i came here because i saw that dani commented on this video but then the video itself was actually great, spread the word so everyone starts rubbing it out together
So, considering the definition of Rogue-likes (or RUBs), I have an ideia for a new addition for the genre: - A game in which you start every new run completely fresh and don't carry over any items or levels to the next run, but let's add a skill tree you can fill up at the start of each run just to add diversity; - Each run you start with a character you pick, characters have different pros and cons and work better with different builds, so it's up to you to master them and find out how to better utilize each of them; - To shake up the genre, let's make the map always the same, but to add randomness it changes slightly throughout the course of the run, so previously visited areas can be revisited to find new content and objectives; - Now for the real randomness and freshness, in this game you are locked in the run with 9 other rogues, they are all like you, every game they are different with varying personalities, abilities, and items; - We will have some mobs outside these main 9, you know, basic low level enemies so you can level up and some stronger and even epic monsters you have to explore to find, and then you get more rewards and currency by killing them, although it won't be easy and everyone is trying to do the same; - Just so players don't focus just on combat, we will separate the characters of each run into two sets, the first will have 5 characters who are your enemies and the other set will have the remainder 4 characters who will be your allies, however you need to interact with and work with those allies, and that won't be so easy because in some runs they might hate you or have beef with other characters, so pulling them together will be just as hard as fighting the enemies; - Because you have to work as a team, all npcs and you will have different roles to play. At the start of each run you CAN pick two roles you want the most, but it's mostly random whether you get to play them or not; - To make it slightly more accessible to newer players, the runs won't end in death. Yes, yes I know it's handholding but hear me out. We put a spawn function, but each time you die the enemies get stronger. And the same for your allies, so you can't just abandon them. And to have a win condition, we will add tier or layers to the map and the end goal is basically going through all tier until you take over the enemy's base, while they try to take over yours. . . . . . . . . . . . . Yes, League of Legends is a Rogue-like.
One new term is not enough. For example, two "Roguelikes." - Caves of Qud, and Brotato. I don't think that those can be argued in good faith to be the same genre, unless you're arguing that genre is meaningless. Which, admittedly, video games are becoming quite a bit like music in that genre is becoming more and more meaningless. But, while we do have some meaning left in video game genres, we can't just recreate the primary problem of the term with a single, new, equally insufficient term. The more you break down either term, into what actually is what, the more clear it becomes that just one will never be enough. Well, unless you're cool with having a genre that is effectively defined the same way the term "video game" is. What counts as an upgrade? In FTL, you buy upgrades deliberately and knowingly. But wait, do we count buying a new weapon in a shop as an "upgrade?" It's not permanent, and not always an upgrade. Are equippable items upgrades? Are temporary "blessings" upgrades? Can something be called "random upgrade" if it contains large parts of purely non-random upgrades? What proportion needs to be random? In Tiny Rogues, frequently you're given a selection of items that's pulled from a specifically curated list of possibilities. Sometimes, the drops are "random" as one thinks of the word, but other times, it's a random "Legendary Melee Weapon" of which there are only a small handful in the game. Other times, it's "Dragonslayer Equipment," or etc. Beyond the items, the statistical upgrades are random, most of the time. You can also buy them in shops, and not infrequently. In FTL, even if you count items as upgrades, most of what you're buying, excluding fuel and missiles, is upgrades to your ship. You never roll the dice on those. You buy one level of engine upgrade, you get one level of engine upgrade. The price is always the same, the button is always in the same spot and everything, and you can do it at any point during the game except in the middle of a battle. Most of the game's upgrades are not random. So is it, too, a random-upgrade battler, lumped in as a refugee from the now-dead term Roguelike? I'd say no, and it's not unique in that way. I don't have a solution that anyone likes but me, and it boils down to "eradicate genres, use a 'tagging system' instead. But if we're gonna stick with genres, we need at least two new ones to replace "Roguelike/Roguelite," and more than likely, closer to four new genres.
