What the Fuck is a Roguelike?

When I began vetting games to write about for the Indie Grind column I found myself constantly referencing roguelikes like Angband and NetHack. As I wrote about major games in an obscure genre one question kept popping up.

“What the fuck is a roguelike?”

Want to play Rogue?  You better get used to ASCII graphics

Quite simply, roguelikes are a sub-genre of computer role playing games based off the cult hit Rogue, an early 80's PC game. Rogue began as a Dungeons-and-Dragons-ization (if you will) of the Atari classic Adventure and slowly evolved into a separate species of RPG whose mutations still permeate throughout gaming. Check out the first page of any indie game blog and you'll be sure to find multiple games that take gameplay concepts from Rogue and apply them in a new context. Games like Spelunky, Desktop Dungeons, Binding of Issac, Diablo I/II, Minecraft, and Dwarf Fortress all contain some DNA from Rogue. Although the concepts are prevalent the genre remains obscure. 

"Neo: Do you always look at it with ASCII graphics?"
Cypher: "You get used to it.  I...I don't even see the ASCII...all I see is goblin, dwarf, dragon"

So the next question that arises is, “what makes a Roguelike, well, like Rogue?” While it is difficult to come up with a definitive answer to that question my experience has led me to conclude that Roguelikes are shaped by two laws; randomly generated content is king and death is permanent.

"Thall shalt not save the game file"

Randomly Generated Content is King

Long before “procedurally generated content” became the buzz words of every developer looking to outdo the open worlds of Grand Theft Auto, Rogue and its like used procedurally generated content to craft the entirety of the player's experience. In popular game design, teams of people toil on carefully choreographed mixtures of conflict, exploration, and rewards into an ideal experience. In roguelikes, the world, the beasts that populate it, the items, and even story events are the products of random generation. Roguelike designers create countless variables for the game to create and populate a level with. Since the content of roguelikes is mostly unscripted, improvisation and adaptability are the key to surviving. Clever use of the loot given to you will get you much further than level grinding ever will. 

That +5 Spear of Awesomeness won't get you out of this one.

Death is Permanent

Death isn't uncommon in video games. In the vast majority of games death equals reloading in a prior area, with nothing lost but some time. What is uncommon in video games is for death to have real consequences. In roguelikes death has consequences, death is permanent (or as the roguelike communities call it, permadeath). When a player dies in a roguelike their character, their loot, every level gained, every inch of the dungeon explored, are gone for good. It's rare to find a modern action game that will send you back to the beginning of a stage, it's downright ludicrous to have a character deleted upon death in a modern RPG, but not for roguelikes. What makes matters worse is that in roguelikes death is around every corner; either in the form of a goblin ambush, a pet vampire turning on you, or simply tripping down a flight of stairs and falling on your acid potion. You die constantly in roguelikes. Veterans of roguelikes play like Buddhist monks, viewing death as a learning experience and taking their knowledge with them in their new life, only to inevitably die again. 

 

It's easy to see why the combination of procedurally generated content and permadeath is compelling for both designers and players. Randomly generated content allows every playthrough to feel fresh while the threat of permadeath creates a genuine sense of tension not seen in most modern games. So the next time you feel weary of the die-reload-die-reload treadmill of modern games check out NetHack or Angband and learn how terrifying and liberating digital death can be.

-Edward