gorgeous pixel art, overall a pretty enjoyable time.
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Oct 14, 2019 17:34
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 The video was very long so parts 2 & 3 to come later this week. In other news, Phantom Rose is okay.  Straimium Immortaly is a shmup roguelike dungeoncrawler. Explore the butts-hard procedurally generated Cubicus battling beasties, looting endless item and weapon upgrades and defeating huge boss meanies in your vengeful quest to eradicate the Queeni Emperess.  Explore 6 x 6 x 6 = 216 rooms of randomly generated hazards and enemies while collecting the necessary artefacts. Hundreds of monsters are roaming inside, guarding the sword shards — the last known thing to be capable of defeating the demonic castle owner.  Aura of Worlds is a creative tactics roguelite platformer. Explore multiple dangerous worlds where you must utilize your creative abilities and wits to twist the environment to your advantage. Finding your way through ever-changing death labyrinths... Dreadwroth2 posted:You might want to have a look at Crying SUns, it recently came out and is pretty good from what I've played. Its got decent writing and some gorgeous pixel art, overall a pretty enjoyable time.
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Oct 23, 2019 17:46
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Well, Castle of No Escape looks less bad,
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Oct 23, 2019 21:03
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That was extremely anime. Could definitely have done with some better music, though. It wasn't bad but didn't fit the situation that well? Not sure how to feel about the mechanic of cards being single-use. It would trigger my instincts of hoarding every item in an RPG so badly. But that kind of resource use is great for a roguelike, where you're constantly at risk of losing everything when you die. Personally I would not have the basic cards returning to your deck, and balance your draws around that - make every card a resource spent, rather than giving you a choice between spending resources and playing boring weak cards. At that point though I start to wonder if it needs to be a card game at all. You're essentially playing an RPG where your only command is Use Item, except the range of item is restricted to a handful of them at random - is there any benefit to restricting your choices like that? Maybe if you had a lot of control over which items you collect.
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Oct 23, 2019 21:10
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Tenebrais posted:You're essentially playing an RPG where your only command is Use Item, except the range of item is restricted to a handful of them at random I'm writing this in my notebook for when I eventually get around to coding my own roguelike
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Oct 23, 2019 21:26
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Tenebrais posted:Not sure how to feel about the mechanic of cards being single-use. It would trigger my instincts of hoarding every item in an RPG so badly. But that kind of resource use is great for a roguelike, where you're constantly at risk of losing everything when you die. Personally I would not have the basic cards returning to your deck, and balance your draws around that - make every card a resource spent, rather than giving you a choice between spending resources and playing boring weak cards. The card destruction mechanic definitely encourages conservative (and boring) play. I felt like I could only really cut loose and do all my card combos during boss fights or if I ran into a really strong enemy. In theory you could play fast and loose and live on whatever the last one or two dudes you fought dropped, but some of the bosses (one seen later) will annihilate you unless you've got a specific builds prepared for them. I learned pretty quick to just stockpile resources for each of them.
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Oct 23, 2019 22:38
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Party Bug posted:
This music drove me insane. Also do Straimium.
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Oct 24, 2019 01:46
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Straimium Immortaly. Kept seeing it op up on steam things for a while, has me vaguely interested.
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Oct 24, 2019 03:36
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Party Bug posted:Explore 6 x 6 x 6 = 216 rooms of randomly generated hazards and enemies while collecting the necessary artefacts. Hundreds of monsters are roaming inside, guarding the sword shards — the last known thing to be capable of defeating the demonic castle owner. The title isn't appearing here. EDIT:  Never mind. I had dark mode on and it just wasn't visible. Sorry.
DGM_2 fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Oct 25, 2019 |
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Oct 25, 2019 02:55
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Castle of no escape 2.
