As mentioned in the article, the r/RoguelikeDev summer code-along event[1] is a fantastic way to complete a basic roguelike. It provides both a bit of a push and group accountability that some people need to get started and maintain momentum. Unfortunately it takes place just once a year during (northern hemisphere's) summer break because that's when a bunch of young people have more time on their hands to do stuff like this. :)
And https://bfnightly.bracketproductions.com/ is a great tutorial, not just at being a step by step guide but by introducing new ideas (for example, it has a chapter on wave function colapse for map generation [0], among other things)
I’ve been playing roguelikes since the mid 1980s, and from that perspective it’s hard to overstate Josh Ge’s contribution to the genre. Cogmind is just incredible — an absolute masterpiece that he is continually evolving. And Josh has likely written more for and about the genre than anyone else in history.
This is a guy who’s put over ten thousand hours into his seminal game, and to the genre overall. I feel like Josh — along with Tarn and Zach Adams (Dwarf Fortress) — have by sheer force of will translated roguelikes into the current era. (And yes, FTL and Spelunky are awesome as well — just farther afield.)
After finally purchasing RimWorld, I don't see the point in playing most other games. The vanilla game is incredible, but with mods and scenario customizations I can basically create any kind of top down game I want: start a game playing it one way (super peaceful like the Sims) and flip on a zombie mod once I get bored.
We need a law akin to Godwin's: if any online discussion continues long enough, someone will almost certainly argue about the definition of "roguelike."
That game is pure crack. Its an easy way to kill 10+ hours. something about resource management skinner boxes. stardew valley and cities skylines have similar effects too.
It still blows my mind that a game genre I thought was the most niche of niches, that I played routinely in the early 2000s, has become one of the major influences in modern gaming today.
Shoutout to ADOM, a game I spent countless hours playing.
The only real influence is the concept of permadeath. People often claim that games like FTL are roguelikes, but other than permadeath, they have nothing in common with Rogue.
That's unfair to FTL and the advancement of rogue-likes and perhaps more importantly, rogue-lites.
It's not just "permadeath", there's also the seeding and randomness of each game . (No-one would argue that Super Mario is a rogue-like).
Additionally, and while this is stretched to some degree in games like Hades, there's the discrete-time based nature of the games compared to a game like Isaac for instance.
Then with rogue-lites there's also a layering of meta-progression on top of the game loop progression.
Saying that roguelikes are "just" permadeath is misrepresenting the genre entirely.
And the nature of words is that you might conclude that rogue isn't necessarily the quintessential rogue-like game, but that's okay.
The most important concepts which Rogue contributed to modern games are:
- Abstract/symbolic representation over realistic/literal graphics
- Systems (without documentation) as a primary aspect of play
- Procedural content generation
- Permadeath
Permadeath is the least novel of the concepts, but it is key to the effectiveness of the others. Permadeath adds drama and stakes to the player's experiments with the game's systems, and adds importance to the results of the procedural content.
You've basically debunked your own theory here since nobody calls checkers or anything like checkers a roguelike.
Roguelikes almost always involve building up a character or deck or cards or whatever by acquiring more stuff that changes the gameplay, and it's the loss of this unique thing that you've built that is relevant to "when you lose you start over."
Additionally, roguelikes are almost always heavily randomzied, when you start over you get brand new decisions to make.
"When you lose you start over" certainly is a roguelike characteristic, but what losing means and what starting over means is strongly similar among roguelikes and not similar to losing or starting over in checkers.
I always really wanted to get a trident of the red rooster and even with a guide was never able to do it. Maybe I'll give it another shot! Thanks for bringing back some lovely (frustrating) memories.
Uhh, I really don't think it's a good advice for gamedev.
I really miss the times when games were polished since v1.0. Random crash on boss fight? Hey, it's an early access / beta / v0.0.1 / we were in rush, forced by some non-sense deadline set by our kickstarter campaign (or ego). Wait for the updates!
> Uhh, I really don't think it's a good advice for gamedev.
It is, but it leaves out a crucial bit of information, namely who is the audience to whom the game is released. It's important to get feedback early, especially gameplay feedback. At the same time, failed releases to the general public do little to inspire confidence or provide the valuable kind of feedback required in the early phases of development.
One potential downside to releasing early is the risk of a hardcore fanbase coalescing around the game, that knows every system and exploit in and out. As a result they then scream for the game to be harder, harder. And as such devoted and vocal fans for so long, the devs may be overly inclined to listen to them, to the detriment of the new/less experienced player experience.
Among others, I think Risk of Rain fell prey to this, but I may be thinking of a different game.
Most "early access" games I've played were about as bug-free as I'd expect from an old-school v1.0 launch: you'd occasionally hit an obscure hardware combo that caused crashes, etc. but it very definitely "worked on their device"
When done well, it's about putting the concepts and mechanics in front of players, so that they can provide feedback. Maybe the magic system you have in mind is super confusing. Maybe you wrote a throw-away portion in a way that makes everyone think it's going to be central to the eventual plot.
With a small group of friends, you get a lot of bias - you'll build the game your friends enjoy. The easiest way to find out how a commercial audience reacts is to expose it to a large number of players.
Obviously there are BAD early access games that ignore this advice, but I've also played well-established games with numerous patches that are still full of bugs too.
