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Roguelike (orrogue-like) is a style ofrole-playing game traditionally characterized by adungeon crawl throughprocedurally generatedlevels,turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, andpermanent death of theplayer character. Most roguelikes are based on ahigh fantasy narrative, reflecting the influence oftabletop role-playing games such asDungeons & Dragons.
ThoughBeneath Apple Manor predates it, the 1980 gameRogue, which is anASCII based game that runs interminal orterminal emulator, is considered the forerunner and the namesake of the genre, with derivative games mirroringRogue'scharacter- orsprite-based graphics. These games were popularized among college students and computer programmers of the 1980s and 1990s, leading to hundreds of variants. Some of the better-known variants includeHack,NetHack,Ancient Domains of Mystery,Moria,Angband,Tales of Maj'Eyal, andDungeon Crawl Stone Soup. The Japanese series ofMystery Dungeon games byChunsoft, inspired byRogue, also fall within the concept of roguelike games.
The exact definition of a roguelike game remains a point of debate in the video game community. A "Berlin Interpretation" drafted in 2008 defined a number of high- and low-value factors of "canon" roguelike gamesRogue,NetHack andAngband, which have since been used to distinguish these roguelike games from edge cases likeDiablo. Since then, with more powerful home computers and gaming systems and the rapid growth ofindie video game development, several new "roguelikes" have appeared, with some but not all of these high-value factors, nominally the use of procedural generation and permadeath, while often incorporating other gameplay genres, thematic elements, and graphical styles; common examples of these includeSpelunky,FTL: Faster Than Light,The Binding of Isaac,Slay the Spire,Crypt of the NecroDancer, andHades. To distinguish these from traditional roguelikes, such games may be referred to as "rogue-lite" or "roguelike-like". Despite this alternative naming suggestion, these games are often referred to as roguelike and use the roguelike tag on various market places such asSteam.
The term "roguelike" came fromUsenet newsgroups around 1993, as this was the principal channel the players of roguelike games of that period were using to discuss these games, as well as what the developers used to announce new releases and even distribute the game's source code in some cases. With several individual groups for each game, it was suggested that with rising popularity ofRogue,Hack,Moria, andAngband, all of which shared common elements, that the groups be consolidated under an umbrella term to facilitate cross-game discussion.[1][2][3] Debate among users of these groups ensued to try to find an encapsulating term that described the common elements, starting withrec.games.dungeon.*,[4][3] but after three weeks of discussion,rec.games.roguelike.*, based onRogue, which was at the time considered to be the oldest of these types of games, was picked as "the least of all available evils".[5][3] By the time it was suggested that a group be created to discuss the development of these kind of games in 1998, the "roguelike" term was already established within the community.[6] This usage parallels that of "Doom clone", a term used in the 1990s that later evolved into the more generic "first-person shooter".
Drawing from the concepts oftabletop role-playing games such asDungeons & Dragons, nearly all roguelikes give the player control of a character, which they may customize by selecting aclass,race, and gender, and adjustingattributes points andskills. At the start of the game, the character is placed at the top-mostlevel of a dungeon, with basic equipment such as a simple weapon, armor, torches, and food. Following along the role-playing concept of adungeon crawl, the player moves the character through the dungeon, collecting treasure which can include new weapons, armours, magical devices, potions, scrolls, food, and money, while having to fightmonsters that roam the dungeon.[7] Most combat is performed simply by attempting to move the character into the same space as the monster. The game then calculates the damage that the character and monster deal.[8] Other types of attacks, such as firing an arrow or performing an offensive magic spell, can often be performed as well.[9][10]
Defeating monsters earns the characterexperience points, and after earning enough points, the character will gain an experience level, improving theirhit points,magic capability, and other attributes. Monsters may drop treasure to be looted. The character dies if they lose all their hit points. As most roguelikes feature the concept ofpermadeath, this represents the end of the game, and the player will need to restart the game with a newly made character.[11] Roguelikes are nearly alwaysturn-based, with the game only reacting when the player makes an action with the character.[11] This allows players to evaluate a difficult situation, such as being cornered by several monsters, at their own pace and determine the best strategy.[7]
The player generally has to explore the dungeon to reveal its contents, similar to afog of war. Many roguelikes include visibility elements, such as a torch to provide illumination to see monsters in nearby squares, orline of sight to limit which monsters are visible from the player's position. Dungeons tend to be connected by stairs; lower dungeon levels generally are more difficult than higher ones, so that an underdeveloped character will have difficulty progressing too fast. Dungeon levels and the population of monsters and treasure within them are generated randomly usingprocedural generation, so no game is the same on subsequent playthroughs. Most roguelikes have an ultimate goal of either claiming an item located at the deepest level of the dungeon, or defeating a specific monster that lives on that level.[11] Typical roguelikes assess the player's performance at the end of the game through a score based on the amount of treasure, money, experience earned, and how fast the player finished the game, if they managed to do so. The score is displayed in a ranked scoreboard to compare the player's performance on successive runs.[12]
