How Roguelites Are Taking Over Games - Extra Credits Gaming
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- Опубліковано 19 гру 2023
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Embark on a journey through gaming history as we explore the rising trend of Roguelite mechanics, echoing the transformative impact RPG elements had in the early 2000s. These mechanics, characterized by short, repeatable playthroughs with randomization and meta-progression, are infiltrating diverse game genres. Offering short-session play opportunities and massive content reuse. Will Roguelites shape the future of gaming, unfolding a new chapter in the ever-evolving landscape of game design?
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I do not know about everyone else, but Roguelite is my favorite for simple reasons; the 'Steam Year in review' thing literally came out last night, and all of my top 10 were roguelites of one form or another. There is no time investment demand, you pick up and play, and it is done; you can quit and come back a year later, and you aren't lost on any plot, you don't forget where you were going - every run is self contained. Perfect for an adult with a bust life schedule.
We used to call this Arcade lol
This is totally how I feel as an adult gamer. Rogelites just fit into my schedule so much better.
Interesting. As a busy adult I would say the opposite. Sure, to play a rogue like doesn't require much. But to beat one takes a lot of time investment. That's why I would rather play a 10 hour long story game instead of a rogue like which actually takes 80 hours to beat.
@@jktomas Hm. I find myself so divorced from the concept of "beating" a game that I didn't even consider it would be a factor for someone. As satisfying as a conclusion is, it's just not what I play games for, so I always prefer something with more nebulous goals than "reach the last thing". Roguelites and similar are basically my whole thing, as a result.
@jktomas This video was about Rougelites, not Rougelikes. Not as intensive.
This is 100% a video that needs a part 2. I think you’ve touched upon trends in gaming that show the direction we are headed and why
Oooo a deeper dive would be fun!
@@extracreditsDO IT!! 💯
After Hades really showed that you can do proper storytelling with a Roguelite, it was only a matter of time until everyone tried it. Pretty sure this is where we're at now. It's likely going to be around 10 more years until we see how much of it sticks.
I think you should’ve talked about possible downsides of improperly implementing rouguelite mechanics into games or downsides inherent of Roguelite games.
Seconded. This episode completely glossed over the potential downsides from a player/consumer/psychological/enjoyment prospective.
I find roguelites to be a poor excuse for a well implemented game but because they enable The Metrics to go Up they don't get called out or abandoned as quickly as a bad game should be. Playing the same content over and over _is not good_ when there is so much other content out there that would be equally or better to put that time into. It's the difference between playing 10 different games you fully enjoy versus 1-2 mediocre games you only keep playing for the dopamine reward around the corner.
@@zimzat exactly in last years I played two games with well implemented rougelite mechanics (and one of them is really lite). Games that really allow fun with new games, and what most important games, that gave me after some time "that's enough, it was fun now move on" feeling. Most rougelites are just toxic time consumers.
And last but not least one mechanic taking over is always bad for creative game design in general.
Ill uh have a deckbuilder with uh rougelite mechanics.
Daring today are we?
Yeah, when you do succeed it feels not as meaningful as cracking a hard boss in darksouls. You just were lucky. Maybe people prone to gambling get more of a kick out of that.
@@moartems5076 oh please acting as if roguelikes are all luck based is bull. While yes it is a factor in all of them. Some more than others (looking at you Isaac) that doesn’t mean that it’s all just stupid luck. For example you could get the best rng in the world during a slay the spire run but if you don’t know what you’re doing you won’t win. Same goes the other way. Even if you aren’t having a great run you can still win by playing smart. There’s not a single popular game in the genre that can be won with pure luck and without skill. Except for again Isaac. And even then not really since most of the time the rigs happen because of good game knowledge
@@zimzatroguelites in general aren’t the same content over and over 💀. Definitely not the good ones.
All I can say is the same thing I thought when RPG mechanics became ubiquitous.
"You know, it'll be a real shame when publishers figure out how to monetize all of this." It's how we got things like microtransactions, lootboxes, and "time savers".
thank god lootboxes largely died before roguelites took off. That'd be a devastating combination.
Compared to RPG-progression mechanics, which can be sprinkled pretty much everywhere, I feel that there is a somewhat smaller set of games/genres for which a roguelite can bring a lot of significant value.
For example, some grand strategy game experience or story-base RPG are a bit hard to make into a roguelite.
Yeah, I also think so.
Roguelites can only work with a subset of games. They don't necessarily "enhance" or merge with other genres but more or less replace it.
