Roguelikes, Persistency, and Progression
Вставка
- Опубліковано 13 тра 2024
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One of the biggest decisions for any developer making a roguelike, is whether or not to add persistent upgrades. Should every run be the same, like Spelunky? Or should your character get more powerful over time, like Rogue Legacy? Let’s look at the pros and cons of both approaches.
=== Chapters ===
00:00 - Intro
01:40 - Roguelikes (No Persistent Upgrades)
03:11 - Roguelites (Persistant Upgrades)
04:52 - Giving a Sense of Progression
07:22 - Helping Players Win
08:52 - Rewarding Player Skill
10:28 - Conclusion
=== Games Shown ===
Enter the Gungeon (2016)
Rogue (1980)
Monolith (2017)
Crypt of the NecroDancer (2015)
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (2014)
Spelunky (2012)
Rogue Legacy (2013)
Dead Cells (2018)
Slay the Spire (2019)
FTL: Faster Than Light (2012)
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016)
Flinthook (2017)
Nuclear Throne (2015)
NetHack: Legacy (2018)
Downwell (2015)
Hades (2020)
Into the Breach (2018)
Invisible, Inc. (2015)
=== Credits ===
Curiosity - Blue Wednesday ( / bluewednesday )
Spelunky soundtrack - Eric Suhrke (phlogiston.bandcamp.com/album...)
Donut County soundtrack - Daniel Koestner (open.spotify.com/album/6SFBSl...)
=== Subtitles ===
Zero Deaths Victory! World First! World Record! [Rogue Legacy] | ZorsYT
• Zero Deaths Victory! W...
Contribute translated subtitles - amara.org/v/C3BEW/ - Ігри
Hey everyone! You might be thinking “wait, haven’t I already seen this video?” and the answer is - sort of! I wasn’t happy with the original version of this video, and found myself agreeing with some of the more negative comments that I received.
Ultimately, while GMTK will always and inevitably involve my personal opinion, the original version of this video leaned too heavily into that and made it seem like my preferences were “correct”, and everyone else’s was “incorrect”. That’s not true, and so I’ve tried to make the video more balanced and evenhanded - by looking at the advantages and disadvantages of both including and not including persistent upgrades.
I also felt like the original video had comments that seemed to be in favour of things I’ve vehemently fought *against* on Game Maker’s Toolkit! That being inaccessibility / gatekeeping and restrictive genre definitions. So I’ve reworded those.
Anyway, I’m sure some people will be just as negative about me changing the video - but I think this was the right move for me and the channel. GMTK is a tricky beast because it balances opinion and education and, sometimes, I’m just going to get that completely wrong.
In the interest of transparency, can find the original video here - ua-cam.com/video/eXEQ8VBqXBY/v-deo.html
Cheers. Mark
That's great. It should be done often by more people, but they lack the balls.
It was a great video! One thing though: "Persistence" is the word you're looking for! No need to invent new words like "persistency"!
Good on you. Thanks for revising it.
I appreciate your mode of handling said criticisms.
It's things like this that keep me watching your videos religiously as they come out. and I liked the last version of your video.
I can't believe Mark's video died and got sent back to the beginning
At least it kept some of his progress
Luckily I learned stuff from the previous run to help me last longer this time
How perfectly meta
Pack it up, guys. No one comment will beat this one.
Brilliant.
What can i say.. This comment just made my day
My favorite Roguelike is Flappy Bird.
I'm angry because it all checks out.
I can't believe that counts.
Q : Flappy Bird does not have final goal. Is Flappy Bird Roguelike?
@@debleb166 yes, almost. I mean, as flappy bird have randomly-generated level, a kinda-pemadeath and a constant difficulty level, you could say it's a roguelike. But it actually is an other genra (or or a sub-genra of roguelike) : a "die and retry". Due to the extremely short "run" (exactly like a super meatboy level) and the total lack of healthbar/points. And, as it is supposed to be a mobile game that you can play for a potentially infinite amount of time, it adds the random leveling so that you won't get bored by playing the exact same thing every time you play.
Why must you say this
About that "weirdo backwards difficulty curve": That is only true if you look at the game as a whole over multiple runs. In each single run, the difficulty increases the longer you play. What's important, is that you as a player are constantly challenged. If your character is stronger on the 20th run you will get further in the game, but you will also have to play through harder levels which only now you are equipped to beat. To me that's just rewarding game design.
That's also basically the progression for just about any rpg ever - just over multiple play throughs, instead of all in one go.
While true, it can ruin some of the purity that some roguelikes attain. The arcade like feeling that if you were skilled and knowledgeable, you could clear this first try. Same as with speedrunning. With roguelites, with a fresh save, you'd have to make more meta decisions like "in this life I will get X gold so I can get Y upgrade so in 3 runs I'll be geared enough to clear" compared to "this try, I will win"
@@peon9584 Your second paragraph is very true, but I'm confused by your last paragraph: How does that mean the game got less difficult? If your character is upgraded and the game is still challenging, then it got more difficult, not less. Worst case scenario the game is levelling up the enemies to match with you and the difficulty curve is flat.
I guess the point is that most roguelites do not have a clear cut level barrier like most games do.
You could be playing a Level 10 character in a normal RPG, get beaten up by a Level 19 enemy and accept that you are just under-equipped to fight that enemy.
While in a roguelite, you could equally be playing a "Level 10" character and dying at the "Stage for Level 19", however, since there are no level numbers over your enemies' heads, you won't know that you have actually beaten stages 11 to 18 with a Level 10 character with your own Player Skill.
It will feel like that Stage 19 was the limit of your Character Level, but it wasn't. And you never really know. That's why Mark says the Player Skill/Character Level dynamic of Roguelites is ambiguous.
@@peon9584 I think a solution to this would be putting reasons to be in the opening levels, collectibles, anything to do while you are blasting away at the easy lower levels
I also think it depends on the type of gamer.
Especially now in days there are more and more casual gamers or people with limited schedules and a Roguelite allows those people to be able to finish some of these games.
You can also balance out Roguelites by adding additional unlockable challenges for additional runs. Hades with its “heat system” is a great example.
I like Hades' approach to the difficulty curve, first letting you power up, then unlocking extra difficulty (including restricting the previous power ups) after you've beaten the game.
