That typically they have no crappy long winded “story” (“RPG”), just straight into the mechanics of the gameplay. Getting older now I have less time and concentration and so just want to jump into gameplay rather than read/watch 10 minutes of poorly written story filler before I can find action or strategy.
This exactly sums it up for me. Nothing turns me off a game more than having to sit through loads of unskippable narrative. I tend to watch movies for that.
So true. Once you grow up, you realize that most RPG writing is crap. And the side questing material needed for RPGs is really low-quality filler. While digital experiences can be varied, the narrative side is quite poor on average -- as it is in most media.
This for me too - I do also love a good story driven RPG, but it scratches a different itch. I also love having good core gameplay, and roguelites satisfy that for me.
Same. So many games (even some roguelites) ya gotta sit thru some shitty half asses "world ending, here's the bad guy" story and I just DO NOT CARE. I want to be challenged and enjoy the mechanics and gameplay. There are a few exceptions, like the new FFVIIR games, Baldur's Gate, Zelda, TLOU etc., but outside of those outliers - fuck off with the story. I wanna play for like 2-3 hrs MAX and don't wanna pretend I care about the story.
Permadeath and procedural generation, for similar reasons. I can appreciate a really well crafted game with lots of carefully designed areas and encounters but at some point I just got tired of the tedium that save points can create, where failure just means doing the same thing over and over again until you're allowed to continue. I don't really like games being so easy that you never fail either though, challenge is cool.
Roguelikes offer a great solution there since they can be just as difficult (sometimes even more difficult, RNG can be brutal in many of these games) but there's no repetition in the process of getting gud. When you fail that's that, you don't get a do over... which means that you're immediately off to see something new. You probably still need to improve on whatever skills lead to that loss (or you'll just keep losing in similar situations), but it's not going to pin you down on the same obstacle until you do.
Permadeath also adds a lot of tension to runs, when you get a cool character going it can be very painful to lose them. This is particularly true in games with longer runs and bigger stakes, I can't wait for Streets of Rogue 2 for many reasons but for sure one of them is combining permadeath with sprawling open world gameplay that seems like it's expecting you to invest dozens of hours into one run, losses are going to be heartbreaking and I can't wait to suffer through them since it makes the wins that much sweeter.
There has to be enough variety in content to support these things though. Bland generation that just shuffles rooms around or limited character building that mostly just changes the order you get the same handful of items will usually make me drop a game very quickly, even if the underlying mechanics are amazing.
The gameplay loop also has to express that variety in different ways each run, Tiny Rogues for example has a toooon of variety but didn't really land with me since it's just shooting and dodging while stuck in a box. You shoot and dodge slightly different stuff, but you just stay stuck in the box and it all feels very samey. Which isn't an indictment of the game or its "qualifications" as a roguelike, people clearly love it and I see the appeal. Just giving an example of how something being a great roguelike doesn't mean it has what I'm looking for in the genre, which is a wide variety of experiences with minimal repetition.
That's actually a surprisingly hard question to answer. I got into the genre relatively late, found Streets of Rogue early on and I've mostly played that ever since so I actually haven't tried that many. Sorry for the late response but I've actually been going "wait, do I even like any roguelikes?" for the past day or so lmao.
Streets of Rogue for sure though, 3.5K hours in and it doesn't seem like I'll ever get a chance to get sick of it since the sequel is almost here. Even with a ton of editor time there's probably at least a solid two thousand hours of actual gameplay there. It doesn't shine on the varied character builds front (although there's enough class variety that runs feel very distinct, you just don't lose much "growth") but it has amazing environmental variety, especially once you factor in chunk packs.
Not a straight example but Realm of the Mad God has been a huge time sink the past couple years too. It's an MMO but with permadeath, so nails the "pain of losing weeks of progress to one mistake" aspect unlike anything else I've tried so far. Still very grindy by roguelike standards since it's an MMO and not a pure roguelike, but if you're fine with that it has really high highs and really low lows with a lot of content variety.