What gameplay elements explicitly define a "roguelike" game remains a point of debate within the video game community.[13] There is broad agreement that roguelike games incorporate gameplay elements popularized by thetext-based gameRogue (1980), which bore out many variations due to its success;[7][14] As of 2015, several hundred games claiming to be roguelikes were available through theSteam game catalog,[11] and the user-runwiki RogueBasin tracks hundreds of roguelikes and their development.[15]
Some players and developers sought a more narrow definition for "roguelike" as variations onRogue introduced new concepts or eschewed other principles that they felt moved the games away from the flavor of whatRogue was.[13] At the International Roguelike Development Conference 2008 held in Berlin, Germany, players and developers established a definition for roguelikes known as the "Berlin Interpretation".[16][17][18] The Berlin Interpretation set out a set of high-value and low-value factors, basing these lists on five canon roguelike games:ADOM,Angband,Linley's Dungeon Crawl,NetHack, andRogue. The Interpretation was designed to determine "how roguelike a game is", noting that missing a factor does not eliminate a game from being a roguelike, nor does possessing the features make a game roguelike.[16][18] John Harris ofGame Set Watch exemplified this by using these criteria to numerically score some seemingly roguelike games;Linley's Dungeon Crawl andNetHack scored highest, earning 57.5 points of 60 available based on the Interpretation, whileToe Jam & Earl andDiablo, games commonly compared to roguelikes, earned only about half of the points.[18]
The Berlin Interpretation defined nine high-value factors:[18]
Low-value factors from the Berlin Interpretation are:[18]
Though this is not addressed by the Berlin Interpretation, roguelikes are generally single-player games. Onmulti-user systems,leaderboards are often shared between players. Some roguelikes allow traces of former player characters to appear in later game sessions in the form ofghosts orgrave markings. Some games such as NetHack even have the player's former characters reappear as enemies within the dungeon. Multi-player turn-based derivatives such asTomeNET,MAngband, andCrossfire do exist and are playableonline.[26]
Early roguelikes were developed to be played ontext-based user interfaces, commonly UNIX-based computer mainframes and terminals used at colleges and universities before transitioning to personal computers. Games used a mix ofASCII orANSI characters to visually represent elements of the dungeon levels, creatures, and items on the level as inASCII art. These games typically included one or two text lines presenting the player's current status at the bottom of the screen, and text-based menu screens to manage inventory, statistics, and other details.[27][28]
The player's character was nearly always represented by the@ character across text-based roguelikes, which had been chosen by the developers ofRogue to stand for "where you're at".[8] Other common examples would include$ for monetary treasure andD for a dragon. Later games would take advantage of colour-based text graphics to increase the variation of creature types, such as a redD for a red dragon that would shoot fire, while a greenD could indicate a green dragon that would shoot acid. Players would use thekeyboard, using one keypress to enter acommand. Sociologist Mark R. Johnson described these commonality of symbols and glyphs assemiotic codes that gave an "aesthetic construction of nostalgia" by "depicting textual symbols as aesthetic forms in their own right" and consistency across multiple roguelikes.[29]
With modern computer systems, users developed alternate means of displaying the game, such as graphical tilesets andIsometric-based graphical front ends, as well as interfaces that took advantage of keyboard and mouse UI controls, but otherwise still kept to the core tile-based gameplay.[30]
As computers offered more advanced user interfaces, such aswindows and point-and-clickmenus, many traditional roguelikes were modified to include support for having multiple windows. This was useful to not only show the character-based dungeon, but details on the character's inventory, the monster they were in battle with, and other status messages, in separate windows. Having access to multiple windows also allowed having menus to complete more complex commands. More recent examples of roguelikes that have stayed with ASCII art-based displays includeCogmind (2017) andCataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (2013).[31]
With computers and video game consoles capable of more advanced graphics and gameplay, numerous games have emerged that are loosely based on the classic roguelike design but diverge in one or more features. Many of these games use the concepts of procedurally generated maps and permadeath, while moving away from tile-based movement and turn-based gameplay, often using another gameplay genre such asaction games orplatformers.[32][33] Other titles deriving from roguelike games are based on the observation that the traditional roguelikes are difficult with a steeplearning curve, and a player may never complete these games over numerous play sessions, making these titles difficult to sell to a broader audience. These new games would include elements to reduce the difficulty as to draw in a larger audience.[34]
