The Dangers of the Rogue-like
- 1 day ago
- 11 min read
Wow, this is going to be the first post of the year!…….. and we're already almost halfway through the second month ʕ´• ᴥ•̥`ʔ…..
To be honest, I wanted to have done a New Year’s post, including a study of my color palette... but I didn't have time to run several tests, or even a TecTec for the start of the year…..
But well, life happens. I ran out of time due to various jobs, and I was forced to return to the capital I swore I’d never step foot in again to spend months learning how to drive, which was another thing I swore I’d never learn…… you can really tell we don’t get to do what we want in life, right?
It’s only fair to make a hate post then, isn't it? Clearly.
Then my colleague Gaiden calls me to play a game called Absolum, and wow, what a cool game! Finally! A beat 'em up, I love beat 'em ups. I used to play them a lot in arcades, and well, after the arcade era they kind of vanished. Man, finally, and you can play co-op online. I couldn't ask for anything else.
Until I look at the game tags and there it was: the terrible ROGUELIKE.
It's not that I have a hatred for the genre (okay, I do), but I hate the idea of repeating the game and losing all the progress you’ve made along the way. I’m a hoarder; I like having things, and I like collecting junk I find in the bushes. Why the hell am I going to waste time on games where I can't even collect stuff???
But this, my friends, is not just a post for hating and complaining. Because besides the entire current industry being based on selling games based on "how many hours you can play," which in itself I find ridiculous, companies lean on this and we always see the same old tropes: roguelike and Open World. Why on earth do people think I have 200 hours to waste on their games with "countless possibilities" that are basically the same 5 initial things?
No game is eternal. The closest we got to that was Skyrim, and even then….. it’s neither a rogue-like nor open world! (at least back then we didn't even have that term properly...)
“Oh, Mayke, but what’s your point?”
My point, after a fruitful discussion with my rogue-like-defending colleague, is… that you can use rogue-like elements in a way that actually works! So, let’s do some light case studies here:
STEP 1
Whoa, whoa, but before that, first let's go to the origin and definition of a rogue-like. For that, I called in the specialist on the subject, Dr. Gaiden
Origin and Definition: "To deeply understand what a rogue-like is, we need to understand its precursor, Rogue.
Rogue is a Dungeon Crawler, just like Wizardry or other games of the genre. It follows that classic structure of exploring dungeons: levels are floors with rooms connected in labyrinthine ways, where you need to explore, face creatures, collect treasures, kill the boss guarding the exit, progress through floors, and repeat. Your goal is to reach the end of the dungeon. Dungeon Crawlers usually come with RPG elements, and progression is turn-based: you move, then the enemies move. But what does Rogue do differently? The dungeon was procedurally generated, not just the layout and connections between levels, but also the items you found and their properties. It had permadeath, you die, you go back to the start. It was Top-Down (most others were First-Person). This was the core structure: - Dungeon exploration - RPG elements - Procedural generation - Top-Down - Turn-based - Permadeath For a game to truly be a Rogue-like, it needs to hit ALL these characteristics."
(This was just a sample of the text I received…… but…… hmmm, this feels weird)
"☎ ring ring ring" Oh, wait
Gaiden: "But there’s Rogue-LIKE and Rogue-LITE! Rogue-likes are simple: games built on the base of Rogue, as mentioned above. Rogue-lites are games that take some elements of Rogue but break other fundamental ones. To simplify, Rogue-lites need these 3 elements: - Permadeath - Procedural generation - Permanent Progression In other words, you die and go back to the start, things like scenarios and items are randomized within certain limits, and over time you get improvements that persist between matches “beep☎”.
Man…. that’s why it felt weird. So Rogue-likes and Rogue-lites are not the same thing. In the end, people don't know what they're talking about, and game subgenres have just become marketing tools…. (You have no idea, the guy asked if I was in a hurry and started sending me a mini-thesis on Rogue-likes).
ANYWAY, Rogue-lites are what’s described above. Let’s focus on those 3 main points so we don’t lose our minds, and I’ll have to change all the terms in the text I’ve already written from here on out because my buddy really sent me pages and pages breaking down the genre….. God, how I hate rewriting…..
STEP 2
Now, let's strip away all the joy of playing a game and analyze it coldly (and here I’m only going to talk about things I played without knowing they were rogue-lites (ugh) and things I forced myself to play later). In my conversations with other professionals in the field, names like Vagante, Hades, Nuclear Throne, Enter the Gungeon, Balatro, and many others came up. I haven't played them, nor do I plan to anytime soon :]
Study 01 - Absolum
The culprit for me writing this study instead of just letting the hatred for a genre consume me completely, because I REALLY liked this game!