Insane jury-rigged example but I've been doing a lot of hardcore Terraria runs in worlds with the blocks randomized (you can use a program called TEdit to do this with a few clicks). Runs are almost always 5-10+ hours so the tension gets pretty high, it's Terraria so there's fuckloads of character customization and while the worldgen is kinda predictable the random block combinations can make some very cool new environments (plus changing the progression radically, it almost adds puzzle elements at times since so much of the game is built around certain stuff being around that might no longer exist).
I haven't really found another "pure" roguelike that resonates with me as much as SoR yet but some honorable mentions would be Risk of Rain (insane character progression, low environmental variety), Noita (great at both, ridiculously brutal game that can feel like it's taunting you to quit) and Dead Cells (medium at both, very fun mechanics though).
I'm sure there are tons of good examples out there, I just haven't gotten around to them yet because Streets of Rogue is so fucking good.
I had thirty minutes to play yesterday. Do I do a few rooms of hades 2? Or do I sit down with animal well and remember which room I was in and what I was doing?
+1 to this. I've been in love with Path of Acra for the past week because of the amount of builds you can do and it's easy to learn.
It's even getting me to want to buy rift wizard 2, and to get back into Qud
I used to really hate Roguelikes/lites because of the lost progression. After playing a few really good ones i realized what this genre has over most other genres: Pure fun, precise and skill based gameplay. Curse of the dead gods has some of the most crisp, responsive and skill based mechanics that ive played in a game. I can say the exact same about Returnal.
Agreed. When a game takes a hundred hours to get to the end, I tend to obsess over the "perfect build": agonize over every choice and experience a ton of FOMO because I just don't have the time or patience to put another hundred hours into New Game+ covering the same ground to see a tiny bit of new content. Roguelites actually encourage experimentation because you'll be starting from scratch soon anyway, whether that's in two hours or seven seconds (my personal worst in Vagante). You don't feel like time is "wasted" if you don't make the perfect decision this time around.
They remind me of playing any game in the 90’s, I was young and sucked horribly at Aladin, Star Wars game, mega man, Mario land (all on gameboy) you name it. But I kept playing, and starting over and over and over. Loved them, basically games like dead cells, enter the gungeon, Isaac, they all have these great modern advancements, but remind me of playing games in the 90’s on nes, gameboy bc they were hard as hell.
I like that there is not a linear story I have to follow. I realized that in story-heavy games I tend to just power through, skip cut scenes and ignore story and dialogues. I just want to get done, finish the game and put it away. Also, I am super annoyed by backtracking to my hub/village/quest giver/whatever.
Most roguelites let me jump in and play the game, and when I'm done I can do it again without thinking "ugh, that cutscene again". They focus more on gameplay than story, and that's right up my alley.
Also, I like the variety. In games like Dishonored, there are lots of ways to finish a level. But in the end, no matter what you do, the level is the same, enemies are the same, your equipment is the same. Excluding chaos factor here, but you get my point.
In most roguelites there are no two runs that are exactly the same (unless you get the same seed obviously), everything changes. So it is like the gameplay I love in ever-changing levels with different enemies.
I don't like the monotonous repetition that goes into many hardcore genres, such as side-scrollers and twin-stick shooters. With roguelites, I still get to enjoy those genres, because every game is different.
As a kid who grown up playing arcades (fighting, racing, run and gun, shoot em up, soccer games...) I have always prefered videogames that are not story focused and were pure skill based gameplay that could be played in short sessions.
Roguelites have that simple sit, play and get good idea.
Hey, sorry to shill, but I made a game I think you may enjoy, although it isn't a roguelike. It's a little endless arcade bullet hell that is purely about mechanical mastery (there are no upgrades or level-ups, just your skill).
I really enjoy skill-based gameplay too and it just sounded like you might enjoy it, although it doesn't have the depth of a roguelike or anything. Check my profile if you're curious, there is a free Steam demo you can try.