Many games with some of the Berlin Interpretation elements call themselves "roguelike", but bear little resemblance to the originalRogue, causing confusion and dilution of the term.[35] Some players of the Berlin Interpretation roguelikes disliked the dilution of the term, believing that in the 1990s and 2000s, the term "roguelikes" served well to distinguish games that forwent aesthetics to focus on depth of gameplay from games more comparable to interactive movies, particularly games that incorporated real-time gameplay elements which tended to reduce the game's complexity.[36] As such, the term "rogue-lite" or "roguelike-like" has been used by some to distinguish these games that possess some, but not all, of the Berlin Interpretation features from those that exactly meet the Berlin roguelike definition.[37] The phrase "procedural death labyrinth" has also been applied to such games, as they retain the notion of permadeath and random level generation but lack the other high-value factors normally associated with roguelike games.[38][39]
Rogue-lites favor short gameplay runs with victory conditions, in contrast to some traditional roguelikes that can be played indefinitely. The shortness of a single gameplay run in rogue-lites can motivate players to continually replay the game in the hope of reaching completion, making replayability a high-value factor in these types of games.[40] Game journalist Joshua Bycer observed that several games considered as rogue-lites feature fixed events, even if the means to reach that may be through procedural generation, whereas a roguelike game typically lacks this level of predictability. For example, several rogue-lites require the player to travel a fixed number of biomes, each which culminates in aboss fight, such asRogue Legacy.[41] Associated with their short length, many rogue-lites feature ametagame, whereby achieving certain goals will unlock persistent features such as the ability to select a new character at the start of the game or the addition of new items and monsters in the procedural generation of the game's levels.[42][43] Alternatively, each run through rogue-lite may be to collect resources which one then advances their character within the metagame, and a player may simply forgo a complete run once they have collected sufficient materials for that advancement.[41]
Several rogue-lites feature daily challenges, in which a presetrandom seed is used to generate the game's levels in a deterministic fashion so that each player will have the same encounters; players attempt to complete the game through those levels or otherwise get the highest score through online leaderboards.[44] Rogue-lites may also allow the player to enter the random seed directly as to be able to rechallenge the same set of levels or share a difficult set of levels with other players.
US Gamer further identified games they consideredge cases of being roguelikes or rogue-lites, as they are inspired byRogue, and "that stray a bit further from the genre but still manage to scratch the same itch as a great roguelike". These include games such as theDiablo series,ToeJam & Earl, andDwarf Fortress, the latter of which retains the classic ASCII art-approach to gameplay as traditional roguelikes.[24][31]Ars Technica writer Richard C. Moss alternatively suggested that the term "roguelike" is less necessarily about any specific genre definition but instead the idea that "games can be deep, inventive, challenging, and endlessly compelling experiences through their rules and their systems alone".[13]
In considering the popularity of roguelikes that deviate from the Berlin Interpretation, the rogue-lites, some subgenres have emerged.
Action roguelikes are typically based on combining gameplay ofaction games within roguelikes instead of the turn-based gameplay.Spelunky is an example of combining aplatform game with the roguelike formula, whileThe Binding of Isaac andEnter the Gungeon are effective roguelikeshooter games.[41] Within action roguelikes have also emerged a minimalistic shooter roguelike, withVampire Survivors as a leading example; in such games, the player generally fights through wave after wave of enemies, their character often fully firing or using all possible attacks without player intervention, with the ability to expand their character through a random selection of power-ups as they defeat more enemies.[45]
Another type of roguelike subgenre is theroguelike deck-builder, where combat is resolved by using cards or an equivalent object. These games are inspired by physicalliving card games, where the player builds their deck over the course of the game, forcing them to plan strategy on the fly. While the 2014 gameDream Quest is considered the first example of such a video game, the popularity of the genre was cemented withSlay the Spire in 2017.[46]
The creation of roguelike games came from hobbyist programmers andcomputer hackers, attempting to create games for the nascent computer field in the early 1980s, particularly influenced by the 1975text adventure gameColossal Cave Adventure (often simply titledAdventure, oradvent on filesystems without long filenames), and from thehigh fantasy setting of the tabletop gameDungeons & Dragons. Some elements of the roguelike genre were present in dungeon crawlers written for thePLATO system. This includespedit5 (1975) believed to be the first dungeon crawl game, and featured random monster encounters, though only used a single fixed dungeon level.[34]pedit5 inspired similar PLATO-based dungeon crawlersdnd (1975),orthanc (1978),Moria (1978), andavatar (1979).[47][34] It is unclear if these PLATO games inspired the roguelike genre as there is no evidence that the early roguelike creators had access to these games.[47] The core roguelike games were developed independently of each other, many of the developers not learning about their respective projects until several years after the genre took off.[48]