I agree with a ton of what you wrote here, especially that in some ways I am arguing that genres have become a little meaningless, at least at the highest level. Consider God of War and Final Fantasy.. both considered RPGs, but played very VERY differently. (They got closer lately with XVI having a combat system closer to real time.. but I digress). When you browse a shop (I used Epic Games as my general guide) for a new game and pick a category, there is HUGE diversity of games under each category.. just to start they have ACTION, then ACTION-ADVENTURE, then ADVENTURE, and so on... But only one category (Rogue-Lite Games) referred back to a specific game, instead of a general description of how the game functions. That was my impetus for the video. It seemed very weird to me that of all the "firsts" in gaming, gamers had somehow chosen this particular (commercial flop) game to live on in perpetuity by naming an entire genre after it. The first RPG ever made was Dungeons & Dragons, and the first RPG video game made was called DND, based on, of course, Dungeons & Dragons... Dungeons & Dragons is still relevant today, they still make movies, TV shows, games from that original... but do we call RPG's DND? No. We extracted the concept behind DND and then applied it to a genre and within that genre, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of sub variants, each adding their own twist or element on top of what was the original concept. So.. yeah, obviously my end result was meant to be comical, but the overarching point is that we have elevated this one game, which I found out after I posted the video wasn't even the first in this style, to define a genre that now has almost nothing in common with its inspiration. As for upgrades, I'm using the term extremely liberally... ANY improvement is an upgrade. I chose random, b/c I can only go by my personal experience, which only spans about 30 games in this genre now.. but in all the ones I've played personally, the "upgrades" were random in that you couldn't be sure what you would get next. You might get a shop that will allow you to do SOMETHING and it might be limited options. Maybe only 12 upgrades available, but it will randomly choose 3 (Kinda like augments in TFT) to present to you and then you choose from them. In Balatro there is a shop, but what Jokers appear in the shop is unknown, in Peglin you can go to a chest, but what artifact you get is unknown, what orbs you will be offered at the end of a fight is unknown.. I could go through so many, but every one I have personally played had that. I haven't played FTL, but you said there is nothing random in the upgrades, so I don't know. In the original Rogue, you never knew what treasures you would find, there were certain fixed things (You gain XP and level up gaining HP and other stats, etc.), BUT the random part came from the items that you would ultimately need to win. Does FTL have none of this? If not, then some might argue that it fails the basic test for Roguelike, but when I googled it, it came up as a roguelike. I appreciate the thought out response and agree that genres have very little meaning these days.. if someone says to me "You gotta try this new RPG" that tells me very little about the game. I get a little more information if someone says "platformer", but still.. so much variance within that group, so ultimately, "tagging" is a better option.
maybe something to do with how most Roguelikes are sorta like an endless loop? Endless Looping Game Random Looping Upgrader idk, someone surely is more creative than I
I like the idea, but one of the things I like about these games is that they end. It has a beginning, middle and end and that makes them fun to me. It was one of the reason I moved over from MMORPGs to MOBAs in 2012. Each match ended and you could (If you were so inclined) walk away after you finish a match. While many have endless modes, the generally have an end point where you have "won."
The difference is that people that look for rogue likes on steam expect turn based perma death grid games, whereas rogue lites look for any combination of genres with random generation and perma death. Neither fan is satisfied when they get a ton of each others games when browsing steam, which is the reason for most of the discourse around the topic. For historical reasons rogue likes should not change, since they provide a very specific experience
The whole turn based thing has always been silly to me, since Rogue was only turn based b/c of programming limitations at the time. The essence of Rogue, which was not the first game of its type, was a dungeon crawler with a randomly generated map, random upgrades (items in the case of rogue) and permadeath, so each try is unique. Turn based/grid.. that is just a quirk of how you had to program in 1980.