Gaiden and I play it every other week, or whenever life lets us progress. The truth is, it had been a long time since I felt that joy of playing a good beat 'em up with someone else. About 2 years ago, I think @Gifavetta and I beat Sailor Moon, but honestly, it’s a style of game that outside of arcades doesn't make much sense when you no longer need to spend a ton of tokens or actually "git gud" to beat it.
And this is where the Rogue-lite element works: it takes the place of those damn arcade coins.
Have you ever played an arcade game on an emulator and found it extremely easy? It’s because it is! You have infinite coins. In the reality of the arcade, you had to pay close attention and improve as fast as possible so your grandma wouldn't notice you were taking her cigarette money to beat Streets of Rage faster than a dysfunctional adult who thinks they’re better than 10-year-olds……
That’s where the Rogue-lite comes in: you go back to the start. It would be unfair if you didn't come back with some kind of points to trade for new skills, items, and upgrades that help you go further each time. Honestly, if you’re a madman, I’m pretty sure you can beat Absolum WITHOUT SPENDING A SINGLE POINT….. because that’s how it was done in the arcades: pure skill. (Or A LOT of money if you were rich, which was nowhere near my reality).
This is one of the things that always annoyed me in Rogue-lites: losing everything you have on you and being, in a way, forced to evolve your character. In many games of the genre I didn't like, it's very hard to win without building very specific item sets (yes, Dead Cells and Hollow Knight, I’m looking at you). Even though Absolum has that randomness of skills you pick up along the way, creating a complex strategy isn’t mandatory. Plus, every time we played, we found a different shortcut to make our next run easier, creating evolution within the game map itself!
Study 02 - Darkest Dungeon
Of this list, I think this is the one I played the most. And wow, how the art, setting, and narrative of this game hooked me, even though I hate losing my items with all my heart.
I hate games that make your characters disposable. I bond with them way too easily, so there’s no way I’m accepting Dismas dying, and man, this game is designed for that to happen.
Here we have a specific point about maintaining progress: at the end of each dungeon, you don’t just keep the gold or points used to upgrade characters…… you also keep their traumas. And how I HATE (and love at the same time) this damn feature!
Because look, on one hand, I know my party of adventurers is going to get more and more debilitated, but at the same time, it makes so much sense with the narrative and adds so much to the stories we create in our heads as players, to the point where I can't truly hate it…. and yet, I try my best to avoid these things happening while I play Darkest Dungeon (yes, I save-scum a lot).
Study 03 - Loop Hero / Cult of the lamb
I’m going to cheat a bit here and talk about two games at once to see if I can explain the similarity I see in them.
So far, we’ve talked about the two aspects of Rogue-lite defined by Dr. Gaiden: death and permanent progression. Now I want to focus on procedural generation, and that point of progression that feels so lost and timid in most Rogue-lites I hated.
Let's define some things: procedural world generation. You have parameters like “this is the forest area” or “this is the catacomb area,” but generally, these areas are always different and random, even if they keep certain items, enemies, and scenery. This is standard for the genre and one of the things that irritates me most when it's poorly used. Procedural generation is a great tool… if used well. Often it’s just used as "filler," and a game that promised a world full of possibilities just delivers the same things with a slightly different look.
But not these games. Both do it very well. In Absolum, I actually don’t believe the scenarios are procedural, and of course, Cult of the Lamb has this well-defined: each boss area is unique in music, visuals, difficulty, items, and enemies. In Loop Hero, you see this change more in the bosses you face rather than the scenery itself… because here, the difference is that you build the scenery!
And for me, that’s the similarity. In both, you are actually building something. My biggest problem with Rogue-lites is perhaps the lack of a visual sense of evolution. Yes, in Darkest Dungeon you unlock some buildings, in Absolum you bring in new characters, but the environment is the same starting area with a few new things. In these two? No!
Between your runs, you build your camp. Your safe haven depends entirely on what you want to do with it, which works much better for me than a menu with levels on a screen.
In Loop Hero, your village is the only place where remembering things is allowed, so it's very satisfying to see a camp become a busy town after a lot of hard work. In Cult of the Lamb, it goes to the level of almost becoming a character manager, not just building the village for resources, but controlling the pathetic little lives of everyone you "save" along the way. This is a masterclass! Give me more interactive menus (just be careful not to get too lost like Fable 3).
….hmmmmm, have you noticed that every Rogue-lite game is kind of depressing? I don’t think it’s necessary, but that’s a topic for another post where I want to break down how I’m going to start cataloging games in my little notebook.