Fact is I don't play those games for the feeling of "achieving something by my skills" but rather for the pleasure of playing and discovering things.
This makes an important point. It's important to remember that people play games for different reasons and that it is helpful to have as well rounded of an understanding of this aspect as possible.
Agreed. I don't care about "my skills", I just want to play, and there's nothing more frustrating than having a whole quantity of game content (especially for a game I paid real money for, and most especially if it was expensive) that I don't get to see and enjoy because I don't have caffeinated-teen levels of hand-eye coordination or caffeinated-autistic-teen levels of obsessive focus and interest in repetitive tasks.
I don't like to "train" for my fun. So that influences the types of games I seek out, especially since "hard games" seem to be such a fad these days. Rogue-likes are such a weird genre to me. Some of them look fun and interesting... and then I play them and they're just not, because I can't get anywhere and see anything new, unless I can be arsed to sink hours of time and frustration I just don't have to spare at my age, training for a "skill" whose only real-life value is "can play that specific game", for an "accomplishment" that is just "finally got all the stuff you paid money for".
I like RPGs where you get a character that becomes more powerful through experience and progresses through new and different experiences, and never gets out of practice by you moving on with your life for a few weeks (and thank goodness for quest journals). It's an interesting idea that in a rogue-like it is YOU who becomes more "powerful" through experience. I can see the appeal completely, but I can't FEEL the appeal in the slightest. When again, the "power" you get is "finally get to see the stuff that's in that game you already paid for" not like... any actual power.
I'd read the shit out of a book that closed on my fingers every chapter, if I knew by the end of that book I could speak Spanish, or operate a bulldozer, or whatever skill. Otherwise, it's just a book that closes on your fingers every chapter, and all you get at the end is its own ending - which other books give you without the trouble.
If rogue-likes had a level of play that was EASY, genuinely EASY (that hardcore self-flagellators could jump right over to go torture themselves all they want), and the overall loop is short - like you could never sink hours into one go whether you succeed or fail - and non-repetitive, so if you fail and die you don't just keep starting in that same damn brown room full of spiders... that would be appealing. I love a game I can pick up, have fun with for a while, a "session", and put down, and move on with my life (Left 4 Dead is still one of my favorites because even the "story mode" is only at most about three hours per session).
The barrier of entry is too high, otherwise. If it's all as difficult as end-boss-after-hours-of-play, then it's like Run 1: Died in 2 seconds. Run 2: Died in 4 seconds. Run 3: Died in 2 seconds again. Run 4: Died in 11 seconds. Run 5: Died in 3 seconds. QUIT wasting time on it, having never seen or heard or gotten to play or enjoy 90% of everything else the creators created for the game.
It gives a feeling of "I don't want YOU to play this game, you filthy casual" and that seems to be the attitude of a lot of people who enjoy those games too, and they like spending their money on a product that tacitly insults other people for being inferior to them, and that's not really a worldview or fanbase anyone should be getting involved with.
@@jessicalee333 roguelikes arent that hard boomer
@@jessicalee333 The game just isn't for you. It's not that nobody doesn't want to you play it. YOU just don't want to play it. Sure, it would be nice if games had more options to accommodate everyone, but complaining about it and calling them autists is like asking for a horror movie to be less scary and to have more love triangles because you like romcoms. You find no merit to the skill? Since there are "better things to do with your time" you're going to talk down to them? I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people who think you are wasting time playing games at all. Who are you to judge what people do with their time?
@Jessica Lee that’s some very biased comment you made. Obviously you don’t know that not every human have same personality.
For the case, I’ll just let you know that not everyone is as goal oriented as you, people do read books and play game for the experience. There’s even people who engage in economic activity because they enjoy the process of gaining resources(money) instead of the resources itself.
So what becoming powerful in rogue like gives is the satisfaction of getting overcoming a barrier.
Using your book analogy, rpg is the latter while roguelike is the former. You play rpg, grow your character, reach the ending of the game, then you start another game from the beginning again. You play roguelike, get good, finish the game, play another game requiring similar skills, you start being better than before.
A super easy level for rogue like is probably pointless since the target audience who are willing to pay for it would find it unnecessary because they can overcome the barrier easily by themselves. It’s not worth the investment from dev to create such level nor from players who are
a) good enough to not care about this difficulty
b) won’t progress through this difficulty and thus unable to access the bigger portion of the games
You can play similar roguelike on website like Kongregate that offer less polished free games, they are likely to be easier to win.
Your ethnocentrism is the one that should be avoided.
I prefer Rogue-lites because I'm bad at video-games, plain and simple.
I seem to be good at some but bad at others even if I practice
I'm not so good at games too but i like Rougelikes more like Spelunky because i like the satisfaction of pure progress even when it's at it's slowest
Me too, haha
We are the ungamers
I like when it combines both permanent & temporary progression like enchanted cave and greedy cave do, turning the "permadeath" into a push-your-luck mechanic, addressing the roguelite difficulty issue by making later checkpoints serve as new "starting points", etc.
Most good roguelites make up that weird difficulty curve with increasing enemy strength and complexity. Compare the enemies from the hell area in Rogue Legacy to the ones in the first few rooms and its night and day. The attack patterns and more complex and deal more damage, as well as having more health, thus demanding more skill of the player to beat them.
Also when you beat the game it permanently unlocks "Hard mode"
Yep, add on to this the cost scaling of upgardes forcing you to *have* to go into harder areas generally flattens out the difficulty curve. You can only grind power for so long before you get walled by skill and must improve in order to survive and progress long enough to reach the next upgrade.
Soul knight
Yeah I did feel like he missed this a bit
That's true of roguelikes as well though.
Another positive with Dead Cells is after you beat the game once the game lets you increase the difficulty for more content.
And often by the time you get to that point you've gotten all the vertical upgrades. Everything else is either cosmetic or just more weapon variety.
i pass dead cells in my first try, so i let this game, but maybe now i'm going to play again if there is more difificulty but dunno
@@joaquindiaz15 What if I told you that you can increase the difficulty up to 5 times? Each increase is very noticeable and even with the maximum possible upgrades it gets insane.
the thing about Dead Cells that many new players don't realize is beating HOTK isn't actually beating the game
Additionally, health potions becomes less valuable due to Malaise and the no hit door bonuses
But we all know one thing's for sure:
Minesweeper is the best rogue-like
wait
I dunno how to play this game...