For example, I don't think a game with a more guided experience like Twilight Princess would give the same feeling or be enhanced as a Roguelite game. In fact, I'd say it would take a lot away from it. Puzzles wise they probably would need to be dumbed down to work no matter your progress, and you would keep seeing the same puzzles each run. The story could be a problem, unless only the dungeons are randomized, but then the dungeons would feel less coherent/intentionally designed and more like some rooms cobbled together.
Also, there are people that do want to keep game progress and not start from (more or less) 0 every time they lose once. (And yes, I know there are games that keep upgrades or let you early skip sections etc.)
I have had some fun with Polytopia, a pretty quality mobile game (also on Steam if you prefer) that's basically Civ but limited to 30 turns (also a mode that's "infinite" with the goal of crushing all opposing tribes sword-style). 30 turns doesn't sound like a lot, but it actually ramps up pretty quick, and ends up feeling pretty meaty by the end.
I agree, while we'll probably continue to see more diverse roguelites mechanically it doesn't quite have the versatility to become a truly ubiquitous feature. Though considering how broadly applied the concept can be I wouldn't be surprised if a number of games are mistakenly called or marketed as roguelites.
Case in point: labeling Civilisation as a roguelike/lite. The terms are meant to apply to RPGs. Just because a game involves generated levels or can be replayed doesn't make it a roguelike, otherwise Minesweeper and Solitaire are roguelikes and virtually any game with checkpoints a roguelite.
On the contrary, what is a game of civilisation if not a roguelike run? It has all the criteria. Randomisation, highly replayable. Its not short, but in comparison to the length of a big story game its not long either. The only thing missing is meta progression, and thats not even part of the roguelike genre, but an rpg element that makes roguelikes more palatable.
Mind you, what we saw with RPG mechanics back in the day was all sorts of direct (and occasionally weird) hybrids, and then a diffusion of particular subsets of their mechanics into basically everywhere else. And today, it's really hard to find a genre of game where there isn't some notable example using some sort of rpg mechanic in it somewhere.
And that's what we're seeing.... Take Against the Storm, a roguish city builder/colony manager. Hades is, in part, a roguish visual novel. Inscryption uses roguish elements as a major part of doing what it does. The most recent Age of Wonders (published by paradox, even) has some roguelite systems in how it runs it's campaign mode...
one mode i really love that has been popping in games is Randomizer modes. similarly to making a game a Rougelite, it can add a ton of Replayability when it forces you to do things you might have skipped over or change playstyles.
Gotta admit, between Dave the Diver, Vampire Survivors and the new God of War Valhalla update, a lot of my library has become rougelikes without me realising. It is great for quick pick up and play! And gives you feeling you achieved something each run. 😊
I have a story idea that I've struggled with for a long time. With recent games, I realized I'm trying to write a rogue-lite metroidvania as a novel. The MC explores a looping area of ruins with timed events and abilities, some which carry between "runs" and others that require rediscovering. I'm a fan of this trend at least for research purposes.
Roguelike mechanics will find their ways into more and more games, simple because of one reason:
It let's you reuse a lot of content without the gaming community immediately complaining about it...
How very cynical.
@@Tuss36 the business world is extremely cynical, any engagement when that side of the world turns out this way >_>
It's not a rogue like, but I'm always extremely impressed that guerrilla games used a large majority of the kill zone 2 assets for kill zone 3 and they are both great games, despite the constrained development schedule for 3.
Although I don't mind the occasional roguelite (depends on how it's implemented), I think I would just stop playing video games is this happened.
I want to explore new world, not run around the same maps with minor changes, that drives me nuts.
sorry if this comes across as too negative.
Honest truth one of the reason I play games is to explore a vast, fantastical world. And when games use the rougelike/lite elements for maps, it can be very quickly discouraging seeing samey elements shaken out over and over again. I've seen games be able to punch through that but it's something I'll play a game in spite of instead of because of.
You can implement any idea poorly enough that it becomes bad. The equivalent of what you are worried about in traditional long single run games is going from one area to the next in a line or wandering around an open world, and it doesn't change the experience because you found a mechanic (like the big club in the video) that solves every problem and the game never causes you to change things up.
A good rogue light makes runs feel different because you don't always have the same tools that used last time. It can force improvisation. Avoiding improvisation and sticking to a single established strategy is one of ways players often optimize the fun out of games.
I agree with you. I find myself sticking to older and older games as time progresses. The few new games I played this year are roguelikes - but that's likely because everything is going roguelike.
@@nottelling7438 I'm not worried, whatever happens happens, & my life is getting to complicated for video games anyway.
I can respect roguelites & the people how love them, but they drive me nuts, everyone has different things that engage them, there's just not much that engages me.
This is all a broadly stated concept, in reality it's all about the ways the mechanics are implemented.