Roguelike games were initially developed for computing environments with limited memory, including shared mainframe systems and early home computers; this limitation prevented developers from retaining all but a few dungeon levels in memory while the game was running, leading to procedural generation to avoid the memory storage issue. Procedural generation led to highreplayability, as no two games were alike.[49]
Though the term "roguelike" derives from the 1980 gameRogue,[50] the first known game with the core roguelike gameplay elements wasBeneath Apple Manor (1978), written by Don Worth for theApple II;Beneath Apple Manor is also recognized as the first commercial roguelike game.[51] The game, inspired by Worth's enjoyment ofDungeons & Dragons roleplaying, included procedural generation using a modification of the random maze generator from the gameDragon Maze, role-playing elements for the characters, tile-based movement and turn-based combat.[51] ThoughBeneath Apple Manor predatedRogue, it was not as popular asRogue:Rogue had advantage of being distributed overARPANET which many college students had easy access to, whileBeneath Apple Manor was packaged and sold by hand by Worth either at local stores or through mail fulfillment.[51][52][53]
Another early roguelike whose development pre-datedRogue wasSword of Fargoal (1982), developed by Jeff McCord starting in 1979.[48] The game was based onGammaQuest, an earlier title McCord had created on theCommodore PET which he shared locally with friends while a student atHenry Clay High School in Kentucky; the game itself was based on aDungeons & Dragons campaign he had run himself in the prior years.[48] Before graduating and attending theUniversity of Tennessee in 1981, he had started work onGammaQuest II, which required the player to navigate through randomly generated dungeon levels, acquire a sword, and make it back to the surface with that sword through more randomly generated levels. The more advanced computers available at the school, such as theVIC-20, enabled him to expand out the game further from the highly limited memory on the PET. On seeing the prospects of selling computer software, he eventually got a publication deal withEpyx, where they helped him to refine the marketing of the game, renaming itSword of Fargoal, and giving him access to the more powerfulCommodore 64, enabling him to use graphics and sound as part of the game.[48] The game was considered a success, and when it was ported to the PC in 1983, it out-shoneRogue's PC release the same year due toSword of Fargoal's superior graphics and sound.[48]
Rogue was written byGlenn Wichman and Michael Toy in 1980 while students at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz. The game was inspired by Toy's prior experience in playing the 1971Star Trek game and programming clones of it for various other computer systems.[8] It was also inspired by interactive fictionAdventure.[8] While looking for a way to randomize the experience ofAdventure, they came acrossKen Arnold'scurses library that enabled them to better manipulate characters on the terminal screen, prompting Toy and Wichman to create a graphical-like randomized adventure game.[8][54] They created the story of the game by having the player seek out the "Amulet of Yendor", "Yendor" being "Rodney" spelled backwards, the name of the wizard they envisioned had created the dungeon.[8]Rogue was originally executed on aVAX-11/780 computer; its limited memory forced them to use a simple text-based interface for the game.[55] Toy eventually dropped out of school but got a job at the computing labs atUniversity of California, Berkeley, where he met with Arnold. Arnold helped to optimize the curses code and implement more features into the game.[56]
Rogue proved popular with college students and computer researchers at the time, includingKen Thompson;Dennis Ritchie had joked at the time thatRogue was "the biggest waste of CPU cycles in history".[56] Its popularity led to the game's inclusion onBSD UNIX v4.2 in 1984, though at that time, without itssource code.[56] Toy and Arnold had anticipated sellingRogue commercially and were hesitant about releasing it; Toy would go on to meet Jon Lane atOlivetti, and together they would go on to create the company A.I. Design to port the games for various home systems along with publishing support by Epyx, later bringing Wichman back to help.[56]
| Rogue 1980 | Other Variants | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hack 1982 | Other Variants | Moria 1983 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| NetHack 1987 | Other Variants | UMoria 1988 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ADOM 1994 | Angband 1990 | Other Variants | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ZAngband 1994 | Other Variants | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tales of Maj'Eyal 2009 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The popularity ofRogue led developers to create their own versions of the game, though their efforts were originally limited by the lack of access toRogue's source, which was not released until BSD v4.3 in 1986.[58] These developers resorted to building games from scratch similar toRogue but with features that they wanted to see.[58] These versions would be distributed with source code, and along with the originalRogue source, other developers were able to createsoftware forks of the games, adding in new monsters, items, and gameplay features, creating several dozen variants.[58] This process was aided by switching code to languages with betterdata typing, includingobject-oriented andscripting languages, and cleaning up and modularizing the code so that contributors can better follow where changes can be made.