@@MrBLUOFF It's a actually really easy once you know what the number means. The number says how many bombs are there on a 3 by 3 grid with the number in the middle.
Also, when you tap your first tile and it's a bomb...
@@NoFontNL I feel like that would be easily avoidable to program. Simply move the bomb to a random empty space if the player selects a bomb tile first.
And yet, here we are.
Rewatching this, there's two points I'd like to bring up.
Firstly, I think there's a third pillar of the idea of a 'roguelike/lite' that was missed (which is missing for the variety of meme 'X is my favourite roguelike' comments) being 'an RPG system supported by either random or semi-random elements' (most frequently stat changing item drops). Most of the games mentioned as jokes involve procedurally generated challenges, but the way the player interacts with those challenges frequently remains static. With 'Arcadelikes', as I will dub games with procedural generation and perma death but no RPG systems, the player's ability to interact with the world changes far less drastically than it would in a true Roguelike. Arcadelikes usually use randomness to test the player's execution within the given system (to prevent rote memorisation and/or brute forcing one's way through a tricky section by just dying on it until you happen to the exact set of inputs). Roguelites, on the other hand, usually use randomness as a way to generate non-repetitive content in the place of the generic 'grinding' you might see in a normal RPG. Roguelikes, on the other hand, frequently are about testing the player's ability to make decisions, achieved by having a large number of variables. Thus, not only does the environment need to change, but so does the specifics of how the player interacts with it.
I think it's also important to point out that, even in a standard Roguelike, the difficulty of the game isn't a flat line but rather a wide bar that contains any number of different lines. With an RNG influenced upgrade system, different runs will require a different level of mastery to be completeable. I'm sure anyone who's played a Roguelike for any length of time has run into 'the god run' where they get a windfall early on and ride that windfall far further than other runs would take them. As a player's skill increases, the number of RNG layouts they can potentially complete increases, but if you try to measure 'how long until a player beats the game once', that's going to depend on how long until the game spits out a seed that crosses their current skill level.
Super insightful. Thanks
Arcadelikes is a great term.
>on the other hand ... on the other hand
sO YoU hAvE 3 hAnDs?
Actually interestinng idea, I think we must differentiate "Arcadelikes" from usual Rogue(like/lite)s
@@Evoleo In Ragnarok you can get extra fingers, allowing you to wear more magical rings than normal. An extra hand wouldn't be a stretch for a Roguelke :)
Very interesting reading. 100% agree with the pillar idea of RPG system of character progression, a couple of examples would be the Pilot's progression of the Into the Breach game or the item collection in Risk of Rain 2.
Talking about Risk of Rain 2, this game does have scaling difficulty over time. You can even choose at the start of the game between 3 types of game difficulty so the game can be played with 3 different types of curves reaching out to more players.
Whats great about dead cells however, is that in BC 4 and 5, the difficulty is so much higher than earlier boss cells, that you need to master parrying and timing of all enemies. It feels like it starts out as a rogue lite and eventually morphs into a roguelike
Yeah that's my only gripe about his view of Dead Cells. Like you can probably classify BC 0 as a standard Rogue-lite but starting from BC 1 to BC 5, you're getting more skillful each level instead of relying on the op-ness of your build, especially with the hp flasks being disabled.
Yeah I felt weird on the dead cells part, bc 2+ is HARD. I'm on bc 4 and am getting STOMPED
Wtf are you saying. Roguelite is a roguelike, but not all rogue elements must be in the game and... On 5bc you don't have turn based combat and you still have metaprogression
@@1stflower834 I don't recall dead cells having permanent stat upgrades, the only persistent upgrades are new weapons being unlocked and the health flask and costumes
Also what you are describing is a "traditional roguelike", roguelikes nowadays don't just mean turn based, grid based games, game-genres are confusing, I know
@@Azure9577 that's what I meant
I respect Mark Brown. He ended up not liking a piece of content he put out, so he fixed it until he did.
As long as he doesn't go all George Lucas on us.
Fixed Video, made be Betters.
@@givcon14 It's stylistically designed to be that way
@@Assimandeli What way?
Just like what Nintendo is doing with Metroid Prime 4 :)
What I would say about Rogue Legacy is that, the game's difficulty doesn't decrease over time, rather that the game's goals change over time. When you first walk into the castle the game is difficult, but the aim is to survive one or two rooms.because that should get you all the money you need in order to purchase an upgrade. Then the price of upgrades increase. So now when you enter the castle you need to survive ten rooms to get enough coins - you're stronger, but the goal is also greater and more difficult. Your character is stronger, but if you don't play well enough to progress through those 10 or so rooms, then you don't get anywhere in the game. In a roguelike you have this same idea, except the goal isn't X amount money for upgrades, the goal is 'reach the final floor'. It's a fixed goal instead of an iterative one that changes to suit you. Sure, in Rogue Legacy you still need to beat the entire game in one go and when you do that you'll be much stronger. But the game is designed in a way that requires your character to be stronger from the first room to really stand much of a chance. I much prefer this video to the original you released on the topic, but I still think it unfairly categorises roguelite games as "pointless because you'll win eventually"
I like coming back to it every now and then, see how much you can get done in a run or 20 or so. It's not a massive game so it's easy to start a new run and set a goal for yourself.
Thank you, I appreciate hearing someone else pointing out that the game is not designed to be able to finish on the first playthrough ('legacy' would be a bit redundant if it was). It's segmented, and if you want to grind that's fine. If you're good enough you can beat it 'early' and that's fine too.
@@Jalais Still have to get that new achievement they added on Steam. Finish the castle in 20 runs or something like that? I also had a lot of fun on several runs where I would ban certain upgrades or armors/runes :)
edit* I think the game works so well for me, because it feels like an engaging but casual lovechild between a rogue/metroidvenia.
@@Jalais Yep, the one thing that this video really seems to miss is thst roguelikes and roguelites are not identical games where one has a permanent progress track. They are designed around the mechanics that exist in them and it's unlike Mark to have ignored/missed that!