Yes. I started noticing this already a couple years ago, in my opinion it started with Rogue Legacy. Not that there weren't any roguelikes/lites before, but that was a super easy to digest roguelike where the roguelike-ness was Super obvious, and fun, popular and intriguing. Then, again in my opinion, Slay The Spire sealed the deal, every card or card-like game looked at it and thought "yes, this, this is what we all want, let's make more of these" and we got more, and more and a lot more, and suddenly players who love strategic slow gameplay on branching paths combining many tools started thinking, "well, what if other games did this? what if Age of Empires was a roguelike? if I slowed down the timer to allow for strategizing, and made the buildings or technologies I can develop random, while allowing for crazy combos in the right setups, wouldn't that also be cool?".
It all just started falling like dominoes. Personally I have a couple of unique roguelike games I've thought over the years (on genres or scenarios that I haven't seen explored yet) that I'd love to program, I just need to get enough time to actually get down to it lol.
It'd be interesting if Fromsoft decided to turn the Chalice dungeons from Bloodborne into a full game so that they'd have their own dedicated rougelite game.
I'm personally not a big fan of the genre. There are some games that I do enjoy that go into that category so there are certainly exceptions. But it does feel like nearly every indie game that at first catches my interests, I then find out its a rogue likes/lites, and it kind of deflates my desire for it. I know that there are many people out there that love the genre, so I don't want to complain, but I also do because I am sometimes annoyed by it. I want to make meaningful progress in games and their stories. Children of Morta certainly makes it feel like the story is constantly progressing. But some games, it feels like I just got a meaningless 5% uptick in some random stat.
I'm in the same boat as you, roguelite has become a mental shortcut in my brain for squeezing the most possible 'gameplay', with the least possible narrative and genuine sense of forward progression, that as soon as I see the tag I am immediately turned off. The example game used in the video, Returnal, sounds like the exception that proves the rule, to me, the fact that it stands out for doing it right, shows how easy it is to do it wrong.
I like hybrid rougue likes with actual stories, for example caves of qud has an actual story and set in stone main quests even if everything else is randomly generated
Interesting. I was kinda hoping for a run down of what "rougelite" is though. I'm one of those who doesn't have a whole lot of time for video games (any spare time taken by TTRPGs, not that I don't game at all). Would have been nice to have a definition in there.
Yeah. I was a little lost too. Found this though: "Rogue-adjacent games mostly just require randomized upgrades and permadeath. Roguelike means specifically no meta-progression, if you die you start over from scratch with no advantage. Roguelite means it has meta-progression, you die but keep something which you can use to make the next run easier." Is a tower defense game where you get points to spend on permanent perks roguelite? I don't know.
It's like a roguelike, but with more forgiving mechanics that let you keep _some_ sort of progress in between runs. A lite version of a roguelike.
The elements as I see it are separate runs where losing means starting over and a great deal of randomness so you don't always face the same challenges and you don't always have the same tools to face those challenges.
This ideally makes for a highly replayable experience because it is always different. Often it is difficult so you are not expected to win on your first try.
When people make a distinction, "lite" means you advance between runs in ways other than increasing player skill and knowledge, often by collecting a persistent currency for upgrades or unlocking things you can then find on future runs.
I had some fun with rougelite, but now I got to the opposite feeling: Instead of seeing permanent upgrades AFTER a session, I see an unwinnable game BEFORE I played X amounts of time for permanent upgrades.
I dread playing one because I don't see me winning, I see me chipping away at the endless grind.
It's one of the real design pits of roguelikes: making the floor too low. You start out way too weak. This CAN be made into a good mechanic too if designed well, but too often still I agree that it runs into basically the exact same thing as level up mechanics. You have to put in hours before your character power is where it honestly should have started.
I'm trying to imagine a game where they set up your expectations correctly though, you ARE asked to grind and die early on to get the stuff you need, and that's appreciated. First run victory is not intended, maybe not possible, and that's fine. Hmm. Actually are there lessons to learn from clickers/incremental games here? They're made entirely of grind and resetting... Then again few of them are actually all that good, very easy to make those not engaging. But hey, the good ones did something right
Hades is sort of that, and it works really really well, because getting further in feels like improvement. Enter the Gungeon is similar. It doesn't feel bad that you don't win the run immediately. You never go into it thinking you're going to win right away, and in fact the narrative of both of those games suffers quite a bit if you do somehow manage to win it right away. In fact thats basically the case with all roguelites that I've played. Your skills and meta progression combined both render it unwinnable right away, but getting further in each time shows how you're improving in a way that traditional rpgs actually have trouble with.
