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The war is over. We lost. A rogue-like today means some procedural generation, and maybe perma-death. To be honest though, by the strict definition of the Berli

The war is over. We lost. A rogue-like today means some procedural generation, and maybe perma-death. To be honest though, by the strict definition of the Berlin Interpretation, games don't leave much room for originality and are generally pretty not fun. Mostly reskins of old classics where the symbols are mapped to different genres monsters and items. Most of the stand-out entries in 7DRL were games that tried hard to break OUT of the box. Honestly weird to see the argument in 2024, but as a fellow (actual) rogue-like enjoyer, I once stood on that hill as well.

Kluggy 3y ago
So what did a rogue-like used to mean?
- sblom 3y ago
  A game like Rogue. Slightly less obtusely, it usually was a procedurally generated dungeon-crawler with potions and scrolls and varied weapons to use against varied mobs. When you died, you were dead. Your character began each time with no knowledge and had to learn what a "cloudy red potion" happens to be this time around by drinking it or using an identify scroll.
  - Kluggy 3y ago
    So the change is that players knowledge keeps in “modern” versions and in classic versions, your memory was largely useless?
    - mcphage 3y ago
      The biggest difference (as I understand it), is that in classical roguelikes, nothing persisted from run to run. In modern ones, you build your character up over a sequence of runs, so that in later games you're more powerful and can go further. But in classic roguelikes, every run is like the first. So a player's knowledge is the only thing that does keep—they learn the game better, learn the systems better, and progress further because of that. Not because of anything they unlocked in-game over a series of runs.
- syngrog66 3y ago
  like Rogue that was the literal point of my blog post. (I am the OA) back in the 70s/80s there was Rogue. and then there were a dozen or so follow-on games all clearly like Rogue we then, at that time, called them Rogue-likes. made sense! we all knew exactly what we were talking about then. nothing has changed with either the word "Rogue" or the word "like" since. To spell it out more concretely... Here is the game Rogue: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game) is some game like that? yes/no. tho I gave 6 distinct exemplar cases of the shades of gray nuances involved, from black to white, using oranges as an example. oh and "the Berlin thing" is irrelevant, it has no more Authority than any rando hipster on the street spouting off a quote from cult propaganda. Rogue and like each have concrete meaningsz unchanged. To be more clear, for the kids: both permadeath and procgen are game design features independent from Rogue-likes. Permadeath was common in standup arcade games and in home video game cartridge games of all genres, for a decade plus -- platforms where you could NOT save and restore. I also played plenty of procgen games that had nothing to do with dungeons or Terminals or ASCII.
  - Kluggy 3y ago
    Can you please iterate the concrete meaningsz that define something as rogue-like compared to the modern claims?
    - syngrog66 3y ago
      I wrote a blog post on that.

Kluggy 3y ago

So what did a rogue-like used to mean?

sblom 3y ago
A game like Rogue. Slightly less obtusely, it usually was a procedurally generated dungeon-crawler with potions and scrolls and varied weapons to use against varied mobs. When you died, you were dead. Your character began each time with no knowledge and had to learn what a "cloudy red potion" happens to be this time around by drinking it or using an identify scroll.
- Kluggy 3y ago
  So the change is that players knowledge keeps in “modern” versions and in classic versions, your memory was largely useless?
  - mcphage 3y ago
    The biggest difference (as I understand it), is that in classical roguelikes, nothing persisted from run to run. In modern ones, you build your character up over a sequence of runs, so that in later games you're more powerful and can go further. But in classic roguelikes, every run is like the first. So a player's knowledge is the only thing that does keep—they learn the game better, learn the systems better, and progress further because of that. Not because of anything they unlocked in-game over a series of runs.
syngrog66 3y ago
like Rogue that was the literal point of my blog post. (I am the OA) back in the 70s/80s there was Rogue. and then there were a dozen or so follow-on games all clearly like Rogue we then, at that time, called them Rogue-likes. made sense! we all knew exactly what we were talking about then. nothing has changed with either the word "Rogue" or the word "like" since. To spell it out more concretely... Here is the game Rogue: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game) is some game like that? yes/no. tho I gave 6 distinct exemplar cases of the shades of gray nuances involved, from black to white, using oranges as an example. oh and "the Berlin thing" is irrelevant, it has no more Authority than any rando hipster on the street spouting off a quote from cult propaganda. Rogue and like each have concrete meaningsz unchanged. To be more clear, for the kids: both permadeath and procgen are game design features independent from Rogue-likes. Permadeath was common in standup arcade games and in home video game cartridge games of all genres, for a decade plus -- platforms where you could NOT save and restore. I also played plenty of procgen games that had nothing to do with dungeons or Terminals or ASCII.
- Kluggy 3y ago
  Can you please iterate the concrete meaningsz that define something as rogue-like compared to the modern claims?
  - syngrog66 3y ago
    I wrote a blog post on that.