Most modern roguelikes tend to only have the first two of these, tho. But those are the 4 main elements of the original game for which the genre derives its own, Rogue.
And Rogue-lites tend to make progression persist after death, at least partially. Such as with the unlockable weapons and things in Hades, while the boons and other abilities are pick ups you only have until death untill you pick them up again the next run.
The popularity is because they are easy to pick up and put down. If I want to go back to an RPG that I haven’t touched on months I need to try to remember where I was going, what my build was doing, and how to deal with the things I was fighting. If I want to go back to FTL that I haven’t played on years I just start a new run anyways, and all my ship unlocks are there if I want them.
I would argue that a substantial reason for their popularity is also just that devs have fun when developing them.
With most other genres, you’ve seen the story a gazillion times, you’ve done each quest a thousand times etc… It just gets boring to test the game and it becomes really difficult to gauge whether it still is fun to someone who isn’t tired of it.
Meanwhile with roguelikes, the random generation means that each run is fresh and interesting. And if you’re not having fun on your trillionth run, that’s a real indicator that something needs to be added or improved.
There are a thousand definitions and mine is just one among many, I’m aware. This is not a “right vs. wrong” matter, it’s how you cut things out.
For me, a roguelike has four rules:
Permadeath—can’t reuse dead chars for new playthrus.
Procedural generation—lots of the game get changed from one to another playthru.
Turn-based—game time is split into turns, and there’s no RL time limit on how long each turn takes.
Simple elements—each action, event, item, stat etc. is by itself simple. Complexity appears through their interaction.
People aware of other definitions (like the Berlin Interpretation) will notice my #4 is not “grid-based”. I think the grid is just a consequence of keeping individual elements simple, in this case movement.
Those rules are not random. They create gameplay where there are limits on how better your character can get; but you, as the player, are consistently getting better. Not by having better reflexes, not by dumb memorisation, but by understanding the game better, and thinking deeper on how its elements interact.
I personally don’t consider games missing any of those elements a “roguelike”. Like The Binding of Isaac; don’t get me wrong, it’s a great game (I love it); but since it’s missing #3 (combat is real-timed) and #4 (complex movement and attack patterns, not just for you but your enemies), it relies way more on your reflexes and senses than a roguelike would.
Some might be tempted to use the label “roguelite” for games having at least few of those features, but not all of them. Like… well, Isaac—it does feature permadeath and procedural generation, right? Frankly, I think the definition isn’t useful, and it’s bound to include things completely different from each other. It’s like saying carrots and limes are both “orange-like” (carrots due to colour, limes because they’re citrus); instead of letting those games shine as their own things, you’re dumping them into a “failed to be a roguelike” category.
Slay the Spire: yes. All four rules are there, specially in spirit. It’s also a deck-building game but that’s fine, a game can belong to 2+ genres at the same time.
I’m not sure on Balatro. I didn’t play it, so… maybe?
You ask an excellent question, one that I feel you already know the answer to. From my understanding, the term is unfortunately broadly overused for any procedurally generated game, to the point where the original meaning has been lost to time.
Man I wish we had better terminology for this type of game. Roguelike and roguelite give the same energy as “Doom-clone” for every fps in the 90s. Later we called them FPS games. That genre has since been refined into tactical shooters, arcade shooters, milsim, etc. Meanwhile, we’re still stuck calling all games that have randomized runs “rogue-likes”. Being pedantic about the definition doesn’t make this situation better.
How and why do they even access Steam? The Internet and Computers aren‘t „traditional ways“ of communicating and video games are not „traditional ways“ of entertainment. Do they reject modern medicine too for being „non-traditional“? Seriously out of all the anti progress bullshit, this is the dumbest aspect.
I don’t really know why they feel they need to Cave to Russian pressure here. They have all the cards. Russia will never ever stop Steam from running in Russia. If they try to cut off Counter-Strike the entire country would collapse immediately. I’m 100% serious that is not sarcasm at all.
I mean, there’s DRM but that hasn’t stopped them ever before…
Do they stand to lose something if they switch? I don’t understand CS:GO economics, maybe there is a sanction-evading money flow via weapon and skin trading on Valve’s servers?
Unlikely? There are 3rd party websites that allow liquidation, but that’s all outside of Valve’s sites. The closest you can get to liquidation officially is buying Valve hardware like a Steam Deck with your store credit, but they don’t ship steam hardware to russia.
I wasn’t saying the exchange for money happens on Valve’s servers, but it’s Valve who oversees everyone’s inventory. You could hack the game and run a third party account server and give yourself all the knives but they would not be recognized by Valve and thus worthless, unless you convince exchanges that your server is trustworthy and has assets behind it.
Ah in terms of the Steam inventory API, it’s completely unregulated. All purchases are steam platform only, but trades between players are unmonitored (with the exception of requiring both sides to authenticate the trade).
I did back in 2015 when I was an edgy idiot, upset about their removal of the game Hatred because it is literally a spree shooting simulator. And I was all like “free speech”. And Gabe actually replied! And put the game back up too.
They started their business in there a while ago (I believe they were the first online distributor who managed to succeed in the Russian market, despite media fears of mass piracy), and I would imagine that revoking all of the users’ Steam Libraries wouldn’t be a popular move, or terminating all their accounts.
I’m not sure why they continued purchases after 2022 though. Maybe their Eastern Europe payment processor doesn’t ask too many questions?
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