What's the point of roguelikes?

For me its the diversity in challenge. You don't know what equipment you will get to make or find and depending on your build you have to adjust your tactics accordingly. It can get frustrating dying but I think of it like a game of pacman. You can't finish pacman - you just try to beat your score.

You also do a bit of larping. That is coming up with an in-game fiction to explain your characters actions, pitfalls and successes. The randomness helps this.

How far you can get with a build is the gameplay loop. Die and you change tactics and see if you can get further. You need to adjust your expectations of what a win state is to play roguelikes I think. I find them quite compelling.

It's interesting to read this thread and see how different people have different things they like about roguelikes. For me it's the diversity, and the chance to try out new options and to adapt to new situations. For example, TOME has a ton of incredibly diverse and interesting character classes, as well as extremely different builds within each class. In a typical game I'd pick one, and I wouldn't get to try the others unless I wanted to do another run through after 50 hours of gameplay (I usually don't). But in a roguelike I can do a playthrough in an hour, and then try a different class that plays completely differently, and my experience will be completely different, not just because of the class, but the challenges I meet and equipment I find will be completely different.

ADOM though, has a lot of repetition. It was a great game for it's time, and is probably worth playing for a roguelike lover, but it's not the type of game I'd necesarily recomend to someone deciding if they like roguelikes or not.

I'm not a big fan of rogulelikes. They tend to suffer from too much repetition, making more than a couple of playthroughs uninteresting, because you see the same thing over and over. My favourite one by far is Sword of Stars: The Pit. You can play as one of many characters which makes how you play different. It has an interesting sci-fi setting and survival elements. You can just as easily starve to death as die in combat, depending on what type of character you are playing. I think I did at least 10 playthroughs. Tales of the Maj-Eyel and Faster Than Light are two other roguelikes that I enjoyed and played through more than 5 times. That's more than I can about most others.

Sword of the Stars:The Pit is an excellent roguelike, mostly because of the pacing. The levels are reasonably small, making the contents of each room very important. Equipment you find has a big effect on how you play the game, and combat is fast and deadly (after the first few levels). There is never a feel that your just exploring on autopilot and runs don't tend to drag on too long.

Originally Posted by fadedc
Sword of the Stars:The Pit is an excellent roguelike, mostly because of the pacing. The levels are reasonably small, making the contents of each room very important. Equipment you find has a big effect on how you play the game, and combat is fast and deadly (after the first few levels). There is never a feel that your just exploring on autopilot and runs don't tend to drag on too long.

For you guys that played SOTS: The Pit, does it support playing with just a controller? or did you do mouse and keyboard? I have hand problems that cause me to gravitate towards controller games sometimes, which is a shame since I like fiddly games. I developed the problem like 15 years ago played Jagged Alliance 2…

I played it with k+mouse, so I'm not sure if it supports a controller.

I didn't read all the thread and I hope I didn't miss anything crucial.

I think the first thing is to determine the elements of the roguelikes and then you can basically determine if you like them or not. Also the term Roguelike is a bit up for interpretation. Three Moves Ahead did a pretty good podcast about it over here:
https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/roguelikes
For some players roguelikes need ascii graphics, for some permadeath is a major thing and other think that's about the randomization.

Personally I never played any Ascii roguelike, and while I played and finished Sword of the Stars: The Pit, I don't think that I would play such game again (in the version I played it, which was without any take overs) (link to my playthrough from start to finish: here)

One aspect I like most is the one of Permadeath. Now I am not particularily a fan of "losing everything" but I like it if your decisions actually matter and cannot reversed by simply loading the game. So games which give you some advantages after each playthrough or some additional unlocks are fine for me too.
So for example whenever I play Civilization for example I will never load. The decision I take should matter, and I wouldn't be able to reload in multiplayer either. Loading would damage the overall game experience.
I also like how in Dungeonmans with each character you play you can gather some stuff which will then help the next character you play.
Other games like Don't Starve or FTL work with unlocks instead. That can be rewarding as well and add very different gameplay to the game.