@@AutarchTFT Put 'er in reverse pardner, retro elements can be genre defining and while birthed as a limitation, now make or break a game. Warhammer Space Marine 2 is a good example of an AAA third person shooter, but theres also Warhammer Boltgun, which is a retro pixel art game with pick ups and almost no story. Those arent limitations. If it had better graphics, longer cutscenes, itd lose its appeal. The SOUL of the game
I hear what you are saying and retro elements have appeal, but there is strong disagreement among gamers about whether "turn based" and "grids" are required for roguelike.. some say 100% yes and some say 100% no. Given the simple fact that there was no other way to do it at the time.. I query what the developers WOULD have done if they had the tools. In the interviews I read they talked most about the random map and perma death. (quote from an interview with the developer, "We talked it over and decided it was possible, but also decided that we would have to make one where "the computer creates the dungeon", so we could be challenged by our own creation, and so we could come back and play it over and over, getting a new adventure every time we played." They also talk about how limited they were by technology. (Another quote, "It is funny how, in retrospect, it feels like we were struggling with technical limitations.") So what really makes Rogue (which again, was NOT the first game of its type) the thing? It's the random map generation and replay-ability, as far as I can tell, the turn based/grid part is just part of the technical limitations they were dealing with.
The name of the genre doesn't matter, it's just a label like all language, intended for utility, for communication. Like how role-playing games rarely involve roles. Or like how dungeon crawlers rarely have dungeons or crawling. But the label is still useful for the purpose of communicating a broad category of gameplay elements. For roguelikes the core feature is that the game is short, brief rounds, with high replayability usually due to RNG. Like most casino card games. The term roguelike is simple and functional and that's what matters. "Roguelite" is a bit silly, it's a small subgenre that doesn't really need to be separated, it's basically just a roguelike with a few modern gameplay conventions.
R.U.B could be equally as functional... language is what we decide it to be. This all started b/c I, at first, completely misunderstood what "roguelike" meant and found it funny that despite me having played video games my whole life, I had no clue about this. Second, this was the only major genre I could find in the epic store that was named after a game, instead of some type of description of how the game plays. The fact that my kid's head nearly exploded when I suggested R.U.B and instead of going on a run, rubbing one out.. well, I couldn't pass on that.
People that like rogue likes head for that because they're looking for a turn based randomly generated grid game to grind through but find a ton of random silly games and get into arguments about classification. People that look for rogue lites just want a randomly generated game with perma death.
Rogue-Lites don't always have perma death, Hades 2 certainly doesn't and is considered Rogue-Lite. And I commented this on another comment, but the "turn based" concept wasn't a concept, it was how the programming worked in 1980.
the difference between rougelike and rougelite is not what you said. Rougelite is basically a game that seems to be a rougelike, but it breaks at least one of those fundamental rules of roguelikes. For example, there is a game called Secrets of Grindea, that, outside of the "main" story mode, has an arcade mode. The arcade mode feels like a rougelike version of the game, even though you don't have random abilities. You choose your skills personally. But it still is totally random and feels like a rougelike, so we, people of the community call it a rougelite.
The funny thing I found while researching this.. was so many people disagreed about the differences and what made one and the other. The one thing I found nearly universal agreement on was once you dealt with meta changes, it became "lite" over "like".. so many other things wound up in arguments. The most argued one was "turn based" (and I discussed that in another comment). Ultimately, I chose the meta changes as the big distinguisher b/c that is where I found the most agreement.
@@AutarchTFT I mean yeah, that is THE most often "broken" rule of rougelike, but even the name rougeLITE suggests that it's the "incomplete" rougelike experience. Basically my headcannon is that there was a situation that there were some games that we would call now rougelite, but then they were called rougelike. But some people were butthurt about "How can you call this game a rougelike?! It's missing XYZ!". So then the more chill people were probably like "fine, we will call it rougelite".
This is why I would love to see the world move away from the name. Rogue, which wasn't even the first game to follow these rules, had technical limitations that some now consider requirements of calling it "Roguelike".. as I said in another comment, it's like saying something isn't a phone unless it has a rotary dial.