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Oct 25, 2019 16:56
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I watched your stream of that game and I thought about buying it, but after seeing you play it again with more knowledge of the game I'm not sure anymore. Still an interesting concept. I also vote for Straimium
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Oct 25, 2019 20:19
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  Two updates for the price of one! The third one is pretty long, sorry about that.  Despite their one-and-done nature roguelites all tend to have some sort of permanent progression system that carries over between every run. Some have heavier systems than others while others are the most barebones possible, but it’s pretty rare to find one without some sort of progression mechanic. Arguably some would say progression is what makes roguelites ‘lite’. In an attempt to classify permanent progression I’ve separated it into four categories: - CHARACTER PROGRESSION Character progression represents the progression of abilities, health, items, or any other thing that belongs to character that you are playing. It doesn’t mean unlocking new characters or classes (that would be Pool Progression), but refers always to the character being controlled during the current run. For example, in Void Bastards the player will cycle through dozens of characters with minor ability differences throughout their playthrough. The character’s loadout of weapons, however, will always remain the same. All characters have access to the same pool of weapons and upgrades, meaning any character you play will benefit from a shared progression. Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit did a nice video on roguelikes and progression. He noted that this kind of progression can turn the game into a grind where the answer is always getting more abilities instead of improving player skill. The game actually gets easier as it goes on instead of maintaining a constant difficulty. Other examples of games in this category include Rogue Legacy and Everspace. - POOL PROGRESSION This type of progression represents items, characters, and other things that are put into a shared ‘pool’. These items have a temporary nature, either because they’re found at random or because their benefit is removed at the end of the run. The best example are random item pools such as those found in Enter the Gungeon, Isaac, or Wizard of Legend. The player finds items from their pool during the run, enjoys their benefit (or drawback), and the item is stripped from them upon their death/run restart. Players can also have pools of character classes or to pick from for their singular run or pools of starting benefits to pick from for that run. The aforementioned video notes that this type of progression allows the game to retain a more standard difficulty throughout the length of the game. This is mostly true but it should be noted that adding more powerful items or characters to the players available pool will still end up making the game easier in the long run. - WORLD PROGRESSION This is a weird one. A select few roguelites have worlds that progress during play. One example would be Heat Signature, where even if the character dies the levels they’ve liberated still remain liberated. This could also apply to shortcuts and unlockable areas. In Spelunky or Gungeon the player can access shortcuts to further levels, while in Heat Signature previously liberated portions of the map will remain liberated despite character death. - PLAYER PROGRESSION This category represents ‘skill’. How familiar the player is with the systems, the levels, enemies, and other challenges. The more you play a game, the more you progress as a player. Though rare there are occasional roguelites that heavily favor player progression and almost nothing else. The Swindle and Spelunky are notable examples of games that have (almost) no other type of permanent progression. MORE? LESS? This is a pretty rough list so far. I feel like World Progression is a bit iffy, and Player Progression exists outside of the game itself. Maybe it’s only worth separating and refining the first two categories. I’m also not super happy with the name ‘Character Progression’, as I feel that can get too easily confused with literal characters. Anyway, that’s the end of my 500 page essay.
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Oct 25, 2019 23:13
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There's also loadout options, as in FTL or Into The Breach - as you progress you unlock new start conditions, but after that point the game is the same. Kind of the overlap between character and pool progression. Heat Signature is an odd duck in its progression. While you do steadily take over the nebula, this doesn't actually impact the gameplay - your individual levels take place on enemy ships, and they're going to be available whether that faction has one station or twenty. The conquest aspect is largely a cosmetic marker of how much you've played the game, with some amount of victories allowing you to progress the plot. Actually, maybe "plot progression" is a better name for that concept? Where your victories don't change the game available to you but reward you with story or the flavour of your impact on the world. The mechanical progression in Heat Signature going on there is that as you liberate stations that makes items available in the shops between heists. It's not really pool progression (the same drops occur throughout), nor progressing your loadout options (you can't buy these things at the start for the most part) and it's not directly making your character stronger either (since you need to buy the things, your available resources won't change). It doesn't categorise neatly; it's common for a roguelike to have shops but I don't know of any others that have your meta-progression tracked entirely through them. Tenebrais fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Oct 26, 2019 |
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Oct 26, 2019 00:14
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Tenebrais posted:There's also loadout options, as in FTL or Into The Breach - as you progress you unlock new start conditions, but after that point the game is the same. Kind of the overlap between character and pool progression. Yeah agreed, liberating stations in Heat Signature isn't really world progression in any meaningful way, because the stations don't functionally make up much of any part of the world you're actually playing in. It's basically a big unlock-features tree, something like the Sphere Grid in FFX or the crafting table in Void Bastards. You could just put it in a menu and call it Unlock Grid and it wouldn't change anything really.
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Oct 26, 2019 13:24
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