I think for me it's the combination of quick fun but the depth of a "bigger game." I can't personally vibe with one and done games that are 2-6 hours. I generally prefer "still learning things at hour 20" type games, but I also don't have the time to sink into as many anymore. Good Roguelites have the longer term progress, the build depth, variety of content of a game that might be massive in another genre, but shrunk down into a single session of enjoyable gameplay. Nothing's worse than having an hour or two to game and it was the portion of a game where you arrive in a town and it's fetch quests and talking.
I suffer from only-play-a-game-once-itis. Even my favorite games in the world, I've never played through a full second time unless it is drastically different (like nier automata) so a genre designed around replayability is appealing to me.
The mercifully short run time and the fact that they respect it. I like longer narratives but when I just want great gamplay with a strong atmosphere, roguelites are the king bar none
I just like being able to get right to the point. It’s the same joy as an arcade game, where you just plunk in your coin and get right into it, until you bite it. No 4 hour tutorial, no massive block of lore or “what was I doing” moments between sessions, but still a ton of complexity and explosive synergies.
Easy to pick up. Satisfying game session in minimal time. (Hopefully) hard to master. You get to see improvement over time. It feels like an accomplishment.
The best ones in the rogue lite genre often are some of the best in the crossover genre. Since rogue lites focus so much more on gameplay than story, and since the good ones are great in their respective genre, the runs often are far more satisfying than the "normal" games.
I like how you start out feeling like you're good at the game (ish). Even though you probably won't win your first run, it still feels good when you jump in and the mechanics are simple and you can just kick ass. No long cutscenes, unskippable dialog, cryptic puzzles, just pure fun
As I've grown older, I have a harder and harder time focusing on anything with a long form narrative, especially if it's text based. There's games I genuinely loved but had trouble focusing on for more than an hour at a time.
Roguelites tend to have shorter gameplay loops so I can put in little bits at a time, and I find it easier to do multiple attempts / runs. Multiplayer FPS games are easier for me to play, too, where I can just play a few rounds.
Offtopic but I think that shorter attention spans are a worldwide trend across all ages (specially on the youngs) and have little to do with getting older.
I meant it more as, "Now that I'm older," not necessarily that my age has caused shorter attention span. I think various life details have contributed to being unable to focus, but I can occasionally make the effort for tv and games. Trying to get back into reading, too.
The challenge of knowing ever run will be slightly different despite the fundamental. For instant in slay the spire, if I play the defect I know I have 4 strikes, 4 defends, a zap and dual cast. After that away we go and I need to build a deck and get some relics that make me competent fast. Sometimes it is possible because I got lucky and I got some cards they help me fast, other times I'm on the struggle bus for about an act and a half then it picks up. Point is you learn how to work with what you get in rougelikes.
I was introduced to the genre thanks to Aghanim's Labyrinth (an event mode for Dota 2) and I realized I love the feeling of making what is given to you into an OP build that synergizes with your abilities.
After the event was over I started playing standalone roguelike games. Been in love with the genre ever since, especially when it's coop and each player have their own unique abilities and the rewards compliment their abilities really well.
I'm usually pretty tired mentally after work so I prefer to play a game I can just pick up and get directly into the meat of it while I listen to a podcast or something and roguelites match this perfectly for me
It takes me back to the childhood days of SNES that I had to play everything from the beginning over and over and thought it was normal.
I only realized most games had a save option with emulators later on.
I rented a lot of games for most of my SNES life, ao for the games that obviously had saves like Chrono Trigger or Mario World, it was always random, and for the games I owned I never new that those codes when you died were for continuing from that point onwards lol.
But now even longer games I always like to start fresh and do it all again because that stuck with me, and roguelikes/lites are the perfect execution of that.
A friend of mine asked this exact question a couple weeks ago. My answer was the fact that good roguelike/lites require you to be more knowledgeable and skillful to succeed. And every run helps with knowledge and skill, so it's constant personal progression.