@@AutarchTFT personally to me... a name is a name. As all the words, we make them up to communicate something. As long as majority of people has the vague idea what it means, they will keep using the name. It doesn't matter what is the etymology of the word, if we mostly agree about its meaning, we can use it. Changing people's vocabulary is a herculean task. And tbh I don't care, as long as I keep understanding what people talk about to me.
@@AutarchTFT as for your second point: limitations can become beloved mechanics. And yeah, if you're looking for the game with those sets of mechanics, you will create an inside-language that helps you searching for them.
Id say "Random upgrade adventure" would fit better, because i dont think all of them can be considered battlers Edit: had another idea What about "random punishing adventure"? Since not all of these games have upgrades, and there is always a huge permadeath penalty for loosing Also since rpg is already a term, rpa shouldnt be too hard to adapt
So... when I first started playing with concept I really wanted to find a name that came out to R.U.N. b/c it would been actually perfect, since the term RUN is so associated with the games. Once I thought of battler... and my kid yelled "YOU CAN'T CALL THEM RUB GAMES", I stopped even trying to think of anything else, b/c I was sold. I like Random Upgrade Adventure, except that I don't think some would classify as "adventures"... Balatro comes to mind b/c it isn't as much of an adventure as a card game.. but you are "battling" in some sense. The permadeath is only really a concept in the Roguelikes.. in Roguelites, death is kinda part of the adventure.. In Valhalla and Hades, Hades 2 and many more, losing is written into the story and while you lose the upgrades from the previous try, you gain something as well.
Why are we dragging in a 1980 dungeon crawler to name it? Why not the even earlier game that was the same type called Beneath Apple Manor? (Which I only learned about after posting this for some reason). Think of all the other major genres.. Platformers.. we don't call them DonkeyKongs... RPGs we don't called DNDs.. MMOs aren't called NeverwintersNights.. but for some reason.. we have named an entire genre after a game that was a commercial flop? As I mentioned in the video, when my kid used to talk about a new "Roguelike" game he wanted, I thought it was a game that involved being a thief.. having to steal something from someone and get it back to homebase or something like that. When I found out the real reason for the name... I don't get it.
@@AutarchTFT Thats actually a really good point , I didn't even consider earlier games or the fact that yeah, we don't refer to platformers as donkey kongs etc. I def think that this could just be my own opinion/theory behind the naming but take a game like Hollow Knight for example. Well it is quite literally a platformer, more often than not its titled as a 'Metroidvania', as it draws inspiration in its game design from both Super Metroid and Castlevania. DK was a platformer and probs the first ever one with the arcade version, but if you look at platformers following DK, they try to be their own thing and create their own identity within the genre. Whereas rougelikes wanna be like rouge and often stay pre true to that core identity. Honestly just think its a way to pay homage to the games that the creators drew their inspiration from. If the people that first coined the term found Beneath Apple Manor instead of Rouge we could very well be playing Applelikes as we speak lol. Although I could be talking complete rubbish. As of writing I realize I do contradict myself alot but hope this gives some kinda thoughts.
When I started working on this video concept (many months ago), my kid brought up Metroidvania, when I said, "We don't name any other genres after games." As I researched more, I found Rogue was the only one with a full category on epic games (If you browse through Genres you won't find Metroidvania or Soulslike, but you will find Rouge-Lite. The Metroidvania is SO specific, but they exist entirely in Platformers in every site I could find, whereas Rouge-Like/Lite ran the gambit. At first they were all dungeon crawlers (Hack, Moria.. heck even the first Diablo was intended to be Rougelike), but as time has moved on, the core concept (Random Map, Random Upgrades, etc.) has been applied to card games (Balatro), Puzzles (Peglin), Shooters (Returnal), FPS (Rogue Shooter), RPGS... Heck, Tocker's Trials COULD have been a rougelike TFT if they had completely randomized the enemies, but since it wasn't random, it wasn't "roguelike." I get what your saying and I love paying homage to the creators of yore and I fully admit, I was so late to this... It LITERALLY wasn't until Valhalla came out that I actually learned "roguelike/lite" was a genre that didn't involved thieves and was a style... and then I researched why and went.. I gotta make a video about this someday. Especially once we came up with Random Upgrade Battler. Now, whenever my kid and I go to play Balatro or Peglin (that's been the recent one), I always ask.. "Ready to rub one out" and he just rolls his eyes.