While there are some direct variants ofRogue, such asBrogue,[59] most variants ofRogue could be classified into two branches based on two key games,Moria andHack, that were developed in the spirit ofRogue.[60]
Moria (1983) was developed by Robert Alan Koeneke while a student atUniversity of Oklahoma, inspired by bothAdventure andRogue. Having access to aVAX-11/780, but without the source toRogue due to computer administrator restrictions, he began trying to recreateRogue but specifically flavored with thecomplex cave maze of the same name inJ.R.R. Tolkien'sMiddle Earth stories. Following Tolkien's fiction, the player's goal was to descend to the depths of Moria to defeat theBalrog, akin to aboss battle.[61] As withRogue, levels were not persistent: when the player left the level and then tried to return, a new level would be procedurally generated. Among other improvements toRogue, Koeneke included a persistent town at the highest level where players could buy and sell equipment, and the use ofdata structures within thePascal language allowed him to create a more diversebestiary within the game.[61] He got help from several playtesters as well as another student, Jimmey Wayne Todd, who helped to program a deeper character generation system.[61]UMoria (short forUNIX Moria) is a close variation onMoria by Jim E. Wilson, making the game more portable to a larger variety of computers while fixing various bugs.[61]
Angband (1990) was developed by Alex Cutler and Andy Astrand while attending theUniversity of Warwick. Having playedUMoria, they wanted to expand the game even further. Working fromUMoria's code, they increased the number of levels and monsters, flavored the game based onAngband, the massive fortress controlled byMorgoth from Tolkien's fiction, and incorporated more of the deadlier creatures described within the Middle Earth mythology. They kept the Balrog as a difficult creature that must be overcome at a mid-game level, while Morgoth became the final boss the player must defeat to win the game.[62] Following Cutler and Astrand's graduation, Sean March and Geoff Hill took over the development to see the game through to a public release outside of the university, adding in elements such as giving the player a sense of the rewards and dangers of a level when they entered it the first time.[62]
OnceAngband was released to the public viaUSENET, there were efforts to have code maintainers (the "devteam") to fix bugs, clean up the code and implement suggestions into the code.[62] Due to numerous shifts in those maintaining the code (due to other obligations), and the number of potential user suggestions to include,Angband would become highlyforked, leading to a number ofAngband variants; at least sixty known variants exist with about a half dozen still under active development.[63][64] One significant fork wasZAngband (1994) (short forZelazny Angband), which expanded onAngband and altered the theme towardsRoger Zelazny'sThe Chronicles of Amber.[65] TheZAngband codebase would be used to createTroubles of Middle Earth (ToME) in 2002, which later swapped out the Tolkien and Zelazny fiction setting for a new original one to becomeTales of Maj'Eyal (2009).[66] The vanillaAngband remains in development today by the devteam.[62]
Hack (1982) was developed by Jay Fenlason with help from Kenny Woodland, Mike Thome, and Jonathan Payne, students atLincoln-Sudbury Regional High School at the time, while participating in the school's computer lab overseen byBrian Harvey.[58] Harvey had been able to acquire aPDP-11/70 minicomputer for the school and instituted a course curriculum that allowed students to do whatever they wanted on the computers, including playing games, as long as they had completed assignments by the end of each semester. Fenlason, Woodland, Thome, and Payne met through these courses and became a close group of friends and competent programmers.[58] Harvey had invited the group to the computer labs at UC Berkeley where they had the opportunity to use the mainframe systems there, and were introduced toRogue, inspiring them to create their own version as their class project. Fenlason had created a list of features they wanted to improve upon inRogue such as having a level's layout saved once the player moved off that level. They approached Toy and Arnold at a localUSENIX conference for the source code toRogue, but were refused, forcing them to develop the routines from scratch.[58] The resulting program,Hack, stayed true to the originalDungeons and Dragons influences, and derived its name from being both a "hack and slash" game as well as aprogramming hack to recreateRogue without having access to its source code.[58] Fenlason was not able to include all the desired features, and his involvement inHack's development concluded after the students had left the school. Fenlason had provided the source code toHack to the USENIX conferences to be distributed on their digital tapes, from which it was later discovered and built upon through USENET newsgroups, porting it to various systems. LikeAngband, the maintainership of theHack code passed through several hands, and some variants were created by different forks.[23]
