SPEAKING EASY - What Makes Roguelites So Fun

 (By Melody Werner)

Roguelites are en vogue these days, as anyone can see by merely clicking on Steam's "roguelite" tag. There are dozens of these things dropping each year--and that's just talking about the ones that gain traction. For every Dead Cells, there's ten flavors of Looking for Heals that go tragically unnoticed. So what draws people to them? Well, it's naturally a different story whether we're talking about enthusiasts or developers. As an enthusiast of the style, I've played tons of 'em and have listened to devs, so I think I can distill what makes them so exciting and evergreen when compared to other gaming trends.

But first, some red hot etymology and history for those unfamiliar. Roguelites (or "roguelike-likes", though that alternate term has fallen out of favor because... I mean, look at it) take inspiration from 1980's Rogue. Rogue was a turn-based dungeon crawling RPG with procedurally generated dungeons, ASCII visuals, and permadeath (meaning that when your character dies, they're toasted and you have to restart with a new one). Like many trailblazers in a medium that is often more concerned with refinement than innovation, Rogue was a massive hit and spawned many, many imitators. A whole new subgenre of dungeon crawling RPG's was dubbed "roguelikes," with entries such as NetHack (1987) and Angband (1992) being especially memorable. Roguelikes these days are rarer and more obscure than you'd think considering their inescapable influence over roguelites--2017's Cogmind being one recent example. Roguelites, for their part, take some elements from their roguelike kin--typically procedural generation and permadeath--but may introduce real-time combat or might not even be RPG's all that much (Void Bastards, for instance, is a roguelite immersive sim). Influential roguelites as of late are many; The Binding of Isaac, Dead Cells, Nuclear Throne, Slay the Spire, Hades, Spelunky, Risk of Rain, FTL, Enter the Gungeon, Crypt of the NecroDancer, Ziggurat, Hand of Fate--and that's a smidgen.

But the phenomenon sees no signs of slowing down. Over the past year or so, we've had some excellent offerings from ScourgeBringer, to Gone Viral, to the full release of Slasher's Keep. Not to mention titles such as Peglin, The Unliving, Bomb Head, and Voidigo boding well for 2021 and beyond. So why are developers so drawn to working on roguelites? An obvious answer would be "demand", but I don't think that's a very good one. There's obviously loads of demand for good roguelites, but the market for quality roguelites is so saturated now that the average roguelite goes unloved on Steam (even if it's great). I'm an enthusiast who's hopped into tons and tons of 'em, and even I can't keep pace with every single one dropping. No one honestly can. Developing a roguelite is as high risk/high reward as playing one of 'em often is, and it really does take a stroke of luck or buckets of prestige to take off in the way that a Gunfire Reborn or Monster Train has. One of the things which makes roguelites so appealing to work on is how they can streamline the work of a prospective dev. This is not to accuse devs of laziness; it's totally practical from a developer's perspective to keep things simple on their end to keep things from feature creeping or getting stuck in development hell, and fine-tuning level or boss designs can be major problems through no fault of theirs. And, while the market is saturated, there's a diehard audience for these games that is always hunting for a good find like Neon Abyss or Blazing Beaks.

It's naturally easier for me to explain my interest in these kinds of games--I for one am not someone who boasts about my skill in besting challenging games. In fact, I'm dreadful at roguelites, despite loving them. I'm of the opinion that the depth and wealth of contents most roguelites represent obscures their status as the evolution of arcade games. When I go into Pacman, I am not expecting to get to the very end of it and bug the game out--nor am I ever expecting to get every single achievement in The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth when I hop into it. That said, difficulty in games frequently draws in those looking to get their teeth kicked in, so I'm not discounting that as a plus for some roguelite buffs or slagging that lot off for enjoying roguelites for different reasons to me. Roguelites remove much of the sting from dying because you're always learning something new, or improving at the game--and the next run may be luckier for you. When games sell themselves as "challenging," I'm often more turned off from them than not, because "difficulty" can manifest in unfair ways and I'd rather play a game that's consistently enjoyable than one which only satisfies when I march to the exacting beat of its drums. With a roguelite, though, dying over and over again is a major part of the fun and it's sorta like gambling without any of the exploitative garbage (so, not gambling at all, but I gotta spin some super clever metaphor to disguise the fact that all of this stuff's subjective and you're gonna have a different viewpoint to me, even if you dig roguelites too). "Am I gonna get Polyphemus this run and wreck house for a few floors before I inevitably blow myself up with my own bomb?" It's a lark!

 

It's clear the roguelites are here to stay, and not simply a zeitgeist that'll blow away in a few years. As a big fan of such games, I'm naturally glad to know that. Roguelites as a pseudo-genre offer plenty of variety, and generally have honed their gameplay to perfection. They make life easier for devs, and I'd say are worth devoting more time into than their half-baked, crunch-addled AAA counterparts.