@@AutarchTFT Maybe because most people just don't know Rogue. So they don't feel using it Roguelike like using DonkeyKong for a platformer. Roguelike is a genre nobody really bother to define. Except like you did. But I think it's too late to throw the genre name away. I do think we need to define new sub-genre, like roguelite-vania, roguelite-platformer, roguelite-shooter, roguelite-poker...
It's never too late to try... once upon a time # was a pound sign. What once was TECHNO is now called EDM.. Hell... Istanbul was Constantinople WHY? That's nobody's business but the Turks!
There is a certain water vapor sales platform that I would NEVER do business with again, because they tried to rip me off and then threatened me when I took action.
Maybe I'll make a whole video on it at some point.. but long story as short as possible. I bought a game that was completely broken. When I tried to refund it, they refused... I told them I was going to have to charge it back and they said they would cancel all my games and wipe out all my progress, when I charged back every purchase I had made in the last 60 days (that was the legal limit on fraud claims on credit cards) they tried threatening me more and I sent them a link to my law license and they just ended up blocking access to my account. Some odd charges appeared on some cards (can't PROVE it was them), so I disputed those charges, changed the card numbers and blocked access to all their servers at the router level so any hidden remnants of their software that I missed could no longer communicate with their servers.
PS: Had a SIMILAR incident with Sony, BUT, Sony realized I was telling the truth, apologized to me, reversed all charges, gave me a free year of PS+ and a $40 gift card.
the persistent upgrades that rogue lites bring are so important that it justifies the distinction. Rogue lites are funner to me because there is a constant progression
I don't disagree and I also tend to like progressive R.U.Bs a little bit better... but, as far as that having its own genre, we have tons of different styles within genres all the time. Final Fantasy VII (the original) and God of War were both considered RPGs, but one was also action/adventure (God of War) while FFVII had turned based combat. So, there are a group of R.U.Bs that have RPG elements (Hades, Valhalla), but they all promise the same general elements of being Random in creation, offering random upgrades to allow you to create a build and they are battlers. ;)
Nah. I really prefer the 2 different names, cause they often play very differently. Something like Lobotomy Corporation feels nothing like roguelikes, so it makes perfect sense to call it roguelite instead
My bigger issue is that.. why ROGUE? Why does this particular game from 1980 get to be a game that defines an entire Genre? Why are ALL RPGs not called DNDlike and DNDLite? since Dungeons & Dragons was the first RPG anything and the first RPG video game was called DND, based, of course, Dungeons & Dragons. And Dungeons & Dragons remains relevant until today.. still with movies, games, etc? As someone else pointed out they personally still call FPS' Doom Clones (and I had it in the video at first, but then discovered Doom was not the first FPS, so I pulled that part)... but my kid never heard of Doom, despite the fact that he plays videos games non stops and wants to be a developer (currently working on his first release)... he had no clue the first major FPS was called "Doom." And then keep in mind that within genres we have so many sub genres, so the larger category is R.U.B, but then some will be progressive RUBs which have an overarching story and meta changes, others will be more hardcore RUBs sticking to the pure nature of perma-death and having to start over. But, you are all still Rubbing One Out and you shouldn't be ashamed.. it's natural and everyone does it ;)
@@AutarchTFT I mean true, but it's a fairly common practice, similar to how metroidvanias are named after metroid and castlevania, or how souls like is named after demon souls. We do that all the time in music too, with things like nightcore, vaporwave, etc
My kid brought up Metroidvanias when I first started working on this months ago.. but they broke out of that title into "platform adventure games" as they expanded and became more popular and are found under "Platformer" categories in game stores like Epic and the water vapor site that shall not be named. Same with soulslike, which really just ends up meaning Unforgiving and difficult, but you don't find them as categories in game shops.. whereas I will find Rouge-Lite as its own category in Epic and lots of games tagged as Roguelike Rougelite in the site that shall not be named. Some publishers do tag metroidvania in GOG and the site that shall not be named, but if you look at the main category, they are all platfomers. R.U.B games run the gambit from RPGs, shooters, puzzles, but they seem to fall under the MAIN category of "Rouge-Like/Lite" That's been my big gripe. Is this obscure 1980 dungeon crawler, that was just a slight variation on other dungeon crawlers of the time managed to get it's own genre.
