The Complicated Question Of What’s A Roguelike Video Game

Steam recently held a gaming sale called “Going Rogue: A Festival Of Persistence” with the idea being to highlight roguelike video games alongside several other subgenres such as souls-likes and metroidvanias. Amusingly, Steam themselves acknowledged how complicated the question of what a roguelike video game is by releasing a blog post called “Going Rogue: A crash course in a confusing (sub) genre“. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at this topic, share some examples that I’ve played and clarify some details.

Starting with a little bit of a history lesson, the term “Roguelike” comes from a video game called “Rogue”. Originally released in 1980, Rogue laid down the foundations of what a roguelike was such as permadeath and procedurally generated dungeons. Roguelikes were historically turn-based RPGs but the genre has developed to the point now where the gameplay covers a wide variety of playstyles such as shooters, platformers, strategy etc.

As time has progressed, a new form of roguelike called “Roguelite” has developed which borrows many aspects from roguelikes but differs by not completely resetting each time you die. While death is still undesirable and will result in a loss of progress, some progress is still carried over into the next playthrough in contrast to a roguelike where no progress is carried over.

The earliest roguelike that I personally remember playing is FTL: Faster Than Light, a game in which you control a spaceship fleeing from a massive rebel force towards Federation headquarters to provide vital information in defeating the rebellion. As you progress through each sector of space, each of which is procedurally generated, you encounter a wide variety of events that can either be positive or negative while you develop your spaceship and crew. The destruction of the ship will result in a permanent game over which requires the player to begin the game from the beginning again. I have fond memories of playing the game over and over again and occasionally succeeding as I lived out a Star Trek/Battlestar Galactica fantasy and it remains a classic of the genre.

Another game that I’ve recently enjoyed playing that fits into this category is Darkest Dungeon. In charge of a hamlet, the player must send adventurers into the nearby dungeons to earn resources to develop their heroes and the hamlet itself in order to overcome the titular Darkest Dungeon. I personally consider Darkest Dungeon to be a roguelite since, while the adventurers themselves can permanently die, upgrades to the hamlet are, for the most part, permanent and make future dungeon attempts easier. I distinctly remember playing the game many years ago but found even its lowest difficulty too hard for me. However, I recently came back to it and managed to complete the game on its standard difficulty, something which I’m quite proud of.

While this genre is by no means restricted to the PC platform, it does seem that it’s the platform where it thrives the most. Part of the reason I wanted to write this article was that I’ve been seeing a lot of information and leaks regarding a PC port of the PS5 exclusive Returnal. A roguelike game, Returnal received generally positive reviews when it first came out but received backlash both for technical issues, which I consider to be fair, and difficulty, which boggles my mind. Considering the point of these games is to die over and over again and to keep persevering, any backlash to the difficulty is very confusing to me and it seems that some people hope that the game will perform better financially on PC where roguelikes have traditionally done very well.

I still see plenty of debate where people can’t decide whether a game is a roguelike, a roguelite or something else but it remains a fascinating style of game. Let me know your thoughts on the complicated question of what a roguelike video game is, how you personally define what a roguelike or roguelite game is, which roguelike games have you played and any additional information you might have on the topic.

Thanks for reading and if you wish to seek any of the titles I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs! Also feel free to follow my curator page on Steam “JRPG Reviews” for thoughts and opinions on any JRPGs that I play and my YouTube channel “Victory Achieved Gaming” where I guide my friend through challenging games.