I like the idea of this, but as I get older, slower, and "dimmer" I'm pretty sure games with hard difficulty "walls" like roguelites and souls-likes will get removed from my gaming library altogether
roguelites do not necessarily need to be hard games, the widespread appeal of vampire survivors proves that point fairly definitively
Extra Credits should make a video about Hades sometime as well as how it became such a massive hit in the roguelike genre as a whole. Hades got extremely popular thanks to so many of the elements mentioned in this video.
Enter the Gungeon and Returnal... I'm starting to see a theme in Matt's favorite games.
(Also, I've been playing Astral Ascent with my friend, and boy howdy is that "one more run" pull strong)
I really hope Rougelites aren't the future of gaming, I hate having all of my cool abilities taken away every every half hour, it's like designing an entire industry around the worst part of Metroid Prime
my biggest problem with rougelikes is that i have a hard time finding a good point to put the game down for good. I never stopped playing a rougelike when the story was over. It was more the slow realization that i am only enjoying the skills i learned playing the game and getting less and less out of every completed run. It is kinda like open world games. You play the game for such a long time that you slowly reach the natural end of the game in terms of enjoyment. Which stands in stark contrast to story based games that try to tell a great story and send you away with the credits.
There is one problem with that logic, with most rogue likes it is impossible to know how long an individual run will take.
There are bounds though, like the expected time for a successful run is going to hover around certain numbers. With variance for different players but still. If you assume you can get to the end on this next run, you can make an expectation for yourself roughly how long that would take
I feel like, in a sense, roguelites also discourage trying out different ways to play. In most other games, whenever you think 'I wonder whether this would work', there is rarely any reason not to just try it. On the other hand, in roguelites, the consequences of failure are a lot larger and so one is encouraged to just revert to the most boring and cautious way to play as soon as the gear one finds allows it.
I think having unlockable classes helps with that, since they're often already specced into a different playstyle, which makes it easier to try things out than if you had to find each individual piece of gear for that playthrough in game, without knowing if the other pieces would even turn up.
I played Hades as I was pretty much into the narrative. Ofc I died a lot at the beginning, but getting all the rewards for all 6 weapons made me actually try them out. also that buff that gives you more darkness per run helped me to try different things out. And the different starting god as well.
I disagree. If the length of a run is short enough, that drains away the cost of failure. Just try again. In some long form RPGs if you spend your upgrades poorly, you might be dozens of hours in and realize your character is ineffective or not aligned to how you want to play and now that is dozens of hours wasted because now you have to either start over or quit entirely.
A well made roguelike can't punish you worse than the length of an individual run. You just have to be willing to fail, which is a good skill outside of games, too.
@@nottelling7438 Not all roguelites have short runs: some can run into hours, at which point you absolutely do not want to try anything risky - the same can also occur for the ones with short runs if they are difficult enough, as the time you lose is not just that of the run, but also that of all the tries to get as far as you currently are. On the other hand, for RPGs, there is an easy fix that most of them already implement: allow people to reassign their skill points at little cost.
The players are making their own informal roguelikes too. They don't all have metaprogression or anything but you arguably don't need it. You can draft in Magic, Hearthstone, or Pokemon. There are lots of video game randomizers that are effectively roguelike modes. Randomizing the locations of the items and the bosses is fun for basically all the same reasons. Lots of tabletop games have a random initial setup. Kaizo Ironmon is kind of like a roguelike.
Lots of older games were arguably designed with roguelike sensibilities. Megaman 1 provides you with totally different experiences depending on the order you go through the stages in. The weapons play differently and hit different bosses for weakness. RPGs with job systems let you play through the game with different jobs. The first 2 Paper Mario games had badge systems that let you customize Mario's abilities and attributes differently on different playthroughs. Pokemon.
owlcat needs to add rogue like elements in their massive RPGs, just finding time to play rogue trader these past few days have been nearly impossible
I loved hearing you gush about Returnal! There are so many indie roguelikes, it was fun to finally play what a AAA roguelike can be. I had a fantastic time with the game, and it’s cool they added an infinite mode too
The flipside of forcing a player to play in ways that they're not comfortable with, is the player will sometimes feel uncomfortable and not want to keep playing. If I just got a cool item combination then die shortly after, I'll spend a bunch of runs trying to get that combination back. If that's not possible, I'll usually either mod the game so I can choose the thing I want, or stop playing entirely and find something else to do.
You're going to mention the "just one more run" feeling these games are instilling 3 or 4 times,without mentioning monetization strategy?
To help share some brief game design thoughts, while I agree that 'roguelites' include elements of game experiences that multiple people value, one of these fundamental valued experiences seems to be iterative gaming broken down in to small manageable pieces which doesn't have to be restricted to roguelites or restricted to a single game genre.