You are confused as to the definition of a roguelike (likely due to roguelites falsely advertising themselves.) A roguelike MUST be a turn-based, grid-based dungeon crawler. Anything else is a roguelite.
I was kinda waiting for this comment, b/c I found so much dissent about this particular "feature" when I was researching this. Many claimed to be a rouglike it HAD TO be turn based and many claimed that was not a requirement. Here's my .02, which is only worth .01 due to the fact that I didn't know Roguelike referred to a game until a couple years ago. The original Rogue was written in C. Turn based wasn't a feature.. it was the only way it could be done. There was no viable way in C to write it so it could be dynamic. So, again.. my .02... the original developers didn't plan to make a turn based game, they just planned to make a game and due to the tools available to them, it was turn based by definition. In my mind, saying a Roguelike has to be turned based is like saying a phone has to have a rotary dial to be a phone. Or go back earlier and say it has to connect directly to an operator to be a phone. They worked with the technology available to them and then improved upon it as they went, but a phone was still a phone.
@@AutarchTFT Yeah, agreed. If we want to go that way, all rougelikes will become rougelites, because they will be "missing" something. "Oh I think that rougelikes need to be written in C" "I think they need to have minimalistic graphics" etc etc
Do you speak of DotA-Style, which Riot purists get upset about when they are reminded that Riot did not invent the concept? I actually thought MOBA did a decent job even though it was a Riot created term, since it did describe what it is.. Multiplayer, Online, Battle, Arena. You get the sense of what it is, be it, League, Pokemon Unite, Smite, etc.. It's multiple players battling in a set arena. Even when Blizzard stepped in with Heroes of the Storm and tried to rename it to a "brawler", it was still the same thing. Yeah, they offered different maps (and then took out the good ones ultimately killing their game), but in each match you were in a specific map (Arena) with other online players (Multiplay Online) doing.. Battle. :)
@@AutarchTFT no, funnily enough its pretty close tho. i was talking about Aeon of Strife Styled Fortress Assault Game Going On Two Sides. u can find out for urself what that spells lol. but while precise, that name obviously is kinda a meme and especially nowadays too offensive to be used. regarding ur explanation: i think the name is just way to generic. u could argue even rocket league would be considered a moba from the acrnoym. its just missing too many aspects like creeps, teams and bases which are essencial to the genre. ofc in the end i dont care. i call it moba every day. but i dont think its a good example for good genre names
LMAO.. I knew Aeon of Strife was technically the first MOBA style (Well, okay, to be honest I didn't know it until I was working on this video and googled First MOBA THINKING it was DotA and it said it was Aeon of Strife, which was a custom map for starcraft, but I never knew the full name.)... that's .. well.. something. And you bring up a great point. Under the basic MOBA language, Rocket League (or nearly ANY sporting game for that matter) would be a MOBA.. but in my head I just knew MOBAs had an RPG element to them, but it isn't inherent in the name. Maybe they should be ROBAs? Roleplaying Online Battle Arenas? I need the world to make sense. lol!
Very true. I had a section in the original audio where I actually had said "We don't call all FPS's Doom-Like or Doom-Lite" and then pulled it b/c I googled "First FPS" and was like.. "Oh.. didn't know that" and I was sure if I left it in someone would call me out.. but I also knew if I went with "Maze war".. no one would know it b/c I had never heard of it.. but.. in all fairness, I never heard of the original Rogue until I started researching this topic.