Hack would eventually be dropped in favor ofNetHack (1987).[63] When Mike Stephenson, an analyst at a computer hardware manufacturer, took maintainership ofHack's code, he improved it, taking suggestions fromIzchak Miller, a philosophy professor atUniversity of Pennsylvania, and Janet Walz, another computer hacker. Calling themselves the DevTeam, they began to make major modifications toHack's code. They named their new versionNetHack, in part due to their collaboration over the game being done through USENET.[23]NetHack's major deviations fromHack were the introduction of a wider variety of monsters, borrowing from other mythologies and lores, including anachronistic and contemporary cultural elements (such as a tourist class with a flash-bulb camera inspired byTerry Pratchett'sDiscworld series)[67] in the high fantasy setting, and the use of pre-defined levels with some procedural elements that the player would encounter deeper in the dungeons.[23] Further iterations of the game included branching pathways through the dungeon and optional character-based quests that could grant the player an extremely useful item to complete the game.[23] Though the DevTeam released the code publicly, they carefully maintained who could contribute to the code base to avoid excessive forking of the vanilla game, and remain relatively quiet about suggested improvements to each release, working in relatively secrecy from its player base.[23]
Ancient Domains of Mystery (1994), orADOM for short, derived from concepts presented inNetHack.ADOM was originally developed byThomas Biskup while a student atTechnical University of Dortmund.[68] After playing throughRogue andHack, he came toNetHack and was inspired by the game but dismayed at the complexity and elements he found unnecessary or distracting. Biskup createdADOM from scratch with the aim of creating a more story-driven game thanNetHack that kept the depth of gameplay with a focused theme and setting.[68] The resulting game featured several different dungeons, many generated procedurally, connected through anoverworld map of the fictional realm of Ancardia, and would have the player complete various quests in those dungeons to progress the game. A major feature was the influence of Chaos forces through unsealed portals, which the player would have to close. While in areas affected by Chaos, the player's character would become tainted, causing mutations that could be either detrimental or beneficial.[68]ADOM, likeNetHack andAngband, would gain a devteam to maintain the code and implement updates and patches to avoid excessive forking.[68]
Not all early roguelikes were readily classified asHack orMoria descendants.Larn (1986), developed by Noah Morgan, borrowed concepts from bothHack (in that there are persistent and fixed levels) andMoria (in the availability of a shop level and general difficulty increasing with dungeon level), but while these two games have spiraled in size to take multiple play sessions to complete,Larn was aimed to be completed in a single session.Larn also uses a fixed-time feature, in that the player had only so many turns to complete a goal, though there were ways to jump back in time as to extend play.[69]Omega, developed by Laurence Brothers in the late 1980s, is credited with introducing an overworld concept to the roguelike genre, prior to the feature's appearance inADOM.Omega was often remembered for its odd inventory approach in which the player would have to pick up an object, considering it being held, and then moving that object to a bag or an equipment slot.[15]Linley's Dungeon Crawl (1995) was created by Linley Henzell and featured a skill-based character progression system, in whichexperience points could be used to improve specific skills, such as weapon proficiency or trap detection. One fork of this would form the basis forDungeon Crawl Stone Soup (2006).[70]SSI'sDungeon Hack (1993) offered randomized dungeons and permadeath withinAD&D 2nd Edition rules.[71]
Through 1993, roguelikes primarily existed in computer space, and nohome console variants had yet existed. Two of the earliest-known attempts wereSega'sFatal Labyrinth (1990) andDragon Crystal (1990), but which lacked the depth of a typical computer-based roguelike. Neither proved to be successful games.[72] There was also the 1991 Japanese exclusiveGame Boy gameCave Noire fromKonami, that centred on four distinct roguelike questlines divided into ten difficulty levels.[73]
Chunsoft had gained success by developing theDragon Quest series, a series which established fundamental aspects of thecomputer role-playing game genre, popular for Western computer audiences, into a more streamlined approach better suited for Japanese players that preferred consoles. With roguelikes starting to gain popularity, Chunsoft's developers believed they could do a similar treatment for that genre to make it better suited for Japanese audiences. Chunsoft'sKoichi Nakamura stated their intent was to takeRogue and make it "more understandable, more easy-to-play version" of the title that could be played on consoles.[74] This led to the creation of theMystery Dungeon, with the first title beingTorneko no Daibōken: Fushigi no Dungeon (トルネコの大冒険 不思議のダンジョン,Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon) (1993) based on theDragon Quest series. Several changes to the roguelike formula had to be made for this conversion: they had developed ways to reduce the difficulty of the roguelike by using progressively more difficult dungeons that were randomly generated, and made permadeath an option by selection of difficulty level.[24] An added benefit forTorneko no Daibōken was that it used the establishedDragon Quest 4 setting and the character Torneko, helping to make the game familiar to its planned audience and giving a story for the player to follow.[72] WhileTorneko no Daibōken did not sell as well as typicalDragon Quest games, it was successful enough for Chunsoft to develop a second title based on a wholly original character and setting,Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer, released in 1995. Chunsoft found that they were more creative with how they developed the game without the need to respect an existing property.[72] Since then, Chunsoft has developedover 25 games in theMystery Dungeon series for various platforms,[24] In addition to theirShiren titles, many of the other ChunsoftMystery Dungeon games span various franchises, includingChocobo series based onFinal Fantasy,Pokémon Mystery Dungeon based onPokémon, and a crossover withAtlus'Etrian Odyssey inEtrian Mystery Dungeon. Several titles in theMystery Dungeon series were popular, and would become a staple of the Japanese video game market.[75][76][77][78][79][12]