While I was watching this video, I thought about farming games similar to Stardew Valley and Sun Haven that break down the entire experience in to a series of short days, with seemingly minimal 'rougelite' game design, like heavy randomness.
I've been playing Sun Haven recently while deeply enjoying this experience, partly because one game day is roughly twenty minutes real time to complete, and I feel satisfied with how much I achieve in the short term, which helps me work towards long term goals. I don't need excessive randomness because I highly value repetition and I value familiarity.
Been playing the Valhalla expansion for God of War Ragnarok, and everything mentioned in this video left me thinking, "ooh, I might do a few runs tonight when I return home from work".
Great video, smashing job!
I just love Noita because all of this. Sometimes I play one live each, with friends (almost getting 40) with music on the back, drinks while talking politics. Like is just there, and when you feel, maybe found a freaking weird wand and everyone laught.
Happy holidays guys! Thanks for this as always! ❤️❤️❤️❤️🎄🎄🎄🎄
I would've liked to hear more specific examples of games and how the mechanics are implemented in them, because I can't remember any time I've encountered roguelite mechanics in games that don't already fall into the roguelike/roguelite genre
Remnant: from the ashes and remnant 2 are good examples. It could have easily been a one-and-done coop shooter. But, they made each run relatively short, with semi-randomized regions and dungeons and multiple potential narratives in each region. Add in the class system, and you have meta progression on top of potential new stories
One of my favorite games pretty much has a rougelite mode, but instead of standard things, each level in that mode is a rougelite, with each run making progress to getting to the next stage, each level is wave based and every run of that mode is different with the ability to pretty much choose your strengths and weakness (called origins) for that run, even if the only thing that happens when you die is the progress being rest on the level you died in, not the whole run, heck, the first 2 runs and your first run with one of the origins adds lore to that mode's story
Always happy to see the differentiation between roguelite and roguelike. It's important to keep terminology accurate and consistent for the sake of describing games. If I say something is like the game Rogue (or let's be real, NetHack) that definitely does not include things like Nuclear Throne or Slay the Spire. It would be like if we called Hotline Miami a Doom Clone just because it has guns and you kill stuff, or Diablo is a Doom Clone because you're killing demons.
nuclear throne and slay the spire are roguelikes, not rogue lites. they don't have permanent stat progression. What you are referring to are Traditional Roguelikes.
@@Zectifin A roguelike is like the game rogue. NT and Spire are not like rogue. They have some minor elements in common, but the gameplay is in completely different genres. If you want a recent example of a rogueLIKE, look at Jupiter Hell.
Rogue is not a deck builder with unlockable content. It is not a top down shooter with unlockable content. NT and spire are DEFINITELY not dungeon crawlers.
EDIT: come to think of it, the ONLY thing that spire has in common with rogue is loss of progression upon character death.
Episode feels a bit toothless, but yeah one of the most popular Genres is definitely gonna be influencing all the games around it and evolve the craft ^^
Inscryption is amazing as a rougelite, and when you finish the main plot parts it unlocks a rougelike mode called "Kaycee's mod" (it's official, it's just named that way because lore), and then when you complete runs in the rougelike section, it unlocks new content if you enable enough challenges, and a small but of lore. So you naturally go into a loop of pushing what you can handle while it's throwing new content into your face. And also because Inscryption is a card game rougelike/rougelite, it also appeals to my understanding of trading card games enough so when I lost because I got a bad hand, I'm like "ok next run I need to try ending with a smaller deck". You can genuinely learn how to play TCGs better in general from Inscryption (although it's mainly a few deck building principles since obviously every TCG is different)
Basically this is my go to recommendation if I think of a Rougelike/Rougelite
Returnal was my first rougelike. The lore was what held my interest but man starting over each time really did make me rage for the first time in any non online game lol. It’s still a game I’d definitely recommend
For game designers, it may be good, but for consumer it just leads to frustration. Games are becoming way too addictive for it to be healthy way to spend spare time, and instead aim to make the whole life of the gamer revolve around them, especially for younger players that do not have developed self control of how much time they can spend. And since they did not develop that as youngsters, when they grew up (with the time consuming "just one more game" attitude) they will not have it when more important things turn up. This in turn leads to destroying relationships, work ethic ("gonna stay up late to play, then be groggy and unpleasant at work") and finally even financial decline (buying game boosts instead of fixing the stuff that broke two months ago). In my opinion we shouldn't be happy that this is happening at all.
Those carrot on a stick graphics?! And on a bat, or a tank...
Clever and funny.
Kudos!
I've had some good fun with a few roguelite's, but I don't like that it feels like they've completely taken over my steam recommendations. That and metroidvanias.
