I think the meaning of roguelike has evolved beyond being a game like rogue. After all, a dungeon crawler that’s not procedurally generated and doesn’t have permadeath would be more like Rogue but it wouldn’t be considered a roguelike. I wish the genre of “procedural run-based game with permadeath” had a better name. It reminds me of how shooters in the 90s were called Doom-clones. Platform fighters went through the same phase with “smash clones” for a while. I think the resurgence of roguelikes happened so far after Rogue that players didn’t have the feeling of disrespect of their game from the term. Anybody who likes a platform fighter wouldn’t want their game reduced to a “smash clone”. Same goes for shooters and Doom. But Rogue was far enough out of the public consciousness that “roguelike” didn’t feel like a comparison.
What other term could we use? “Random run game”? I’ve heard “roguelite” to refer to procedural games with progression between runs rather than starting from 0 every time. I also think this distinction isn’t very meaningful since I can’t imagine many people looking for that style of gameplay loop would be super concerned about the progression system.
The term roguelite predates roguelites having meta-progression. Games with procedural generation and permadeath that aren’t turn-based tile-based crpgs are roguelites.
If this game is a roguelike, then Doom is a point-and-click item adventure, and Asteroids is an FPS.
The value is specificity. Nothing about this game is like Rogue.
I think the meaning of roguelike has evolved beyond being a game like rogue. After all, a dungeon crawler that’s not procedurally generated and doesn’t have permadeath would be more like Rogue but it wouldn’t be considered a roguelike. I wish the genre of “procedural run-based game with permadeath” had a better name. It reminds me of how shooters in the 90s were called Doom-clones. Platform fighters went through the same phase with “smash clones” for a while. I think the resurgence of roguelikes happened so far after Rogue that players didn’t have the feeling of disrespect of their game from the term. Anybody who likes a platform fighter wouldn’t want their game reduced to a “smash clone”. Same goes for shooters and Doom. But Rogue was far enough out of the public consciousness that “roguelike” didn’t feel like a comparison.
What other term could we use? “Random run game”? I’ve heard “roguelite” to refer to procedural games with progression between runs rather than starting from 0 every time. I also think this distinction isn’t very meaningful since I can’t imagine many people looking for that style of gameplay loop would be super concerned about the progression system.
The term roguelite predates roguelites having meta-progression. Games with procedural generation and permadeath that aren’t turn-based tile-based crpgs are roguelites.
If this game is a roguelike, then Doom is a point-and-click item adventure, and Asteroids is an FPS.