A primary difference between theMystery Dungeon games and Western roguelikes following the Berlin Interpretation is the lack of permadeath – inMystery Dungeon games, player-characters may die or become too injured, resetting their progress to the start of the dungeon, but the games typically provide means to store and recover equipment and other items from the previous run.[72] TheMystery Dungeon games were not as successful in Western markets when published there, as the target players – younger players who likely had not experienced games likeRogue – found the lack of a traditional role-playing game save system odd.[80][81][82][83]
Other Japanese role-playing games would incorporate random dungeon generation as part of their design, mimicking part of the nature of roguelikes, and were considered roguelike titles when published in Western markets. Such titles includeAzure Dreams,Dark Cloud,Shining Soul, andBaroque.[19][84] Themassively multiplayer online role playing gameFinal Fantasy XIV added a randomly-generated Deep Dungeon that was inspired by the procedural generation of roguelikes.[85]
Though new classical roguelike variants would continue to be developed within the Western market, the genre languished as more advanced personal computers capable of improved graphics capabilities and games that utilized these features became popular.[86] However, some of these new graphical games drew influence for roguelike concepts, notablyaction role-playing games likeBlizzard Entertainment'sDiablo (1996).Diablo's creator,David Brevik, acknowledged that games likeRogue,NetHack,Telengard and other roguelikes influenced the design ofDiablo, including the nature of randomly generated dungeons and loot.[87][88]
Existing roguelikes continue to be developed: a sequel toADOM successfully receivedcrowd funding in 2012,[68] whileNetHack's first major release in ten years in 2015 is set to help the DevTeam expand the game further.[89] New roguelikes that adhere to core Berlin Interpretation rules are still being created, includingDungeon Crawl Stone Soup (2006),Dungeons of Dredmor (2011), andDragon Fin Soup (2015).[24][90] A subclass of "coffeebreak roguelikes" that could be completed in a short period of time have developed, often derived from entries in theSeven Day Roguelike Challenge; examples include such asDoomRL (2013) andDesktop Dungeons (2013)[91][92] Some games would also take advantage of the ease of developing in the tile-based ASCII interfaces common to roguelikes. For example, the highly popularDwarf Fortress (2006) uses the roguelike interface atop aconstruction and management simulation, and would serve as a major inspiration forMinecraft,[24][93] whileSanctuaryRPG (2014) is a more traditionalturn-based role playing game featuring a scripted story that uses an ASCII interface and roguelike gameplay elements.[94]UnReal World (1992), the game that is considered to be the forerunner of thesurvival game genre,[95] and which frequently uses procedural generation to create the worlds that players must survive in, was developed by Sami Maaranen and was influenced by roguelikes, with its initial interface being similar to that ofNetHack.[96]
The roguelike genre saw a resurgence in Western markets after 2000 throughindependent developers who created a new subgenre designated "rogue-lite", though the games are also sometimes called "roguelike-likes". Indie developers began to incorporate roguelike elements into genres not normally associated with roguelikes, creating games that would form the basis of this new subgenre. Two of the earliest cited examples of rogue-lites areStrange Adventures in Infinite Space (2002) and its sequelWeird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space (2005) byDigital Eel, both space exploration games that included randomly generated planets and encounters, and permadeath. Digital Eel based their work on the space exploration gameStarflight along with roguelikes likeNetHack but wanted to provide a shorter experience that would be easier to replay, akin to tabletopbeer and pretzels games likeDeathmaze andThe Sorcerer's Cave that has elements in common with roguelikes.[25][97]