@Table 53 you make an excellent point, rogue-lites seem to be a natural hybrid of rogue-like gameplay with rpg design philosophy. I think the graphs that Mark showed were a little disingenuous, specifically the one of the rogue-lite and the difficulty curve being angled downward. Looking at the game as Mark does, where the goal is always to complete the game in a single run, it makes sense to describe the difficulty this way. But your approach to see the goals a compounding over time (like an rpg) the line becomes more horizontal, where the difficulty ramps up with each gameplay interval, but so does the characters innate power level. The only other variable is the players skill. In this way, the graph starts to look much more like Mark’s rogue-like graph.
I read the thumbnail as Roguelikes and Depression and was like yea same
I really hope you feel better person
Me too man.
When I eventually beat a roguelite with my persistent upgrades, it never feels like it was only because of the upgrades that I won. The moment that you win is, as your graph here shows, the moment where skill and difficulty are matched. If my final run was too easy, then I would feel like it was just the upgrades, but that almost never happens; it's still thanks to my own skill that I managed to push through and win a little, or a LOT, sooner than my upgrades might otherwise allow.
However, this still relies on the designers getting it right. The meaningfulness of the upgrades, the rate you get them, and the amount of the game that's reasonably playable without the upgrades, it all has to be carefully balanced to make that union point of skill and difficulty a satisfying one... but it can be done.
Yep you can tell when you won from skill or upgrades, as with any game the more you play it the more skilled you get at it, the best way to show that is when you put the game down and spend a couple months playing through different games, then going back to it. Even with the upgrades you'll find your struggling much more than when you first beat and put down the game a couple months ago, since you have kinda forgotten the controls and the enemy moveset that you had gotten used to
The Binding of Isaac does both. After meeting certain criteria you can unlock different characters that benefit a slightly easier playstyle, said characters will eventually get a permanent starting item/ability that they didn't start with, and you can donate money to the shop to make it so shops have a permanently bigger selection as you play. However, the game also moves the "difficulty goalposts" so as you get better and your normal runs get stronger, the game also gets harder with more difficult floors and new bosses to defeat and new floors and new bosses to reach after the "end" of the game. Playing fast allows you to reach a difficult boss rush mode for additional upgrades but these and other diversions are completely optional, mostly there to allow the more skilled players to be challenged.
Exactly, it's a great balance. Was very surprised to not see it discussed in the video (especially with so much time being devoted to a worse game (Rogue Legacy)).
@@tbolland1991 Well in the original video Rogue Legacy was mostly used as an example of how Roguelikes failed to work. In the rewrite of that script a lot of that language was removed.
Unlocking Items into the pool by completing Challenge modes and completion marks help keep the exciting and strategic - you’re forced to play the game in various ways to improve player skill and being rewarded in avatar strength - but this is very cleverly mediated by the RNG nature of the game so it’s not a dull linear progression like Rogue Legacy. The concept of synergies force the player to think on their feet and be resourceful with consumables and the subsystems of the game in order to maximise their chances of success on a per run basis. The interplay between systems is really genius in Isaac. You’re forced to engage with all of the systems in depth purely through the way the game is balanced. Shallow experiences in gaming are usually attributed to shallow engagements in a game’s subsystems
I get the sense that Mark hasn’t really played much Isaac when he uses clips of it in these videos over lines in the script that really don’t reflect the depth of Isaac at all
Enter the Gungeon does something similar. As you reach further in the game and purchase more weapons, more difficult enemies spawn in the early floors.
The Binding of Isaac's unlocks definitely change the game's difficulty, both making it easier and harder. A 100% save file has a dozen or so characters with different abilities and stats, plus hundreds of items in the world, as well as almost double the length of a run along with alternative floors (when you first start there's 6 levels, after a while it goes out to 10+). The sheer amount of items, that all interact with each other, means when you first start the game you get decent combos, but as you go the possibility of getting god like combinations both increases and decreases due to the bloated item pool. However, player skills also has to increase to proceed as the new floors are much harder, and some characters like The Lost (1 hit kill) are amazingly hard to play as.
They gave the lost the holy mantle so he's 2 hits now
The one increase in hit per room took him from nail biting terror to very strong character.
And now we have Tainted Lost! Rejoice!
Honestly a lot of the things he says in this video are objectively incorrect.
I like how FTL has a lot of different cruiser designs and layouts, each of which provide entirely new ways to play.
Yep, kind of same with Slay the spire. These two are one of my all time favorites.
@@neorickio What is Slay the Spire like?
@@mr.mcweasel6257 it is a roguelike cardgame. I never cared that much to cardgames, but Slay the Spire really got me. It offers an amazing challenge and it's really fun due to how you can build and sinergize your decks. I strongly recommend it, above all games mentioned in the video IMO.
@@neorickio Okay, cool.
@alascow How so? I know that one fullscreen mode makes it really small, and the other one literally didn't work for me. However, one of them worked fine. Only problem with it is that the screen flashes when I change the volume.
"Well, time to go get killed again."
I do so love this.
I really like ur pfp, looks like the snake just told a joke and is waiting for people to laugh
@@BookWyrmOnAString :D thanks! That gives me a big smile, to know that
@@matthewp4046 I can picture the type :)
Huh. Well, damn, this actually shows a healthy amount of intellectual honesty to me, Mark. This is why I'm always here for these vids. Even if they are just re-uploads.
what is intellectual in coming up with new definitions of 30 years old terms which are used by everyone else and pretend that your new definitions are correct ones?
@@tsartomato it isent a new defenition... it is a presentation
Thank you for taking your time to resubmit this video. I was one of those people that found it to be a bit too hard on roguelites, which I personally prefer heavily over roguelikes due to the persistent elements, and frankly, I was shocked by how much I was disagreeing with you... for the first time ever! This video I think does a much better job outlining the pros and cons of both. My main complaint with the first video was that the "backwards difficulty curve", as you put it, is actually more of a balancing act, rather than an inherent flaw of the subgenre.
In fact, I would say that in regular roguelikes with no persistent upgrades, the difficulty for each run is actually higher, as you need to better tackle more content, and the later content is also more difficult than the earlier content, so your improvement rate over time must match that difficulty increase and in fact surpass it to actually beat the game. This is why those games are so taxing to the player, not because the difficulty is constant.
On the other hand, in roguelites with persistent upgrades, the difficulty is actually closer to constant, as the content deeper into the game gets more difficult, but so does your power. It can be decreasing if the rate and power of those upgrades is much higher than the difficulty ramp-up of the content, but that is different on a per game basis depending on what the developer wants out of it.