Conclusion and Tests
All this thinking started because of something I thought about while watching a guy make a "spaceship game" (shmup) at work.
So why not dive deep into this and try to brainstorm a design for one of my favorite arcade genres, the famous "shmup"? Get your spreadsheets ready and let’s go to the Definitions:
-Shmup (or Shooter):
You are a ship, you shoot everything moving in the opposite direction, you must reach a point on the map after some specified kilometers, and at the end, face a big boss. What’s the original problem with this style? They were made to eat coins. That’s it. But I don’t know about you, I haven't seen an arcade coin in years! And that kind of makes beloved genres like Beat 'em ups and Shoot 'em ups unviable. But we’re here to solve that:
Procedural Map: Each area will have assets, enemies, and items generated procedurally, but the area boss will always be the same.
Permadeath: If your health hits zero, your ship goes boom! But luckily, your pilot is hard to kill, so you always return to the hangar, and subsequently to the same ship model without the upgrades and items from the run. The only thing you keep are your Technology Points.
Choices!: After a certain distance, you can choose between different routes. All will lead to the same end, but the path, enemies, and items are the player's choice.
Example: The player installs a defense in the hangar that reduces ground damage. It’s only fair he chooses the route with more tanks and mortars instead of aircraft.
-Evolution:
From these definitions, we insert the elements: the shmup principle is dodge bullets and destroy everything. We keep that. The game can be hard but not unfair, no "counting ammo" nonsense. We can use some bases for each ship:
Firepower: Your ship's aggressiveness. Think of it like this: a ship with Firepower 1 takes 4 shots to destroy a base enemy, but Firepower 3 shoots more bullets and destroys it in one shot!
And clearly, here we can add the various effects that Rogue-Lite can present along the way, such as finding bullets with effects like paralyzing enemy ships, limited-use bombs, and many other single-use or continuous-use items. It's worth remembering that these effects will be lost after the player returns to the hangar, but who knows, maybe they can spend points there to get some of these effects from the start?
Fuel: Basically your life, fuel can appear randomly throughout the game, and this needs to be carefully managed. We don't want an easy game, and we really want the player to learn how to avoid enemies. Following this idea, fuel can randomly appear depending on certain conditions, such as destroying an entire line of enemies or a specific obstacle. And of course, after each "area" of the game, we can place landing zones to replenish the plane's fuel.
Technology Points: This is where we can break the rules above. You'll receive points for destroying enemies and completing objectives; the more difficult the objectives, the more points you'll earn. These points can be used to permanently increase things like firepower or fuel, or to start the next turn with a unique item, or with weapons that have specific effects, and so on. Here, we can even go crazy and add the dreaded skill tree, with aspects that are clearly designed to be upgraded.
And why not? Spend them on NEW SHIPS AND CUSTOMIZATION! (I love customizing a little ship).
-End of the Game:
Here we get to a cool part because I’ve never beaten a Rogue-lite! But maybe that makes me the perfect person for this. I am pure, untainted by the mind of the hardcore Rogue-lite player. And the game is mine; I can do what I want. So much power……
Happy ending? Of course. Imagine killing yourself in this kind of game for hours just to get an ending as depressing and purposeless as the beginning was? That’s madness!
Here your choices don’t matter; what matters is that you reached the end, and I think that has to be worth it for the player.
Well, I don't know about you, but I feel like playing this now………… Maybe I’ll try to convince some people to make it in the end…..
This is just more proof that you can think of ways to not make your Rogue-lite look like the same thing that for some reason needs 200 hours of gameplay! Could I be talking nonsense? Probably….. but hey… it’s my blog, and I like creating things I like, even if I hate parts of them ʕ – ᴥ – ʔ
But what about you? Do you like Rogue-lites (or Rogue-likes)?
Do you also think it’s being overused just as filler to sell empty games?
Tired of so many subgenres changing just one letter and claiming it's something completely different?
Tell me which games you like and why, and prove me wrong for not liking the style (I just don't like suffering, guys).
Have a good loop of defeats, don't forget to hydrate, and see you next time! ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ/
LAST MINUTE UPDATE
According to the specialist already mentioned, Dr. Gaiden, it seems Steam just changed the subgenres:
Now, games inspired by Rogue are "Traditional Rogue-like," and Rogue-lites are "Action Rogue-like."
I give up. Call it whatever you want. If you want to call it "frimbolhos," I don't care, seriously…….. Wow, this must be the biggest post on this blog so far ʕ ⊙ᴥ⊙ʔ