Spelunky (2008), released shortly after the formation of theBerlin Interpretation, is considered to be a major contribution to the growth of indie-developed rogue-lites.[24][14]Spelunky was developed byDerek Yu, who wanted to take the deep gameplay that is offered by roguelikes and combine it with the ease and pick-up-and-play of aplatformer. The result was a platform game incorporating the notion of permadeath in which the player takes an explorer character through randomly-generated caves.[17] The intent was to create "deep" gameplay in which the game could be replayed over and over again, with the randomly generated situations driving the need for the player to develop novel, emergent strategies on the fly. DeveloperJason Rohrer stated thatSpelunky "totally revamped my thinking about single-player videogame design".[98]Edmund McMillen, the developer ofThe Binding of Isaac (2011), and Kenny and Teddy Lee, the co-developers ofRogue Legacy (2012), credit Yu's approach withSpelunky as showing how to distill down the nature of a traditional roguelike to apply it to other gaming genres which they had done for their rogue-lites.[17][99][100] Justin Ma and Matthew Davis, the co-developers ofFTL: Faster Than Light (2012), credited bothWeird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space andSpelunky as part of their influence forFTL.[99][101] All of these games earned critical praise, and their success has led to a more modern resurgence in rogue-lites since their release.[22][24][102]
The newfound success in rogue-lites is considered part of a larger trend in those that play both board and computer games, looking for "rich play experiences", as described by100 Rogues developer Keith Burgun, that more popular titles may not always offer.[22] David Bamguart of Gaslamp Games stated that there is a thrill of the risk inherent in rogue-lites with random generation and permadeath, helping the player become more invested in the fate of their player character: "The deadly precariousness inherent to the unknown environments of roguelikes gives that investment a great deal of meaning."[103] Additionally, many of these newer rogue-lites strive to address the apparent high difficulty and ruthlessness that traditional roguelikes were known for, and newer players will be able to find more help through user-generated game guides and walkthroughs made possible through wide Internet accessibility.[103] Fabien Fischer offers that players have taken to independently developed rogue-lites as they have tired from "superficial gameplay, whitewashing spectacle, the content craze, andSkinner Box design" in titles produced byAAA developers and publishers.[104]
McMillen ofThe Binding of Isaac said that including roguelike elements into other game mechanics can be difficult due to the complex interfaces roguelikes tend to have, but eventually "it becomes an increasingly beautiful, deep, and everlasting design that allows you to generate a seemingly dynamic experience for players, so that each time they play your game they're getting a totally new adventure".[105] Procedural-generated world lets developers create many hours worth of game content without spending resources on designing detailed worlds.[22][102][103]
Examples of successful games that have integrated roguelike components into other genres include:
Hades, a rogueliteaction role-playing game, was built to strongly incorporate elements of non-linear narrative into the game, giving the reason for the player to continually delve into replaying the game, and helped to draw in players to the roguelike genre that otherwise had been put off by its high difficulty level before.[111][112]
The roguelike genre has developed with the expansion of both classical roguelikes and rogue-lite titles, a dedicated fan community has come about to not only discuss games within it but to craft their own tales of near-death adventures or amusing stories in roguelikes.[113] Within this community, there is strong interest in developing roguelikes. The 7 Day Roguelike challenge (7DRL) was born out of aUSENET newsgroup in 2005 for roguelike developers, informally challenging them to create the core of a novel roguelike within 7 days to be submitted for judging and play by the public.[7] The competition has continued annually each year, since growing from 5–6 entries in 2005 to over 130 in 2014.[114][115] In the spirit of the 2008 International Roguelike Conference, the "Roguelike Celebration" was held for the first time in September 2016 in San Francisco where several past and present roguelike developers gathered to discuss the history and future direction of the genre.[113] It has since been organized again in 2017, 2018 and 2019 in San Francisco, and as virtual events in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
I would like to propose formally that a new hierarchy be created, namely rec.games.roguelike. This hierarchy would contain groups dedicated to discussion of rogue-type games.
It seems to me that we'd do a lot better taking all of the dungeon-adventure games, including ones that don't have their own newsgroups like larn and omega, and reorganizing them under rec.games.dungeon – recognizing the intrinsic similarities of all these games. It would make it a lot easier for people who like one of these games to find newsgroups about other, basically similar games, and would finally provide a home for all those random posts about Larn and other games of the same genre that keep popping up in rec.games.hack and other inappropriate places.
I would like to propose formally that a new hierarchy be created, namely rec.games.dungeon. This hierarchy would contain groups dedicated to discussion of rogue-type games.
Those people who agree on a name seem to favor "roguelike" as the least of all available evils.
With the large number of Roguelike games and variants in existence and in development, there are occasional discussions about programming problems such as dungeon-generation algorithms which are of interest to designers of several games.
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