Glad to see such a well articulated point on the difficulty of rogue lites, well done.
Totally agree with this, very well worded!
I think if you want to argue about the difficutly, you'll have to differentiate between single runs and the game overall.
If you look at a certain point in a run in a roguelike, maybe the endboss, it doesn't change in difficulty between you first run and the 100th. Both your own charakter and the endboss have the same stats.
If you compare a roguelite, even though the endboss stays the same, your character becomes more powerful, so the game does get easier at the 100th run, compared to the first.
However, if you focus more on a single run, then the first time you explore a new floor (or similar) in a rougelike, the game has probably just upped the difficulty. The power difference between your character and the enemies is greater than on the first level.
In a roguelite, upgrading your character means that new levels have a comparable difficulty to the earlier levels.
So maybe it would be more fitting to talk about "objective" and "subjective" difficulty...
It's overall a difficult topic :/
@@Magrior Indeed, but it's a matter of tuning. In roguelites, since your character gets more powerful, the content is also setup to be an order of magnitude more difficult than in a roguelike where you don't get more powerful. It can easily be tuned where your own power is relative to the boss exactly the same as it would be in a roguelike, if you have all the available upgrades. It can also be tuned to be MORE difficult - it's all up to numbers!
The only thing that becomes easy in any given roguelite compared to a roguelike is the earlier levels, which you can basically steamroll with your upgrades. However, to me, that is actually a good thing, as you can quickly get through that to reach the endgame where the new content is. This tedium of slogging through the same content without any boost is one of the issues I have with roguelikes. Roguelites simply have much better pacing, as you can get past obsolete content quickly.
LocrianDorian
The reason why Roguelikes have a persistent difficulty is the more difficult content is always there. As you increase your skill, you can access more of it, yet it was always there. It takes more skill to get to the end until eventuality you will win.
Coming back to this with Hades fully out now, it does things amazingly well for a Roguelite. The upgrades aren't all that great. And mostly needs good play to take advantage of your upgrade. And the God Mode is wonderful for players who aren't great at the game, but can be turned off for the more hardcore players.
and if you want to, you can unequip upgrades you've gained by playing the game!
I think Hades is a good game. For real.
But after having beaten the game in relatively high heat, I wondered if I could beat the game on a new save. I feel a bit disapointed by finding I just can't. And I founded that beating only stage 1 were difficult as hell.
@@kaeso17 This is why I stopped playing Hades.
I think the the upgrades in hades are op. Having three death defiances and increasing your health for example will make runs pretty easy. While the game does depend on skill, I would say that you can beat the game pretty fast with the upgrades help. But thats my experience and I am pretty sure everyone has different experiences.
Upgrades like 3 extra lifes and extra dash are op (fuck dash in hades, it is very overpowered on it's own, but still)
Dead Cells' difficulty curve is really odd, because it's at its hardest points both in the very beginning and very end (i.e. 5 bc's)
Ascending stairs (Boss cells) made of descending stairs (upgrades) made of ascending stairs (areas)
In the bc 0 and bc 1 isnt the hardest, Bc 2 however...
Every BC before 4 feels really easy in comparison
Awesome video Mark :) !
Though I really liked the old version as well, I must admit this one feels more "balanced", with great points on the positive and negative aspects of roguelikes and roguelites ! Thanks !
Hey BTP! Didn't expect to see you here! How's the puzzle game going?
Am I the only who reads your comments with your accent?
Is that bad?😂
I cant wait to play your game!
Roguelite is not a real genre. He was right to not mention it at all in the first video.
Hey! I hope you learned something from here! İ love your chanel and the Game Maker’s Toolkit
"A low skill player may never finish the game." = me 1000 hours in Binding of Isaac.
idont think you still didnt finish the game.
@@feelslikebatman6091 Your comment was hard to read
@@Slade69 lol
Aaron Stokes Finished Spelunky in the easiest way possible. That was a great achievement for me.
To be honest reaching 1001% on Isaac save file is kinda challenging
So happy to have found your channel Mark! I don't develop games, but I'm learning so much information I subconsciously knew from years of gaming, but probably wouldn't be able to explain. You're a great teacher!
Slay the Spire is my favourite Roguelike for various reasons, one of which is how perfectly it avoids both of the main issues that Roguelikes can have (both of which were pointed out in this video):
1. The issue of lower-skill players never being able to finish the game is avoided by having 20 different difficulty levels (or 'Ascension Levels' as the game calls them), allowing a very wide spectrum of players of different skill levels to be able to pick up the game and play through it comfortably. Not to mention the fact that the game also offers two different endings for each run; a more challenging ending that involves collecting 3 keys to go to Act 4 to defeat the Corrupt Heart, and a significantly easier ending that simply involves defeating the Act 3 boss; further increasing the spectrum of skill-levels that can enjoy this game even more.
2. The issue of lost runs feeling like a 'waste of time' is avoided by having the game not be very long (especially if you're going for the easier ending), as well as unlocking new cards and relics to potentially find on future runs. Most importantly though, apart from its roguelike element, Slay the Spire is a very deep turn-based strategy game. That level of depth lends itself greatly to new playthroughs because you'll always be learning new things and coming up with new ideas. So even in a lost run, you'll still gain some new things to think about in future as long as you didn't lose on purpose. It wasn't a waste of time.
This is a much improved video from the original
It takes a real sense of humility to admit when we're wrong about something
So I just want to say thank you for going through all this effort
Thank you
And good stuff as usual
This is kind of funny because he's still wrong about so many things.
I like both, but I really like it when the game gives me the option to grind past a difficulty bottleneck just in case that's how I'm feeling that day.
Ayyy, look who it is!
“Unchanging difficulty”
*ascension mode*
Well, nondecreasing, in any case.
Ascension in slay the spire doesn't reduce the difficulty but it's too hard to play a15 or so as a new player so the lower ascension lvls are kinda there to make you find working tactics with each character while being less punitive
Nowadays, Hades has updated a lot since the video and after you kill the last boss for the first time, you can increase the difficulty of your next run to get more rewards, rewards that only used mostly for the House cosmetics, it's a nice way to keep the game harder while you also get upgraded
*Isaac Hard Mode*
Boss Stem Cells
I value my time (and enjoyment, bc I do end up feeling like it was for nothing when I completely start over) over some nebulous sense of skill at a game.... so yeah, sign me up for Hades and Dead Cells haha
Well, good luck with dead cells, the upgrades won't do close to enough to get you thru the harder parts of the game
What BC are you right now?