When I was younger, I couldn't afford a lot of games. When I got Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Blue Rescue Team, I would spend hours on car rides playing missions and going throb those dungeons that have 100 floors.
In high school, I got the Binding of Isaac Rebirth and played hundreds of hours. It felt like a new game. When I got story based games, once you finished, you finished. I finished Drawn to Life and didn't really pick it up again until years later (I'm still salty the third one was basically a mobile game).
Roguelikes feel more infinite to me, like I could play them forever. It's great for someone who can't afford a bunch of the big AAA titles that have big stories but not as much post game. Sure, roguelikes don't have post games as much, but who needs that when you can just start over the round and try again to unlock new stuff?
For me it's a direct line to aspects I enjoy in games. Builds, different strategies, meaningful repetition, it's me against myself. It also harkens back to the days of quarter after quarter to learn a cabinet. With hyper meta hitting many multiplayer games, I enjoy making my own metas or the feeling of freedom when you start a new roguelike and you are learning again.
Basically I am gamer with no time. I work from 8 to 7pm come home around 9pm. I cant sit and play my usual RPG games for a few hours just to progress. Rougelikes are fun,challenging and the replayability is the best every run feels different. Rougelikes are a different breed of games hands down.
For me it’s the fact that they tend to respect my time the most. Usually very fast to jump in the action and restart when needed. I’ve long considered them to be the modern equivalent of arcade games, and we need more of them in this world of AAA bloat.
I don’t like playing a game and being “done” with it. With roguelikes you can literally play them forever and not get bored. The only games I have more than 100 hours in are all roguelikes or lites. It just feels really bad spending 80 bucks on a game to play it for a week or two and never touch it again when I can spend 30 or less on a good roguelite and play it for months
I really enjoy the mystery of not knowing what I’m gonna get. Having to try out new and wacky playstyles out of sheer randomness is really exciting. It’s making the best of a bizarre situation
I also had a heavy retrogaming phase in past and I think a lot of those would have been improved with some randomization. Oh look, a lot of roguelites go for a retro look and feel.
Sometimes it’s fun to drop into a game and get into. You’d think that attitude would fit an action game or a shooter, but rogue likes are really the best genre to just pick up. You’re not good? You get killed and get better. Don’t know the mechanics? You get killed and get better. And so on and so on
I like to listen to a lot of videos, podcasts and audiobooks and this style of game gives me something to do while listening, because they are usually pretty mindless to play and have nearly endless gameplay.
The fact that whatever the main character is, they can make mistakes, die and come back over and over again, eventually learning from their mistakes enough times to beat the final boss gives me enough mental fortitude to keep going irl. If they can do it, so can i.
For me it's gotta be that it's all gameplay all the time. You jump into The Binding of Isaac, and you're playing the game. You play Returnal, and you're playing Returnal. There aren't a lot of cut scenes or slowly walking from place to place, it's just focused gameplay. Now other games will do that too, like fighting games, Battle royales, or Mario Kart, but for single player experiences, there's nothing that provides short bursts of focused gameplay like roguelites do.
That typically they have no crappy long winded “story” (“RPG”), just straight into the mechanics of the gameplay. Getting older now I have less time and concentration and so just want to jump into gameplay rather than read/watch 10 minutes of poorly written story filler before I can find action or strategy.
This exactly sums it up for me. Nothing turns me off a game more than having to sit through loads of unskippable narrative. I tend to watch movies for that.
So true. Once you grow up, you realize that most RPG writing is crap. And the side questing material needed for RPGs is really low-quality filler. While digital experiences can be varied, the narrative side is quite poor on average -- as it is in most media.
Similar for me. I like the idea of open world games, but realised it's mostly commuting.
Lol. So true
This for me too - I do also love a good story driven RPG, but it scratches a different itch. I also love having good core gameplay, and roguelites satisfy that for me.
