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I was unfamiliar with the term roguelike. For those in the same boat, a definition from Wikipedia: "Roguelike is a subgenre of role-playing video game characte

I was unfamiliar with the term roguelike. For those in the same boat, a definition from Wikipedia: "Roguelike is a subgenre of role-playing video game characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, tile-based graphics, and permanent death of the player character. Most roguelikes are based on a high fantasy narrative, reflecting their influence from tabletop role playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons".

softwaredoug 7y ago
And if you’re new to the genre, definitely check out FTL. https://subsetgames.com/ftl.html https://subsetgames.com/ftl.html
- edraferi 7y ago
  God that game was so hard. Maybe I’m a wimp about rogue likes in general though. I enjoy stuff like XCOM where it’s a puzzle you can reason your way through and use save states to re-try when you realize your plan or your execution of the plan is insufficient for the task. There are random elements, but it’s mostly a puzzle. FTL was just confusing, hopeless death for me.
  - knodi123 7y ago
    > Maybe I’m a wimp about rogue likes in general though That really is a core element of roguelikes- some playthroughs, you're just going to get screwed by the random number generator- hence the saying "pray to RNGesus". And when you die, you start over- no fixing, no recovery. With those precepts in mind, FTL is a pretty fair game. I've beaten the mothership a few times in vanilla FTL, and each time it was a combination of making good tactical decisions, and getting one of the several equipment configurations that I knew how to capitalize on. There's no shame in bailing early on a run where you know you're not going to get a useable set of equipment. The only way I know to "cheat" (and one I don't feel guilty doing) is to discuss strategies among a community of people who have also been experimenting with different approaches. That's how I learned that teleporters and mantis raiders are so OP.
  - Pfhreak 7y ago
    The thing most players do is try to race for the end, which makes sense -- you are being constantly pursued! Counterintuitively, you want to go as slowly as possible to maximize the amount of rewards you receive. The more planets you visit in a system, the more rewards you get, and the stronger you are when you hit the mothership. That was a key misunderstanding I had that let me make significant progress once I figured it out. That... and liberal use of the spacebar to pause.
- mihaifm 7y ago
  Is FTL a roguelike though? The thing about roguelikes is that they’re turn-based, while FTL requires some micromanagement skills being closer to real-time strategies. You can still pause of course, but I’ve seen some Twitch streamers make no-pause runs on hard difficulty, which is abolutely insane. Regardless, a very original game.
  - Moru 7y ago
    These games are frequently labeled as "roguelike", but also are referred to as "roguelike-like", "rogue-lite", or "procedural death labyrinths" to distinguish them from the more traditional roguelike. / Wikipedia
    - mwfunk 7y ago
      Yeah, it seemed like sometime around when Spelunky came out was when a bunch of games (generally indie games) started coming out that were inspired by certain elements of roguelikes: procedural everything, generally designed to be played through in one sitting, "winning" isn't really the goal but rather seeing how far you can get and enjoying what happens along the way, etc. For the longest time game journalists and people on game forums were careful to refer to these games as "rogue-lite", etc., but in recent years it's become more common to just call them roguelikes as well, even though they don't play anything like Rogue/Angband/Nethack/etc. That's fine by me, it feels more like a natural evolution of the terminology than people using the wrong words for things.

softwaredoug 7y ago

And if you’re new to the genre, definitely check out FTL. https://subsetgames.com/ftl.html https://subsetgames.com/ftl.html

edraferi 7y ago
God that game was so hard. Maybe I’m a wimp about rogue likes in general though. I enjoy stuff like XCOM where it’s a puzzle you can reason your way through and use save states to re-try when you realize your plan or your execution of the plan is insufficient for the task. There are random elements, but it’s mostly a puzzle. FTL was just confusing, hopeless death for me.
- knodi123 7y ago
  > Maybe I’m a wimp about rogue likes in general though That really is a core element of roguelikes- some playthroughs, you're just going to get screwed by the random number generator- hence the saying "pray to RNGesus". And when you die, you start over- no fixing, no recovery. With those precepts in mind, FTL is a pretty fair game. I've beaten the mothership a few times in vanilla FTL, and each time it was a combination of making good tactical decisions, and getting one of the several equipment configurations that I knew how to capitalize on. There's no shame in bailing early on a run where you know you're not going to get a useable set of equipment. The only way I know to "cheat" (and one I don't feel guilty doing) is to discuss strategies among a community of people who have also been experimenting with different approaches. That's how I learned that teleporters and mantis raiders are so OP.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  The thing most players do is try to race for the end, which makes sense -- you are being constantly pursued! Counterintuitively, you want to go as slowly as possible to maximize the amount of rewards you receive. The more planets you visit in a system, the more rewards you get, and the stronger you are when you hit the mothership. That was a key misunderstanding I had that let me make significant progress once I figured it out. That... and liberal use of the spacebar to pause.
mihaifm 7y ago
Is FTL a roguelike though? The thing about roguelikes is that they’re turn-based, while FTL requires some micromanagement skills being closer to real-time strategies. You can still pause of course, but I’ve seen some Twitch streamers make no-pause runs on hard difficulty, which is abolutely insane. Regardless, a very original game.
- Moru 7y ago
  These games are frequently labeled as "roguelike", but also are referred to as "roguelike-like", "rogue-lite", or "procedural death labyrinths" to distinguish them from the more traditional roguelike. / Wikipedia
  - mwfunk 7y ago
    Yeah, it seemed like sometime around when Spelunky came out was when a bunch of games (generally indie games) started coming out that were inspired by certain elements of roguelikes: procedural everything, generally designed to be played through in one sitting, "winning" isn't really the goal but rather seeing how far you can get and enjoying what happens along the way, etc. For the longest time game journalists and people on game forums were careful to refer to these games as "rogue-lite", etc., but in recent years it's become more common to just call them roguelikes as well, even though they don't play anything like Rogue/Angband/Nethack/etc. That's fine by me, it feels more like a natural evolution of the terminology than people using the wrong words for things.