I remember when the term "rogue-lite" started showing up, it was used to describe games such as the Binding of Isaac, to distinguish them from turn-based "games that are like Rogue". Crazy how now BoI is being called a 'pure' roguelike, with rogue-lite used for games that stray even further from the formula. I've no problem with terminology changing over time, but now that the slope is confirmed to be slippery, there's an obvious problem.
"Games that are like Rogue" (turn-based, tile-based, etc.) will never go away, simply because they're so easy to program for how deep their systems can be, which makes them a popular genre for amateur developers who want to try creating a game completely from scratch. And there's a real community of players too. The question is what to call them? They're Roguelikes, obviously, but now that that term has moved beyond a genre and mainly just describes level generation systems more than anything else, discussion in that niche community can maybe get muddied.
You need to remember that ALL genre's get muddled all of the time. FPS used to be doomlikes but modern FPS's are sometimes nothing like Doom at all (not counting ones that literally are just doom again of course).
I'm looking forward to they day that Roguelikes have a name that doesn't reference Rogue. Because when people search for a genre they are looking for a category of experience, not a specific set of mechanics. There are other keywords for those that ARE looking for the mechanics
Bottom line is that someone looking for a Roguelike are trying to find a game that isn't going to repeat content yet is designed for repeated play-troughs. That isn't any less of a genre than FPS is.
If a camera angle and projectiles can make a genre, then why not random levels and permadeath?
All roguelikes have a similar feel to them even when they have completely different forms of core gameplay. Even roguelites, and by what I just said I mean they scratch the same "itch" so to speak and thus appeal to a similar demographic.
Obviously not everyone will like everything in the genre, but not everyone likes every shooter and games in the action adventure genre are diverse as hell.
@@Nuclearburrit0 this issue is a little different - this is a case of another set of things basically supplanting the name of a whole genre. This is kind of shitty if you think about it, since the Roguelike genre is far more niche than rogulites
VikingSchism Is that really such a bad thing? Having Roguwlike not just be one narrow slice of these types of games means more people can get into it.
It's not that there isn't any essense left. When I play a game like splunky, crypt of the necrodancer, FTL, slay the spire, ECT. They all have very different second to second gameplay, yet something about all of them, including the older games, that scratches the same itch.
It does matter how vague the definition is blurred. I can intuitively tell if my need for whatever you want to call these games is being sated.
So yeah obviously it's not just permadeath and randomness that is required. I don't get the same thrill playing Temple run or other infinite runners, and I certainly don't think Minecraft hardcore mode when I imagine roguelike.
Of course roguelike does necessary HAVE to be the term used to describe these games. It's just the one that ended up sticking. Procedural death labrenth sounds promising in particular for an alternative
@@Nuclearburrit0 And so the result is that I have no idea what the fuck I'm being sold when something is marketed as an RPG or an action game.
I think the issue is that genres are too broad in general. Dark Souls is Zelda is World of Warcraft is Final Fantasy (which itself is so radically different between installments) is Fallout is Paper Mario is Cave Story is The Elder Scrolls. All of these are called, by a lot of people, an RPG, but the experience for each one is so radically different. And so then you start getting odd sub-genres that get overused, underused, warped, break off, or redefine the parent genre. So now any difficult game that has melee-oriented real-time combat and a dodge is a Soulslike, whether it be Nioh or Hyper Light Drifter or Dead Cells or _Crash Bandicoot._
And so here we have the humble roguelike, one of the oldest, boldest, coldest types of games out there. One whose legacy spans back to the days of room-filling mainframes, outdating even ancients like the Atari 2600. One that, with its storied history of overly-complex gameplay commands, frustratingly brutal difficulty, and strong utilization of "outdated" ASCII graphics, shouldn't have survived in the eyes of many. It fulfills a _very_ specific niche, true, but that also means that nearly all the core fans of the genre will have plenty of enjoyment from nearly all of its games.
In the previous iteration of this video, Mark argued that such tight restrictions would stifle innovation, but rather, it demanded more and more. After all, limitations breed creativity, and what's the point of investing countless hours into developing a game that already exists? Their ease of implementation compared to their sheer potential depth makes them a prime passion project among decades of software developers, and the hacker culture strongly bound to them that encourages easily-modified open-source means that plenty of new titles have spawned from what were once simple Nethack mods. And with the incredibly negligible cost of creating "assets" and implementing behaviors for entirely new features, it means that almost anyone with the skill and desire can create a wildly original system, even if they're often short on time.
"True" Berlin Roguelikes, both as games and genres, have deceptively simple exteriors that make them _seem_ incredibly limited in depth and potential, yet that couldn't be further from the truth. With a strong set of core systems backed by a broad culture of tinkerers, roguelikes and their fans form a strong, industrious ecosystem where a given player is more likely than not to have also at least dabbled in its growth and development. There's a strong symbiotic relationship of the community building itself up further and further as people who spend just as much time developing new games as they do playing existing ones become commonplace.
So, yeah, some of us are stubborn purists and don't want the stricter interpretation of the genre to be as diluted as it's gotten, and has been for years. Some of us are perfectly content passing arcane key sequences to a grid of characters in a terminal to make an @ symbol move around and fight, one turn at a time, tensely watching log messages state numbers passed between a player and the ever-mighty red capital D standing between them and the next floor. It might be frustrating, confusing, or just plain boring to a lot of others, but not us. We are a strong community with a strong core at the center of every game we play, make, share, and evolve. Pretentious, condescending, uptight? Perhaps, as any bunch has a few bad apples, though I'd argue that this inseparable cluster has more merits on those grounds than, say, the fragmented hellscape that the FPS "community" sustains. Even that sentence right now, or this entire comment, may come off as elitist and hostile. It adapts that from hacker culture, a fierce meritocracy, but one happy to adopt those with the desire to develop their own skills.
This is what we want to preserve.
This is a huge part of why so many of us have stubbornly rigorous and nigh-inflexible definitions of what we consider a part of our niche.
This is the world that surrounds roguelikes.
_also we already have the term "roguelite" for all the little exceptions and twists and such that people like to add on c'mon man_
Yeah, I had actually never heard those definitions of lite and like and to be honest I can't say I like it.