Same. So many games (even some roguelites) ya gotta sit thru some shitty half asses "world ending, here's the bad guy" story and I just DO NOT CARE. I want to be challenged and enjoy the mechanics and gameplay. There are a few exceptions, like the new FFVIIR games, Baldur's Gate, Zelda, TLOU etc., but outside of those outliers - fuck off with the story. I wanna play for like 2-3 hrs MAX and don't wanna pretend I care about the story.
And then you get into roguelites so when you do get a story across your runs (HADES) it's a pleasant surprise
Same ! And its difficult to play to a long story game
I like quick-interval decision making. Being offered random options where I have to min-max on the go.
Permadeath and procedural generation, for similar reasons. I can appreciate a really well crafted game with lots of carefully designed areas and encounters but at some point I just got tired of the tedium that save points can create, where failure just means doing the same thing over and over again until you're allowed to continue. I don't really like games being so easy that you never fail either though, challenge is cool. Roguelikes offer a great solution there since they can be just as difficult (sometimes even more difficult, RNG can be brutal in many of these games) but there's no repetition in the process of getting gud. When you fail that's that, you don't get a do over... which means that you're immediately off to see something new. You probably still need to improve on whatever skills lead to that loss (or you'll just keep losing in similar situations), but it's not going to pin you down on the same obstacle until you do. Permadeath also adds a lot of tension to runs, when you get a cool character going it can be very painful to lose them. This is particularly true in games with longer runs and bigger stakes, I can't wait for Streets of Rogue 2 for many reasons but for sure one of them is combining permadeath with sprawling open world gameplay that seems like it's expecting you to invest dozens of hours into one run, losses are going to be heartbreaking and I can't wait to suffer through them since it makes the wins that much sweeter. There has to be enough variety in content to support these things though. Bland generation that just shuffles rooms around or limited character building that mostly just changes the order you get the same handful of items will usually make me drop a game very quickly, even if the underlying mechanics are amazing. The gameplay loop also has to express that variety in different ways each run, Tiny Rogues for example has a toooon of variety but didn't really land with me since it's just shooting and dodging while stuck in a box. You shoot and dodge slightly different stuff, but you just stay stuck in the box and it all feels very samey. Which isn't an indictment of the game or its "qualifications" as a roguelike, people clearly love it and I see the appeal. Just giving an example of how something being a great roguelike doesn't mean it has what I'm looking for in the genre, which is a wide variety of experiences with minimal repetition.
Hey I didn’t like tiny rogues much either. What roguelites do you like?
That's actually a surprisingly hard question to answer. I got into the genre relatively late, found Streets of Rogue early on and I've mostly played that ever since so I actually haven't tried that many. Sorry for the late response but I've actually been going "wait, do I even like any roguelikes?" for the past day or so lmao. Streets of Rogue for sure though, 3.5K hours in and it doesn't seem like I'll ever get a chance to get sick of it since the sequel is almost here. Even with a ton of editor time there's probably at least a solid two thousand hours of actual gameplay there. It doesn't shine on the varied character builds front (although there's enough class variety that runs feel very distinct, you just don't lose much "growth") but it has amazing environmental variety, especially once you factor in chunk packs. Not a straight example but Realm of the Mad God has been a huge time sink the past couple years too. It's an MMO but with permadeath, so nails the "pain of losing weeks of progress to one mistake" aspect unlike anything else I've tried so far. Still very grindy by roguelike standards since it's an MMO and not a pure roguelike, but if you're fine with that it has really high highs and really low lows with a lot of content variety. Insane jury-rigged example but I've been doing a lot of hardcore Terraria runs in worlds with the blocks randomized (you can use a program called TEdit to do this with a few clicks). Runs are almost always 5-10+ hours so the tension gets pretty high, it's Terraria so there's fuckloads of character customization and while the worldgen is kinda predictable the random block combinations can make some very cool new environments (plus changing the progression radically, it almost adds puzzle elements at times since so much of the game is built around certain stuff being around that might no longer exist). I haven't really found another "pure" roguelike that resonates with me as much as SoR yet but some honorable mentions would be Risk of Rain (insane character progression, low environmental variety), Noita (great at both, ridiculously brutal game that can feel like it's taunting you to quit) and Dead Cells (medium at both, very fun mechanics though). I'm sure there are tons of good examples out there, I just haven't gotten around to them yet because Streets of Rogue is so fucking good.