With modern-day development practices (think: modern, 'safer' languages, game development frameworks and automated testing), these things are much less common. You don't wait to fix bugs and work on stability until the last moment anymore, you create an MVP / POC and take it to early access and/or Kickstarter, then work on that basis.
Roguelike games usually draw me in, but you've populated your Steam page with what looks like mobile resolution videos. Mobile ports on PC are rarely appealing, the strong exceptions exist of course, but it may be to your benefit to show some videos at native PC resolutions.
I've been a patron following development for some time, the game's really good and the devlogs even better. It lacks the variety of DCSS but is so much better.. put together. Modern, convenient. Has a twist. And sci-fi theme!
Sudden feelings of guilt as I think "I should really give a few weeks of love to my unfinished roguelike." Maybe I'll get to it over this year's holiday season. Need to finish the multiplayer, the vendor buy/sell system, and compose the music score and I can say "done."
Having shipped a goodly number of video games, both as part of a team and as solo developer over a 20+ year career in professional game development, and a further 20 years as a hobbyist developer since leaving the game development industry, I strongly disagree with your statement. And based on the fact I am more than capable of composing my own music score, and really, I'd simply be pulling from my back catalogue AKA raiding either of my soundcloud accounts or my "abandoned ideas" directory, for several of the pieces, I don't think I should outsource one of my competencies.
Readit News
1. Disclosure: I'm the host
[0] also talked about here https://www.gridbugs.org/wave-function-collapse/ and other places
This is a guy who’s put over ten thousand hours into his seminal game, and to the genre overall. I feel like Josh — along with Tarn and Zach Adams (Dwarf Fortress) — have by sheer force of will translated roguelikes into the current era. (And yes, FTL and Spelunky are awesome as well — just farther afield.)
Respect.
Shoutout to ADOM, a game I spent countless hours playing.
It's not just "permadeath", there's also the seeding and randomness of each game . (No-one would argue that Super Mario is a rogue-like).
Additionally, and while this is stretched to some degree in games like Hades, there's the discrete-time based nature of the games compared to a game like Isaac for instance.
Then with rogue-lites there's also a layering of meta-progression on top of the game loop progression.
Saying that roguelikes are "just" permadeath is misrepresenting the genre entirely.
And the nature of words is that you might conclude that rogue isn't necessarily the quintessential rogue-like game, but that's okay.
- Abstract/symbolic representation over realistic/literal graphics
- Systems (without documentation) as a primary aspect of play
- Procedural content generation
- Permadeath
Permadeath is the least novel of the concepts, but it is key to the effectiveness of the others. Permadeath adds drama and stakes to the player's experiments with the game's systems, and adds importance to the results of the procedural content.
- Random generation
- Resource management
- Exploration
- Single ruleset for players and enemies
- Combat focused
- Multiple viable strategies
So many games are called "roguelike" from so many different genres that the word has lost all meaning.
Near as I can tell, the only thing actually meant by it is "when you lose you start over". By that definition, checkers is a roguelike.
Roguelikes almost always involve building up a character or deck or cards or whatever by acquiring more stuff that changes the gameplay, and it's the loss of this unique thing that you've built that is relevant to "when you lose you start over."
Additionally, roguelikes are almost always heavily randomzied, when you start over you get brand new decisions to make.
"When you lose you start over" certainly is a roguelike characteristic, but what losing means and what starting over means is strongly similar among roguelikes and not similar to losing or starting over in checkers.
This hits me hard as I am always 2 days before releasing my first roguelike game on Steam since 2021 (shameless plug: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2053250/Hellway/).
> Release early and often
Uhh, I really don't think it's a good advice for gamedev.
I really miss the times when games were polished since v1.0. Random crash on boss fight? Hey, it's an early access / beta / v0.0.1 / we were in rush, forced by some non-sense deadline set by our kickstarter campaign (or ego). Wait for the updates!
> Uhh, I really don't think it's a good advice for gamedev.
It is, but it leaves out a crucial bit of information, namely who is the audience to whom the game is released. It's important to get feedback early, especially gameplay feedback. At the same time, failed releases to the general public do little to inspire confidence or provide the valuable kind of feedback required in the early phases of development.
Among others, I think Risk of Rain fell prey to this, but I may be thinking of a different game.
When done well, it's about putting the concepts and mechanics in front of players, so that they can provide feedback. Maybe the magic system you have in mind is super confusing. Maybe you wrote a throw-away portion in a way that makes everyone think it's going to be central to the eventual plot.
With a small group of friends, you get a lot of bias - you'll build the game your friends enjoy. The easiest way to find out how a commercial audience reacts is to expose it to a large number of players.
Obviously there are BAD early access games that ignore this advice, but I've also played well-established games with numerous patches that are still full of bugs too.
Like how most software is built these days.
The author is the creator of the popular commercial roguelike, Cogmind.
Even made some CSS graphs for it (slightly outdated): https://hypertele.fi/8b7ac4d1cbecbf8b
Fiverr
It looks better if you add someone else to the credits anyway
Nah, I'm good.
What I said in my head:
Having shipped a goodly number of video games, both as part of a team and as solo developer over a 20+ year career in professional game development, and a further 20 years as a hobbyist developer since leaving the game development industry, I strongly disagree with your statement. And based on the fact I am more than capable of composing my own music score, and really, I'd simply be pulling from my back catalogue AKA raiding either of my soundcloud accounts or my "abandoned ideas" directory, for several of the pieces, I don't think I should outsource one of my competencies.