I feel something is missing from thoses definitions of "roguelikes" and "roguelites"
One of the key points of earlier roguelikes was the consistency of game rules between player and game entities (ie: monsters, npc, objects)
In rogue, if you drink a teleportation potion, you get transported to a random position. if you throw that potion on a rat, it get transported to.
Likewise, in Spelunky, spikes will kill you as well as the monsters, but they are harmless if you walk through them.
(I belive I've picked up on this idea from an interview of Derek Yu)
This types of rules place a strong emphasis on learning the game (it work on top of the randomization).
While a new player have to learn how to not get killed by traps, an advanced player can learn how to use said traps.
This is why I'm highly anticipating Noita later this year.
I'd be interested to know if you have thought on this @GMTK
So... Rogue legacy doesn't count as a roguelike... Sure, some games have that, but it's not because of the genre. Way too many games have systems like that, roguelikes or not
@@iHeich Indeed, if you take this rule into consideration, Rogue legacy falls into the roguelite genre. This doesn't affect the qualities of the game though. It's just categorisation. I tend to prefere system heavy games so I leans toward roguelike with consistent rules.
Then again, game genre definition is fluid. I once discussed with someone who defined roguelikes as "turn based dungeon crawler in a topdown view with preferably ascii graphics" He was not less right than anyone. As more people make rogue like/lite, the definition evolve.
You seem to not like that "consistency" rule, may I ask you why it does not suits you?
It's not that he's missing nuance, it's that he's straight up wrong.
Every time I watch one of your videos I realize I’ve already watched it.
I love you.
Happy to have stumbled on your channel. Always have interesting videos. 👍
Hey Mark! Tbh I'm kind of glad to see the reupload and like it, as the last one did feel a bit matter-of-fact about roguelikes being better than roguelites. This one seems to acknowledge personal bias much more, which I appreciate. And overall, as an aspiring game designer I'm always glad to see videos like this examining the pros and cons of different yet similar genres. So thanks!
I can certainly understand the preference for roguelikes, as the necessity of skill to emerge victorious is certainly a desirable feature for some, and the backwards difficulty curve of roguelites can be a bit odd. Although I'm personally a bigger fan of roguelites. I think for me that's because I'm such a big fan of RPGs, where you're ramping up the power of your character over time, and it always feels so rewarding for me when I finally reach the level of power I've spent all that time grinding for. So if I'm playing a roguelike, and spend all this time gathering power, and especially if I get a lucky run and get some sort of really strong random power up, then seeing myself die and get booted back to level 0 is so disheartening for me.
I love this remake of the last video, I feel like it's a solid improvement. Still split between roguelikes and roguelites. If I had to pick one, I'd probably say I prefer roguelikes because it means I'm improving at the game.
That doesn't make sense. So any game in which progression exists means you're not improving at the game? This is essentially saying that the complete newbie who first played (and got crushed by) Demon's Souls hasn't gotten any better at Souls games if they've gotten through every other From Software Souls title since. Why? Because permanent character progression systems exist in said games.
@@RicochetForce I didn't mean for games in general, I just meant specifically between the two genres. I like both models really.
@@RicochetForce yeah its weird, the video says that rouguelike have a flat difficulty and rouguelites have a downslope difficulty as if later levels dont become more challenging in rouguelikes and rouguelites.
Roguelite is not a real genre.
I'd prefer to have the existence of both, mainly because each is better suited to an entirely different story.
Personally, Hades is the first rogue anything I've ever played. And I love it. I tend to be pretty bad at certain game types and I'm not the kind of person to keep playing a game I'm sucking at.
For me, games being able to be beaten but sheer force of will and time isn't necessarily a drawback. There are people that just can't get good at certain formats for whatever reason. I have barely played any soulslike or fps games because I'm just so bad at them. Even if I'm deeply fascinated by the world and story (which is often my favorite part of games). I'm the person that plays games on easy mode because I don't want to get mad or frustrated or test my skill. I want to live in the world, and games that allow me to do that while also allowing another player to speedrun it at max difficulty that I would crap myself even dreaming of are probably some of my favorites.
In short, I don't think ambiguity in player skill is always a bad thing. Especially if there's something that says, at the beginning, "Hey, if you're here for the story, or just don't wanna sweat about this, turn this on. You're not a worse player or a bad gamer for it." I think there's a lot of stigma with just playing a game to enjoy it and not be challenged, and it applies to many genres of game. And I think that whole concept is stupid.
Games are meant to be enjoyed in whatever capacity you've come to games to find enjoyment. Be it a challenge, an escape, a brain bender, or a companion filled jaunt. Genre and the fulfilling goal of a game are both important, and one shouldn't be belittled or sacrificed in the name of the other.
I for one love the feeling of becoming more powerful in a game. Being the kind of player who's not complete garbage, but not very good unless I start no-lifing, it allows me to relax, have satisfaction and not sweat my ass off.
Today on Toolkit; will Mark Brown stop mentionning Spelunky? Sources say 'no.'
Cause it's a baller game.
If this video was all one knew about the genre they'd think it went from Rogue to Spelunky.
Definitely more balanced arguments, and the tone fits way better now because of it. Really well done, and well argued.
The only point I'd add is, as a (generally) bigger fan of roguelites, I don't necessarily agree that they're all inverse linear difficulty curves. Your argument at the end kind of contradicts the added counterpoints: yes roguelites can buff the player to an extent, but not creating safeguards for pure OP grinding is more the fault of the design than the (sub)genre. At some point you likely need to prove your skills as a player to get more unlocks, so the question is more about how to make those unlocks rewarding while also maintaining a larger difficulty curve. Which is a difficult balance to be sure (I think it works better as thresholds/set goals than with currency/shops), but to me, blaming roguelites as a whole is like throwing away checkpoints in a platformer because it's not the 'core' experience.
For me, the difficulty always went back to it's original levels in a Rougelite.
Start. I have to get through five rooms. Die. I get through five rooms with increasing upgrades. Now I have to do ten rooms and these enemies have more health, do more damage and take less damage. Die. Beat ten rooms. Now Beat twenty and fight the final boss.
Plus upgrade trees END. You can only upgrade health, shields, speed etc so many times before the game says "Nope, you maxed it" which doesn't make the graph a straight line.