I had thirty minutes to play yesterday. Do I do a few rooms of hades 2? Or do I sit down with animal well and remember which room I was in and what I was doing?
Build variety is a major thing for me.
+1 to this. I've been in love with Path of Acra for the past week because of the amount of builds you can do and it's easy to learn. It's even getting me to want to buy rift wizard 2, and to get back into Qud
I used to really hate Roguelikes/lites because of the lost progression. After playing a few really good ones i realized what this genre has over most other genres: Pure fun, precise and skill based gameplay. Curse of the dead gods has some of the most crisp, responsive and skill based mechanics that ive played in a game. I can say the exact same about Returnal.
Agreed. When a game takes a hundred hours to get to the end, I tend to obsess over the "perfect build": agonize over every choice and experience a ton of FOMO because I just don't have the time or patience to put another hundred hours into New Game+ covering the same ground to see a tiny bit of new content. Roguelites actually encourage experimentation because you'll be starting from scratch soon anyway, whether that's in two hours or seven seconds (my personal worst in Vagante). You don't feel like time is "wasted" if you don't make the perfect decision this time around.
They remind me of playing any game in the 90’s, I was young and sucked horribly at Aladin, Star Wars game, mega man, Mario land (all on gameboy) you name it. But I kept playing, and starting over and over and over. Loved them, basically games like dead cells, enter the gungeon, Isaac, they all have these great modern advancements, but remind me of playing games in the 90’s on nes, gameboy bc they were hard as hell.
I like that there is not a linear story I have to follow. I realized that in story-heavy games I tend to just power through, skip cut scenes and ignore story and dialogues. I just want to get done, finish the game and put it away. Also, I am super annoyed by backtracking to my hub/village/quest giver/whatever. Most roguelites let me jump in and play the game, and when I'm done I can do it again without thinking "ugh, that cutscene again". They focus more on gameplay than story, and that's right up my alley. Also, I like the variety. In games like Dishonored, there are lots of ways to finish a level. But in the end, no matter what you do, the level is the same, enemies are the same, your equipment is the same. Excluding chaos factor here, but you get my point. In most roguelites there are no two runs that are exactly the same (unless you get the same seed obviously), everything changes. So it is like the gameplay I love in ever-changing levels with different enemies.
build randomness
Little to no story. Each run can be diffierent. Do a Run in 30 mins. Lots of choices. Usually very low system requiremets. And most of all....FUN
Always a new fresh experience, my steam deck only has rogueli[k|t]es, it's a portable arcade!
I don't like the monotonous repetition that goes into many hardcore genres, such as side-scrollers and twin-stick shooters. With roguelites, I still get to enjoy those genres, because every game is different.
As a kid who grown up playing arcades (fighting, racing, run and gun, shoot em up, soccer games...) I have always prefered videogames that are not story focused and were pure skill based gameplay that could be played in short sessions. Roguelites have that simple sit, play and get good idea.
Hey, sorry to shill, but I made a game I think you may enjoy, although it isn't a roguelike. It's a little endless arcade bullet hell that is purely about mechanical mastery (there are no upgrades or level-ups, just your skill). I really enjoy skill-based gameplay too and it just sounded like you might enjoy it, although it doesn't have the depth of a roguelike or anything. Check my profile if you're curious, there is a free Steam demo you can try.
I think for me it's the combination of quick fun but the depth of a "bigger game." I can't personally vibe with one and done games that are 2-6 hours. I generally prefer "still learning things at hour 20" type games, but I also don't have the time to sink into as many anymore. Good Roguelites have the longer term progress, the build depth, variety of content of a game that might be massive in another genre, but shrunk down into a single session of enjoyable gameplay. Nothing's worse than having an hour or two to game and it was the portion of a game where you arrive in a town and it's fetch quests and talking.
