Roguelites Analysis

Roguelites are a genre based on roguelikes that are primarily based around stripping away certain facets of the roguelike genre in order to fit the remainders into various different genres, and as a result it’s developed into quite a divisive descriptor for what’s become a very popular subset of indie games. I’m going to attempt what’ll be a pretty shallow overview of roguelites as a whole and why they’re so popular.

So this schism started around the time some guy decided he wanted his Roguelike to look less like Rogue and more like an action platformer, probably. I don’t 100% know what the first true ‘roguelite’ was, Wikipedia says attempts to properly define roguelikes started around the time Diablo got popular, but roguelites as a genre seem to have started more with titles like Spelunky around that era when random generation was getting really popular.

I’m going to cover how I see the differences between the two genres and move on, as I don’t play ’true Roguelikes’ very often and probably never will. Roguelikes don’t necessarily have to look exactly like Rogue but do have to follow many of its conventions. They’re turn based and the world won’t move until you do, are randomly generated adventures, and have a sort of ecosystem to explore. You’re usually simply apart of a generated story, and not its center. Strategy primarily revolves around how you can build your character and make do with what the random generation hands to you. It’s sort of a digital, randomly made early editions D&D story.

This will be the last time I mention roguelikes since frankly they’re about as relevant to roguelites as Java is to Javascript. All you really need to know is that the two are different. I point out that the two are different because, frankly, nobody would look at The Binding of Isaac and think it’s anything like Rogue without the stupid genre name.

Roguelites on the other hand are more straightforward. Roguelites are a subgenre attached onto others, more to describe a set of mechanics that specific take on the genre has implemented. For example, a turn based card game, top down shooter, Megaman EXE-inspired action RPG, and platformer can all be roguelites to the extent that they have roguelite elements in them. The real question is what these elements necessarily are, some of which are off the top of my head:

• Random generation being used for the levels to some extent. This can be randomizing the levels themselves, or randomizing the important things or challenges found within. The Risk of Rain series, for example, uses the same layouts every time for its levels but changes enemy and chest spawns.
• ‘Permadeath’, if you fail then you get sent back to the start and have to build up all over again or you lose vital resources like party members. There’s generally a significant punishment for failure that the player must recouperate from. On the lightest end of this, you have Mystery Dungeon-esque permadeath where nobody really dies but get flushed outside the dungeons with all of their items taken away.
• Meta progression. Certain actions you do can unlock new stuff that you can find throughout later runs, or even provide direct buffs and bonuses, for example getting an achivement that makes a new sword or whatever have a chance to spawn. In spite of what people say this isn’t necessary but is often included anyways because it’s fun.

You know when I started writing this I honestly thought there was a lot more to it but no I think that genuinely about covers it. Even looking up more examples, nobody brings up anything else. Does your game have at least two of these three elements? Congratulations you’re a roguelite.

I bet someone will pull out the sandwich alignment chart on this or whatever but frankly having to explain a genre at all is already spending too much time explaining it. Nobody asks what a “first person shooter” is. It’s a shooter you play in a first person perspective. Wowee.

Onto the important part, why is this genre so damn popular? It’s easily one of the top genres for indie games alongside crap like ‘metroidvanias’ (don’t even get me started), what is it about these basic mechanics that’s so appealing that they get worked into so many games?

To understand that, you need to understand arcade titles. I’ll use a recently released title that was a remake of an old arcade game, The Ninja Saviors, as an example since the design is intact and the compromises made to make it a modern title are interesting to look into.

The Ninja Saviors is a game that’s like 6 stages or so long. These stages can last for around 5 minutes on a generous estimate, meaning the game is like 30 minutes long. Back in the arcade days, it probably costed somewhere between a dollar or two to play and if you fucked up and died then you’d have to spend another dollar to keep going. These sorts of machines made their money by being difficult, but they were still good games at their core that simply required you to learn their mechanics, often beating the hell out of what you could get on a home console at the time due to the better hardware.

The holy grail of course is to be able to do it on a single continue, only having to spend one dollar and in many cases also maximizing your score which was a big appeal at the time because if you were real good everyone could see your achievement on the high score board, right next to your name “ASS” or “FAG” for maximum giggles.