Kinda weird how ubiquitous RPG mechanics are despite almost none of them having any improvement to the roleplaying in those games.
Like skills and gear buffs are usually "get +10 damage against blue enemies while crouching and moving on Tuesday". Rarely is it something that adds character like a fear of toasters or an ability that feeds into the fantasy the game is trying to fulfil like Payday 3's human shield and hostage skills.
For example Far Cry 6 is a open world game full of RPG mechanics that allegedly tries to fill the fantasy of being a guerrilla but none of the mechanics or skills reinforce this. You don't need to hide from an overwhelming force, you don't have limited resources and you don't really work with your fellow guerrillas to overcome problems. It's a roleplaying game without roleplaying.
Best wishes in the new year! ☮
I'm actually starting a new online D&D 5e series that has some Roguelite elements the friday! The dungeon allows for many different players to drop in when they can, there is permadeath but also a retirement mechanic so you can save treasure between runs, earn world synchronous downtime, and build forward despite the impermanence of PCs.
Here is my question to this video @extracredits :
Which games are "adopting" rougelight-mechanics, as you are telling us in this video?
Shure, there are more of those games nowerdays, but i can not think of a game, that uses rougelight-mechanis, without beeing a rougelight game, so, please, some examples would be nice.
Might be a hint for your videos going forward. Returnal is a rougelight bullethell first, and a storry-game second.
I believe the primary thing is that Roguelite mechanics are being added to game genres that are nothing like the original Rogue's top down view turn based dungeon crawler. The Binding of Isaac is an older indie roguelite, and it mostly just changed mechanics to match a top down action RPG rather than a turn based one. With Returnals, it is a 3rd person shooter bullethell game, that has integrated roguelite elements into the gameplay and story. 20XX is an example of a Megaman X inspired platformer Roguelite.
However, there are some games that would not be considered Roguelites that still have sections or modes that are Roguelites. For example, the newish Hoyoverse gacha game Honkai Star Rail, which plays as a classic turn based RPG, also has a Roguelite mode where the characters run through simulations, get random bonuses and face off against random enemies, and you get some prizes for accomplishing things in the run. That might be more what you were asking for.
Okay, but hear me out on this - making players play longer just for the sake of making them play longer is not necessarily a good practice.
Well this is an interesting video and question.. and looks like your next run is going to be a food & cook based build, enjoy the flavours.
Odd thought -- a Castlevania game with rougelite elements would work but a Metroid game with progression through multiple runs wouldn't be a Metroid game.
God of War Valhalla is a great example of a “training room”. Generally forcing you to try new things leading to a better understanding of the core concepts and helping you see the benefits of each piece of Kratos’s kit
Kind of a random example, but the random breakout mode of Cookie Run Ovenbreak is my favorite mode of that game. Sucks that they lock additional runs behind a paywall, but I really like how it gives variety to your runs in a game where you’re usually running with the same load out over and over.
Great video. Just wish it told me what Roguelite is and what mechanics are part of it.
Rogue-Lite offers the progression of a levelling system, but usually in a much more granular way.
And then it adds randomized runs and limitation of playstyles to the mix.
As an adult who’s always busy with an 8hr a day job…as soon as I actually find a roguelite I like that doesn’t annoy me or make me feel like I’m wasting my time…I’ll let you know.
Damn, I was like... Eh the last thing I want is another first person horror games. But you showed the gameplay and told me just what I needed to play it!
the one thing i dont like with most roguelites (or the cards varient version "Slay-the-Spire"-likes" is, that often, its only about the short gameplay run. Most of the time, i dont really have any real progress to work, sure, most of them unlock things over runs, but those are often just variations (and often, i dont event unlock them for having them, but just for the chance of the them showing up in the next run).And often, the gameplay loop itself is either just "defeat hordes after hordes of enemies" "go through randomized level design" or "Slay-the-Spire"-like. So, i might enjoy the gameplay loop for one or two rounds because its had a fun idea, but i often dont stick around because its like "whats the point of playing? its pretty much the same over and over again, just with little bit of different flavour".
Thats of course only my personal feelings. Roguelites per se are not a bad genre, i can understand why so man like them and i have 1-2 games that are rougelites that i like coming back every now and then or games where there are roguelite parts in them in a part of the game, but at least for me personally, if i see that a game is almost only roguelite, it drops my interest a lot.
lol just as I was celebrating that no longer is every other indie release trying to be the new Spelunky
Well, obviously this is the BEST THING EVER and there's literally zero reason people might not enjoy this because it has no downsides to the experience or pitfalls if handled poorly.
Slow your roll there captain positivity.