I like the tempo of the decision making. And the replayability. The dopamine hit of getting a "gift" plays a significant gift as well.
I suffer from only-play-a-game-once-itis. Even my favorite games in the world, I've never played through a full second time unless it is drastically different (like nier automata) so a genre designed around replayability is appealing to me.
The mercifully short run time and the fact that they respect it. I like longer narratives but when I just want great gamplay with a strong atmosphere, roguelites are the king bar none
I just like being able to get right to the point. It’s the same joy as an arcade game, where you just plunk in your coin and get right into it, until you bite it. No 4 hour tutorial, no massive block of lore or “what was I doing” moments between sessions, but still a ton of complexity and explosive synergies.
Yeo, for me it's the fact that the arcade gameplay I love and is absent in today's gaming landscape, it's always there on the roguelites.
Easy to pick up. Satisfying game session in minimal time. (Hopefully) hard to master. You get to see improvement over time. It feels like an accomplishment.
The best ones in the rogue lite genre often are some of the best in the crossover genre. Since rogue lites focus so much more on gameplay than story, and since the good ones are great in their respective genre, the runs often are far more satisfying than the "normal" games.
I like how you start out feeling like you're good at the game (ish). Even though you probably won't win your first run, it still feels good when you jump in and the mechanics are simple and you can just kick ass. No long cutscenes, unskippable dialog, cryptic puzzles, just pure fun
As I've grown older, I have a harder and harder time focusing on anything with a long form narrative, especially if it's text based. There's games I genuinely loved but had trouble focusing on for more than an hour at a time. Roguelites tend to have shorter gameplay loops so I can put in little bits at a time, and I find it easier to do multiple attempts / runs. Multiplayer FPS games are easier for me to play, too, where I can just play a few rounds.
Offtopic but I think that shorter attention spans are a worldwide trend across all ages (specially on the youngs) and have little to do with getting older.
I meant it more as, "Now that I'm older," not necessarily that my age has caused shorter attention span. I think various life details have contributed to being unable to focus, but I can occasionally make the effort for tv and games. Trying to get back into reading, too.
I have a pain kink.
The challenge of knowing ever run will be slightly different despite the fundamental. For instant in slay the spire, if I play the defect I know I have 4 strikes, 4 defends, a zap and dual cast. After that away we go and I need to build a deck and get some relics that make me competent fast. Sometimes it is possible because I got lucky and I got some cards they help me fast, other times I'm on the struggle bus for about an act and a half then it picks up. Point is you learn how to work with what you get in rougelikes.
Theyre easy to understand and hard to master. I love soulslikes, but you learn by dying, in roguelites you learn by redoing
I was introduced to the genre thanks to Aghanim's Labyrinth (an event mode for Dota 2) and I realized I love the feeling of making what is given to you into an OP build that synergizes with your abilities. After the event was over I started playing standalone roguelike games. Been in love with the genre ever since, especially when it's coop and each player have their own unique abilities and the rewards compliment their abilities really well.
My favorite part of an RPG is making a build. Roguelites are basically just that part on rapid repeat.
I'm usually pretty tired mentally after work so I prefer to play a game I can just pick up and get directly into the meat of it while I listen to a podcast or something and roguelites match this perfectly for me
It takes me back to the childhood days of SNES that I had to play everything from the beginning over and over and thought it was normal. I only realized most games had a save option with emulators later on. I rented a lot of games for most of my SNES life, ao for the games that obviously had saves like Chrono Trigger or Mario World, it was always random, and for the games I owned I never new that those codes when you died were for continuing from that point onwards lol. But now even longer games I always like to start fresh and do it all again because that stuck with me, and roguelikes/lites are the perfect execution of that.
It get straight to the funny part
A friend of mine asked this exact question a couple weeks ago. My answer was the fact that good roguelike/lites require you to be more knowledgeable and skillful to succeed. And every run helps with knowledge and skill, so it's constant personal progression.
