Zeno Rogue

Controlling time in a shooter turned out great in DoomRL, but the same idea (take a single-character immersive game and add control time) could be added to many more genres, possibly leading to something great too.

Adding ASCII would be interesting too.

I do not know why you think that all the games you mention are undoubtedly roguelikes. They are randomized run-based games I guess? "Randomized run-based" is not a genre. Moonring and Caves of Qud are roguelikes but not run-based. Legerdemain is a roguelike but not randomized (and not run-based).

So "a game in which you move like in Rogue" is a genre just like "a game where you move like in Mario" is a genre, and "a game where you move and fight like in Doom" is a genre. And calling any of the games you mention (maybe except NecroDancer) a roguelike in r/roguelikes is a blasphemy.

Yes, roguelike is a genre.

People in 1993 wanted to create a space about a specific exploration/combat system that was so good they wanted more of, and called it after the game that popularized it, Rogue. It is still the meaning used in www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/.

Diablo was a great hit, it was clear to everyone what it was (I mean, to everyone who knew what a roguelike was), and that it was not as fun as free roguelikes (including the devs, who said that, yeah, it is not going to be as fun as NetHack). But they coined "ARPG" for it, not "action roguelike".

Roguelike communities praised free games. Gamer media tend to be commercially biased. Especially before the "indie revolution". Free games and communities did not exist for them. Before The Binding of Isaac, you would never hear about roguelikes, outside of the roguelike communities.

With all their equipment, but also an angry and powerful ghost, and whatever killed them. (This feature actually originated in NetHack.) The manual mentions "With the dread day of Ragnarok approaching, many have quested forth [...]. No one has ever returned.", so it fits into the narrative too.

Of course incorporating the loop of "play again until you beat it" in the narrative is always cool.

Baroque did it in the late 90s, so decades before Hades.

In the first roguelike I have played, Valhalla, you could find the exact place where your earlier character died. That was amazing.

You do get a tangible feeling of progression. Late-game characters are much more powerful than the starting characters.

You do get narrative (Caves of Qud got some awards for its narrative).

If you do not like losing your progression, you can disable permadeath.

Progression is great indeed, but why meta?

Is there any specific reason why you would pick a run-based game with metaprogression over a non-run-based RPG (I am mostly thinking about roguelike non-run-based RPG such as Caves of Qud, but other RPGs work here too)?

(Noita takes from the simulationist roguelike branch while also pointlessly taking the bad aspects from the gamist branch. Why forced permadeath, small inventories, randomized perk selection? Simulationist roguelike(-like)s such as Caves of Qud, Minecraft, Terraria, etc. are better without that.)

You seem to like good run-based games so you should love Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Many of the most popular roguelikes are not run-based (e.g., Caves of Qud), but judging by the low rating of Noita you would not enjoy them. Although it depends on what you do not like in Noita.

This is because you have played only a few actual roguelikes and they were not the best in the genre. Here is a good collection of roguelike reviews: www.resetera.com/threads/i-pl... , you could try to find something here.

Dwarf Fortress is on roguelike lists because of its "adventure mode", which is indeed a roguelike; not because of its main mode, which is indeed a colony sim, although with lots of influences from the roguelike culture.

In roguelikes permadeath is usually an optional feature for hardcore players. Moonring, Caves of Qud, Tales of Maj'Eyal...

The artificial extending of the playtime (by punishing gameplay + forced resets + extensive metaprogression, although runs tend to be short) is more of a roguelite thing.

What do you think about Caves of Qud, Moonring, Ancient Domains of Mystery, etc.?

Rogue was named Rogue because it features just one character. Controlling one character directly, with clicks directly corresponding to the actions of that character. Roguelikes feel like you are controlling the flow of time, multi-unit games do not. Otherwise, XCOM is very similar to roguelikes.

It is a perfect format for streaming: short, chaotic, easy to understand... and most gamers nowadays learn about games from streamers.

(In the roguelike community we hate these games being called roguelike. Actual roguelikes we love do not follow this format. But streamers do not play them.)

AFAIU it was originally supposed to refer to the part of Castlevania franchise which was similar to Metroid (hence the name). And later people realized that the whole genre needed a name and they adapted metroidvania.

Moonring is great free intro.

Most roguelikes are free, so the game industry never talks about them and instead claims that it means a repetitive game for masochists. (Popular actual roguelikes usually do not force restart on death. And metaprogression is silly repetition and has basically no relation to actual roguelikes.)

A roguelike is like Diablo but you control time. So good that people in 1993 created a still-existing community around it (this exploration/combat system was hard to describe so they called it after the game Rogue (1980) which popularized it). Some modern roguelikes are Moonring and Caves of Qud.

In platformers with "double jump", where should you actually perform the second jump?

Generally somewhere in the middle. Your jumps reach the furthest if you do so.

I do not think they were ever a requirement...

Epic store won't let a game without achievements if the same game on Steam has them. But that is a different thing.

But then, are those people who play games only for achievements even worth to have in your player base?

This person www.resetera.com/threads/i-pl... seems to love about half of roguelikes they play. My statistics would be similar.

Are you talking about actual boardgames, or boardgame-inspired video games (such as Slay the Spire, Balatro, or Blue Prince)? Agreed in both cases, the similarities of spire-likes to roguelikes are extremely shallow, and video games should adapt the boardgame terminology (engine builder, etc.)

That is a baby, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is 30 years old, it is so old that it mostly REMOVES content.

I think a book about non-regional, non-mainstream subcultures in gaming (roguelike communities, Flash games, shareware, pre-2010 independent games, etc.) could be fascinating.

What about UK? For my game database I have decided that it is not worth to mention what country a game comes from when it comes from USA, Canada, or UK. (I do highlight Australian games although it is also included in the Anglosphere.)