Games

The debate between Roguelike vs Roguelite is definitely interesting, but honestly, most modern gamers just care about the gameplay experience, not the technicalities. As for post-2000s games, Online portal for managing medical payments might be a stretch, but it’s nice to see that even in the world of gaming, we’re seeing innovation in how systems are designed and accessed!

Here's how I understand it:

Rogue-lite: has permanent upgrades that persist between runs.

Rogue-like: each run is unaffected by any previous run.

The conversation around the two really wears me out. IMO, there's no need to be so restrictive. We can call them traditional roguelikes, platform roguelikes, whatever, and I think that's fine. If anything, I think we should have better terminology to differentiate games where the runs are isolated and those where there is meta progression. I don't think roguelite a good name for the latter.

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.

They both have random generation of runs, doesn't even have to be a dungeon crawler. The only difference is that a roguelite has meta-progression: you in some manner earn resources from each run that allow you to gain advantages on future runs

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.

Spelunky lacked the spirit of a roguelike? Yeah that’s bullshit. It is the perfect spiritual successor and evolution to classic roguelike games.

It turns out that the genre is defined by permadeath and random generation, that’s about it. Everything else is merely nostalgia.

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.

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.

Dead Cells, as far as I recall. What a f****** awesome game.

Oh, and Hades, except that had a lot of dialogue, which this is saying true roguelikes don't have. But f*** off, Hades is one of the best games in years.

Definitely Dead Cells covers all of those bullet points in the definition though, and I played that for about as long as I played Hades, 120 plus hours or so.

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.

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.

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...

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.

Off the top of my head, pixel dungeon, golden krone hotel, caves of qud, cogmind, zorbus & tangledeep all fit the strictest definition IMO. Probably Jupiter hell and maybe spelunky too

For me at least, the definitions are:

A roguelite is a permadeath, generally procedurally generated game, generally with a metagame over the runs

A roguelike is that, but in addition it's also a turn based dungeon crawler RPG. I'd say the metagame is a less common aspect with traditional roguelikes

Don´t get me wrong, I don´t mean to gatekeep (I in fact play lites, not likes). However, a useful orientation when you want to know if a game is a like or not, is in my opinion the Berlin Interpretation

Highly recommend FTL: Faster than light for PC. Shits addictive.

For phone, try out PixelDungeon! It's really fun, really hard, and it has an active community here on Lemmy at c/pixeldungeon

Why isn't there just a genre name for both? Painfully uninspired to just tack "like" to any game and dust your hands off for a job well done.

I have so many hours into enter the gungeon, it's so addictive. I don't know what it exactly is but i just know that i love it to bits.

Also trying my hand in dead cells but the game is kicking my butt hard. I only have the first orb that makes the runs harder. Still great fun!

I pretty much stopped reading at:

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.

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.