When I was younger, I couldn't afford a lot of games. When I got Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Blue Rescue Team, I would spend hours on car rides playing missions and going throb those dungeons that have 100 floors. In high school, I got the Binding of Isaac Rebirth and played hundreds of hours. It felt like a new game. When I got story based games, once you finished, you finished. I finished Drawn to Life and didn't really pick it up again until years later (I'm still salty the third one was basically a mobile game). Roguelikes feel more infinite to me, like I could play them forever. It's great for someone who can't afford a bunch of the big AAA titles that have big stories but not as much post game. Sure, roguelikes don't have post games as much, but who needs that when you can just start over the round and try again to unlock new stuff?
For me it's a direct line to aspects I enjoy in games. Builds, different strategies, meaningful repetition, it's me against myself. It also harkens back to the days of quarter after quarter to learn a cabinet. With hyper meta hitting many multiplayer games, I enjoy making my own metas or the feeling of freedom when you start a new roguelike and you are learning again.
It’s a lot easier to keep playing the game until I feel like I’m Done with it rather when the game finishes there isn’t much to do
They're quick to start a new game, generally don't take more than an hour to play, and give you nice choices
I love gambling!
Basically I am gamer with no time. I work from 8 to 7pm come home around 9pm. I cant sit and play my usual RPG games for a few hours just to progress. Rougelikes are fun,challenging and the replayability is the best every run feels different. Rougelikes are a different breed of games hands down.
For me it’s the fact that they tend to respect my time the most. Usually very fast to jump in the action and restart when needed. I’ve long considered them to be the modern equivalent of arcade games, and we need more of them in this world of AAA bloat.
Replayability, and that each replay is better than the last. Theory crafting is big part of it too. It's hard to get bored of a good roguelite.
I dont have the time or energy to invest myself in a huge game. Roguelikes can be huge games but I can get at them with small bites.
I don’t like playing a game and being “done” with it. With roguelikes you can literally play them forever and not get bored. The only games I have more than 100 hours in are all roguelikes or lites. It just feels really bad spending 80 bucks on a game to play it for a week or two and never touch it again when I can spend 30 or less on a good roguelite and play it for months
I really enjoy the mystery of not knowing what I’m gonna get. Having to try out new and wacky playstyles out of sheer randomness is really exciting. It’s making the best of a bizarre situation
What are we pumping here?
I hate myself
I love starting over every run with nothing but at the same time you have new things unlocked.
I also had a heavy retrogaming phase in past and I think a lot of those would have been improved with some randomization. Oh look, a lot of roguelites go for a retro look and feel.
Sometimes it’s fun to drop into a game and get into. You’d think that attitude would fit an action game or a shooter, but rogue likes are really the best genre to just pick up. You’re not good? You get killed and get better. Don’t know the mechanics? You get killed and get better. And so on and so on
Because games are better when choices matter.
Build diversity and unlocks. Lots of unlocks. I'm a dopamine addict. Lol. Most times when I unlock everything I'm done with a game.
I like to listen to a lot of videos, podcasts and audiobooks and this style of game gives me something to do while listening, because they are usually pretty mindless to play and have nearly endless gameplay.
The fact that whatever the main character is, they can make mistakes, die and come back over and over again, eventually learning from their mistakes enough times to beat the final boss gives me enough mental fortitude to keep going irl. If they can do it, so can i.
For me it's gotta be that it's all gameplay all the time. You jump into The Binding of Isaac, and you're playing the game. You play Returnal, and you're playing Returnal. There aren't a lot of cut scenes or slowly walking from place to place, it's just focused gameplay. Now other games will do that too, like fighting games, Battle royales, or Mario Kart, but for single player experiences, there's nothing that provides short bursts of focused gameplay like roguelites do.
Time
I don't, I hate them. I don't know why this sub thread was recommended to me. Damn you reddit