I love roguelites because i have a pretty short attention span, actually playing through story based RPGs or ones that have random encounters can be kind of boring, they're like a buffet, there's a ton of content but it's hard to get a ton of it in one sitting, roguelites are more like snacks, i can play a run or two whenever i have some free time, and the longest runs usually only take 30 minutes or so.
I appreciate the drive to "mix it up" with loadouts and weapons and playstyles, but so far seeing the world roguelike or rougelite in a description of a game just tells me that the world is arbitrary and if you want to make any progress you're gonna see that starting area several times with frequency. That stutters any flow I get into when starting a game.
I feel like any time you see a "you died" screen in a game is a point where "I could stop playing now" can creep into your mind. Doubley so in the early goings of a game where basic mechanics like movement and button memory are as likely to kill you as anything else. Some games can claw their way out of this by hanging story or having genuinely good game feel out of the gate but if it ever hits that point where I feel like i'm wasting my time, that game is as good as shelved.
Personal, it can get frustrating if you have a favorite ability set you like using, but the Rouge Like elements prevent you from being able to use often or even rare, depending on the game.
Some elements work, but if more games force me to constantly adapt to new playstile with no ability to just veg out with you prefered playstyle, then I'd just be less likely to pick up a game for a quick play session, over something that has short missions for those quick playsessions.
I think that another big reason rouge likes have popped up more is because streaming games has made one and done game SO much harder to make profitable.
And I don't mean that the games aren't good, but that if the best part of your game is something that people can get from watching a playthrough, you're losing a LOT of potential sales because people don't have enough reason to spend money to experience it. This doesn't mean streamers are evil, just that it's a much bigger factor than it was 10 years ago.
This is why replayability and/or strong gameplay mechanics are being focused on more and more: developers are trying to convince potential players that they should ALSO be playing their game. And if every run is unique, you're more inclined to want to try it out.
Of course this is only part of it and I'm a huge fan of rouge likes and their progression mechanics, I just figured I'd throw in my two cents.
0:31 can a pie be a rocket proppelled grenade?
Cheese?
Grapefruit?
Chicken?
Stake?
Beef?
Oranges?
Well.. if its a food... it can be a rpg...
Grapenuts?
Toster stroodle?
Vegie pizza?
I don't like rouglites, I hate "losing progress" even if I'm not actually losing progress. I want to play my game for as long as it takes, save, and pick up later. The segmented goal type of progression, my favorite style of which is the automation game tech tree, lets me feel that sense of accomplishment, and I just don't really get that from rougelites
well, considering that i've been playing Dave the Diver recently (only because i like running a restaurant and make dosh for it), it's most likely an inevitable trend to come next in the coming years of 2020+
My feeling when i beat Returnal was absolutely one of "well I got a lucky build, cuz I've mot really figured out how to survive half of these enemies." There were whole cutscenes i never saw because I reached the end before the number of loops thebgame expected me to experience.
I recently got the Platinum trophy on Returnal. It was a great game. (I just didn't enjoy grinding for those final, Rare, Xenoglyphs, but everything else was on point)
Another major thing I think is important is that while we like the feeling of growing more powerful in an RPG, we don't necessarily like being powerful, because it makes the game easier and often takes away the challenge and fun, and roguelikes, by frequently resetting our power to minimum (or some local minimum in rogue-lites), allow us to keep gaining power and then losing it over and over again without ever trivializing the game. One thing that can be annoying in Roguelites though is that often when you've just started you'll unlock new upgrades pretty quickly and then after a little while the game will stop giving you those upgrades, so you lose that feeling of progress.
Roguelites also show the player how they've improved in a way that rpgs often struggle with. You know that sort of myth of rpgs where you level up and then when you go back to the goblins that were giving you trouble at the start of the game and obliterate them it makes you feel powerful? It's actually pretty rare for that interaction to happen in rpgs because... well, why would the player be back in goblin forest when they've already beaten it? But in roguelites you start over every time. You can feel that power increase or that skill increase because you sail through the first floor or first boss instead of being stopped by it.
I think what you mean is that Roguelikes are popular, not that their mechanics are taking over games in the way that RPG mechanics completely changed non-rpg genres.
I'm in the middle of developing my own retro styled ROG using roguelite elements, have been for a while now and I might send EC a review code once I release it in steam, no strings attached, no obligations
Fills me with motivation to work on my rogue-lite deck-builder tower-defence game idea.
Not enough that im actually going to DO it... but _some_ motivation
i feel like meta progression many times goes against the game, because it balances winning the run behind losing runs for unlocks. great games let you win easily the first run and then adding difficulty and unlocks for future runs (like in binding of Isaac)
Eh, dead cells tried something similar, and it made me quit outright.