Of course, arcades are more or less phased out in most areas. Today’s arcades are ticket machines first and games second, because that’s what people wanted out of them. Why pay small amounts to play games when you can just spend one time and have the game forever? Home machines got a lot better so the point of arcades became moot.

The Ninja Saviors, being a faithful recreation of the arcade game, has a similar continue system to it. However, nobody’s going to actually spend money for the privilege of continuing a game they already own, so the game simply lets you continue everywhere. For free. This is kind of bad, now failure has no meaning to it because you can immediately start where you left off, but it’s the best they could do.

If you were to play The Ninja Saviors like most people do, then the fun of the game might be lost on you as a result. It’ll come across like a really easy game due to the nature of infinite continues, and also a really short one due to the nature of arcade games. For an asking price of 20$, that’s not great. Raw gameplay time is a big factor for people.

They’re not GOING to replay the game, they’re not going to aim for the ‘coveted’ 1CC or high scores/low times, to them just ‘beating’ the game is enough. Why would they replay? They already played and ‘beat’ it, replaying the game would just mean seeing the same thing you already saw all over again which would maybe be fun a few months from now but again? Today? Ridiculous for most.

But that’s kind of a shame because underneath it all these arcade games had great gameplay, many of them serving as the foundations for entire genres. The Ninja Saviors itself is a great game, especially if you try to challenge yourself to use no continues. It’s a crowd control heavy beat em up requiring you to make full use of your moveset to survive, but you’ll never understand it without these self imposed rules because as it stands by default the game’s challenge is effectively nil.

You could just say make the game really long, and I guess that fixes the playtime issue but difficulty would still be a problem. Generally the longer the game, the more forgiving you have to be to failure. Whatever difficulty comes out of a long game certainly won’t be very arcade-esque, at best you’d be perfecting section after section rather than consider the game as a whole.

So, now that I’ve explained all of that, now I can explain how roguelites are essentially evolved versions of arcade games, adapted to the modern needs of video games.

First off, roguelites are based around being replayed over and over again. Nobody’s gonna replay your game if it’s the same game every time, so this is why random generation is very common throughout these games. You’re not just memorizing and reacting to what the game always throws at you, you’re developing more general skill that will allow you to react to various situations that might come up.

Then again, most people don’t like to actually improve at games which is why progression systems are a thing in most games. Progression systems are inherent to roguelites, randomness can create variety in playstyles as well as a sort of gambling-esque addiction factor where you’re always anticipating getting the next good roll. It also helps people who are bad at videogames be better at them, offsetting the difficulty juuust a little.

It’d be very boring if you could just start right from where you died, so instead of giving people the option of continuing, you just don’t. You kick them back to the start and tell them to do it all over again. If this were an arcade game, essentially you’d be forcing a 1CC which is the real fun people get out of this type of thing.

But then again this’ll also make people get really butthurt if they just keep failing anyways. Eventually they’ll get bored. So, you have metaprogression which allows people to progress even if they’re not really progressing all that much. These can just be new characters and drops in its most basic form, or Hades’s unique approach to storytelling that has the game’s NPCs attempt to react properly to the player’s achievements and actions over the course of many runs, regardless of how successful they were.

This all blends into an experience that’s really more than what it might initally seem. You can easily take any short concept and give it much more content, life, and playtime through these mechanics, and this is great for indie developers who really don’t have the big teams and budgets required to otherwise make the giant games consumers expect today.

It can also do something which can be very difficult with players today, and that’s convince them to actually take the time to improve. Or, rather, have it unconsciously happen as they focus instead on the metaprogression.

Along with solving basic problems that many indie game devs tend to face, it’s also very easy to insert into pretty much anything and experiment with. This is why so many wildly different genres can be roguelites, like turn based card games or a fucking Peggle RPG.

Roguelites are generally a good thing. I can’t say I’ve seen too many that I’ve actually hated, in spite of the scorn they tend to get since so many indie devs use the idea. Perhaps this is because they all have intense gameplay focus, and really the more your videogame is about its videogame the better a videogame it is, cough cough every single goddamn AAA game.