The second big thing I like about roguelike is their randomness: The game, how I play it right now, is unique. Whatever you do, you will not be able to completely replicate the situations I have. Yes, they can be very similar, but not as similar as in some standard RPG where you end up at the same boss at some point, and probably the main difference is what classes you picked for your group.
I am a big fan of procedural generation and the bigger, the better. In some games it only adds to replay value, like in FTL. But in some games you can end up with very weird situations. And others, which aren't necessarily roguelikes, like Daggerfall, or Elite 2 you can end up in an area where no player before you ever was.

I haven't played it yet as it's still in Beta but Malevolence, which is a permadeath first person Rogue Like with a infinite procedurally generated world, including outside areas is a game I absolutely look forward to.

My favorite Roguelikes so far, which are basically "roguelites" are:
FTL, Darkest Dungeon and Invisible Inc
A game with permadeath shouldn't last longer than maybe 5-15 hours per playthrough imho.

I am not a usual fan of roguelikes but I would recommend ftl or invisible inc.

Those are well-developed games that are easy to get into yet can be very difficult.

Fast paced and with unlocks both of them.


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I grew up watching Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, in Northern Ireland (where I hail from). As a child, I always loved the roadster Pertwee drove as the Doctor. Both wonderful Doctors. Troughton too (thanks to DVDs).
Your picture with Jon Pertwee is definitely a marvelous keepsake. Wow !

Originally Posted by Jaguar
Given that I have watched every extant Dr. Who episode more than once (even Hartnell/Troughton, although not the most recent season I don't think yet), and you have Tom Baker in your signature pic, I find it impossible to disagree with you (I still have my picture with Jon Pertwee from an early 90's convention).

Oubliette for Android is a good one. I just updated my tablet and didn't realize how many apps I have in my Google account. I can post some more suggestions once I start reinstalling some of them.

ADOM isn't very good. Boring dungeon generation; full rooms as the special encounters, none of the awesome prefabs from DCSS. ADOM is unplayable because the autoexplore and autoattack are sluggish and don't look good with the games new graphics and there's no in game macroing so I had to use them with my keyboards G keys.

DCSS is the best modern classic roguelike, ToME is the best for the post world of warcraft generation who appreciate cooldowns and skillbars, DRL might be the best for a pure action roguelike before you get good and macro your DCSS controls.

I like the post about glorified platformer. Platformers make quite good roguelikes, such as spelunky or vagante.

Sword in the Stars is horrible, but it does a good job of hiding it from you for many hours.

FTL is great, but its not really a roguelike. Might as well call Space Rangers 2 a roguelike.

I'm going to check out Invisible Inc because I've played all the others mentioned here.

Well, besides of having no Dungeon and ASCII graphics, FTL basically has all Roguelike elements. PermaDeath, Randomly Generated World, Character Development (you develop the ship) and even a "hunger" mechanic (you cannot take forever as you are chased by your enemies and you also need fuel). Haven't played space rangers, but I doubt it can say the same.

Only rogue-like I really liked was NetHack. The great thing about it is the sheer depth of such a primitive looking game.

However, I didn't like the perma-death at all. No problem: I just backed up my saves and restored them if I died. I could do that far faster than a Witcher 3 reload, too. (Actually, I used to think that's why the game was originally called "Hack" - you're expected to do a little hacking to get the game to be fun!)

I feel like FTL might be a closer relative to the text adventure?

Fallout 4 is a good roguelike

Originally Posted by SirJames
DRL might be the best for a pure action roguelike before you get good and macro your DCSS controls.

What's DRL?

Doom Roguelike (I think)

And +1 for Spelunky, great time waster, best with a controller.

Originally Posted by Jaguar
For you guys that played SOTS: The Pit, does it support playing with just a controller? or did you do mouse and keyboard? I have hand problems that cause me to gravitate towards controller games sometimes, which is a shame since I like fiddly games. I developed the problem like 15 years ago played Jagged Alliance 2…

It does support a controller. I prefer mouse and keyboard through, I did give it a try.

Originally Posted by Zloth
However, I didn't like the perma-death at all. No problem: I just backed up my saves and restored them if I died. I could do that far faster than a Witcher 3 reload, too. (Actually, I used to think that's why the game was originally called "Hack" - you're expected to do a little hacking to get the game to be fun!)

LOL!

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(because the forum complained that the message is too short)

One of my favorite roguelike's ever is Elona….apparently they have a elona+ now


http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Elona_Wiki

http://ylvania.org/en/elona