I like the game being (generally) fixed in difficulty, and having a limited toolset to start with. It lets me really push against the game with those tools, and I better understand how the new tool fits
You guys are back!?!?!?! why did no one tell me! I waited for years if ExtraHistory will ever release another ExtraCredits video, so happy you're back!!
I'm watching on Nebula but commenting here, hope Golfie gets mentioned here!
It's a roguelite deckbuilding golf game.
I like roguelite mechanics but they (and Soulslike mechanics) are quite restrictive on the narrative and the player experience and I worry that devs aren't always giving that enough thought. I'd hate for these to just become our default approach to death and saving and progression in all action-y games.
I feel called out by the whole "that 60 hour game that looks really good but you'll get to it when you have actual times" since I have owned Witcher 3 for 5 years and am just now playing it. Also LOVE Returnal but Hades is my Best Roguelite of All Time, my BRAT if you will. Well job I love roguelites and likes and always have, I really do 100% agree with this video. Thank for this!
You can tell i type :31,i didnt even see the carrots on weopons in the videos yet,
magic empath.
I wonder if the next Ratchet and Clank game (more or less hinted at with the recent hack) will have any form of roguelike mechanics involved. Out of all the franchises I can think of, the R&C series could go with some form of roguelike mode to let players test out out all of their wacky guns
Well Rogue-Lite's main appeal is constant progression while still maintaining challenge and allowing you to try out different strategies quickly. Power creep makes games without any reset button, boring due to lack of challenge by the time you get to mid or late game. Rogue-Lite's are definitely more appealing to mass audiences compared to roguelikes due to the constant progression. Your character gets stronger, win or lose everytime you play so you don't feel like your time was wasted.
Roguelite mechanics are anti-fun to me, so needless to say the recent years have been...rough...for me in the indie games space. So many promising titles lost to The Scourge. Back when every indie game was legally required to feature mediocre retro pixel art, at least it didn't impinge on gameplay so much.
PANR has tuned in.
You can’t stop me from 100% ing Barony
As someone who doesn't like rogue likes I hope not. It's so boring seeing the same rooms and bosses and items appear over and over again.
I mean, Rogue is one of the original action RPGs! It makes sense that some of its mechanics would make their way into more mainstream games now that its more approachable offspring have become popular.
First time seeing actual gameplay footage of Returnal. All I can think is “why would anyone pick this over Risk of Rain 2?”
Hey a great roguelite that you could have talked about was Inscyption + Kacyees mod
Overwatch needs to implement this. There is already a fan-made version called "infinite dungeon" my friend and I relax in, but I would love to see some real money being put into a full mode.
I find it wild that we don't have a better name than rougelike
Rogulike deckbuilders have a stranglehold on me
They're sooo good!
I lost literally every spare moment for two solid months on Slay The Spire. It was gorgeous and perfect and tense and strategic and addictive as hell and I can never be trusted to play anything like it again😢
@@newtonswig it's the first game I ever bought on two platforms, after 500 hours on switch I was desperate to try mods lmao
Another amazing example was of a rouge lite is dead cells
Eh. I wasn't the biggest fan of the RPG proliferation because it often meant that you started out weaker. Roguelike's can start you off strong - but more and more are relying on the RPG progression for the difficulty curve meaning you start weaker for longer.
I just want to start off strong and not worry about having to get stronger - that's why I play a lot of the older games. You start off strong - you may get an ephemeral power-up- but you have all the tools from the start. Now I have to play every genre for several hours to experience the game as the designers want me to.
TIL people didn't mean "roguelike" (ADoM, NetHack, DCSS, et al) when they said "roguelite", but "roguelike-like".
Rogue-like mechanics are already in more games than you'd think, league of legends is a good example imo
I'll believe this when I see a successful open world story based rogue lite
the perfect roguelite imo is lethal company simply cuz it's really funny
I have never understood, are they called roguelite or roguelike? Or are those 2 slightly different genres?
Yes.
@Tigersight0 yes to which one?
@@kevincronk7981 Yes, those are 2 slightly different genres.
You only asked one yes or no question, so I don't get why you're confused with 'yes' being the answer.
@@Tigersight0 oh I did. I didn't know which one of the 1 question because I am very big brain.
Yes. The difference is in a roguelike (name based on the game Rogue) you start from scratch everytime.
Roguelites have a Meta progression where you start slightly stronger as you play more, but still have most of the progression through the gameplay.
I hadnt thought of it but the new warhammer banger is a roguelite
The only roguelite I've ever enjoyed is Hades, just because the characters are fun. Most roguelites just feel like grindfests, with little of interest except "number go up".
I think grinding for coin and/or gear was a staple even back in the 8 bit days.
I have to say my favorite roguelike so far is deadcells