@@DamienDarksideBlog When you beat a roguelike or any game with progression of upgrade trees before those trees have ended, you are left with the ambiquity. Did you win because you did a good strat or because you were good?
And Dead Cells has harder difficulty options that unlock one at a time once you’ve beaten the previous difficulty. Yeah, Normal is a cakewalk when you’ve unlocked every upgrade and weapon, but Nightmare was designed around it.
Not to mention that some roguelites offer traps. Dead Cells offers some upgrades which are obviously making you stronger (higher chance of finding +weapons, more flasks), but you can screw yourself over quite a bit if you unlock too many weapons you are not good at using.
The point he made that Dead Cells is actually easier when you're constantly upgrading is false. 1 the game scales each time you upgrade a core stat. Sure you'll get more powerful, but you'll also die more often from the scaling of enemies' attack power from the scaling
2 it depends on the build you're trying to make.
3 you also have to learn what weapons and traps to combine in order to finish it. And you can only do that through trial and error
In regards to the difficulty curve for both genres, it doesn't feel like the game’s getting easier, it's more that you're becoming better, and gaining access to more difficult levels, until you beat the game for the first time; at which point I can imagine many roguelites/likes would get boring. The Binding of Isaac actually changes the difficulty of the same levels as you progress, I'm not exactly sure how or when, but I think after your first full run, and after each successful run for that matter, the game increases the difficulty of all levels so as to keep it challenging. The game also withholds like more than half of its content to be unlocked after your first successful run.
I think that concept should be in all roguelike/lite games, otherwise it's pointless to continue playing once you 'beat the game' which you were mostly purely hooked on due to the challenge.
Static difficulty -> progress ending with successful run -> increase of difficulty -> endless repetition.
Also, TBOI has puzzle, even though it small but there are some rooms. While other game are just repeating mobs.
Speaking of mob, TBOI also has more variates, Mob has Monstro tear, homing tear, brimstone tear, shield, ...
This is excellent. I would love to see a video on replayability and the pros and cons of New Game+ in games of other genres
Honestly, I was more on your side of the argument when I first watched this video, but now that you have remade it, I've realized the depth and complexity afforded to the player with a rogue-lite system may actually be much better.
I for one love pure and simple games, if you don't need an experience bar, don't use it. However, if the game is still possible to complete if the player decides to completely ignore that mechanic, than it is actually offering a lot of autonomy to the player on how difficult you want your game.
Rather than a player having to choose Easy medium or hard, they can almost use their experience bar as a difficulty slider that can be tuned to their own liking.
But who does this? Extremely skilled few. For vast majority of players that experience bar is a reward for grinding. It is dressed as "you got stronger" not "game has lowered difficulty for your persistence in face of continuous failure". It is functionally the same as hiding the screen "would you like to lower difficulty" that other games put up after player dies a few times in the same spot.
I don't have enough self control for this. The game needs to take a giant shit in my mouth until i get good at it.
You should've looked at Risk of Rain, it has a great system where you can do easy mode, and learn the ropes, but not unlock new characters, items, or achievements. Or do medium or hard mode where you can have your stats recorded and unlock new characters and items.
Albin Dittli
I absolutely agree. It’s definitely one of my favorite games and a great game in general!
He kinda talked about that with the Speluky's shortcut system
I think it might be even better if they called it "training mode" !
Didn't dmc3 and ff9 remake do that as well? Like insert cheat/easy mode and you lose a lot of benefits?(sone of which being trophies or old save files)
Thank you for making this video - I was wondering if I needed to go start my own case study on the differences between different rogueli*e games' progression system, but this gives a fine baseline for me to work with to help make my game!
Love the way you describe how the difference between learning from failure and succeeding, especially in video games
Well, about roguelites... there's nothing really stopping you from starting the game from scratch and seeing how quickly you can beat it again, while trying to rely on persistent upgrades as little as possible.
Take Hades for instance, you can actually strip yourself off of all the upgrades you've accumulated. Not to mention that the game also allows you to upgrade the game's difficulty itself later on.
On a side note, I think Enter the Gungeon and Isaac actually can be considered roguelites. Sure, the guns you unlock in the gungeon are not given to you at the start but there *_are_* a lot more powerful ones you can unlock, some that are even run-winning. Same thing for Isaac, better quality items > less harsh RNG, not to mention characters can be 'upgraded' to have a starting item (example: the D6 for Isaac - giving you more versatility in future runs)
So the real question is... if the game lets you add more powerful stuff into the RNG pool of your runs, does that also make the game a roguelite one?
IvanSensei88 slay the spire also has an early game progression system where more cards and relics get added to the pool but i feel like it is done just to introduce them in a less daunting way.
So Spelunky really is the peak definition of Rogueli K e
I think the key here is not so much in "unlocking content" than in the difficulty curve. In The Binding of Isaac, your late-game run of trying to defeat this or that "hidden super difficult secret boss" with a "die-in-one-hit secret character" is incredibly more difficult than beating the first "final boss" the first time you play the game.
Just because there is unlockable content does not make it a "roguelite", this is exactly what is said in the second half of the video.
TBoI has absolutely nothing to do with Rogue Legacy, where I totally had the feeling that Mark talks about: did I get better at the game, or did I fianlly win because I got more skilled, or just because I increasingly built my stats over runs (=generations of heroes)?
There is definitely something to be said about games adding more "good rolls" into the RNG. Technically speaking, you get statistically more likely to win, thus it does technically get easier to win
It is worth noting that both Isaac and Gungeon demand the player to win multiple runs. I feel like this is to help prevent players from relying on RNG to get the win. Odds are, by the time they get to the "final ending", they've already won dozens of runs, hopefully some with some average-poor RNG.
In any case, I do think Spelunky is the best roguelike, in this regard.
@@jacojerb Yeah, true. Both roguelikes and roguelites have pros and cons.
True roguelikes can be more repetitive, but they put an emphasis on player's skill to beat the game, whereas roguelites can mitigate player's skill for success, but add progression which gives them a lot of replay value.
The guns unlocked in gungeon do change runs difficulties, as many of those you unlock as you progress are better, dealing more dps and having better effects
Was checking if anyone said this before I commented it
Doesn't this go for Binding of Isaac too?
@@captaincrash9002 It does, Godhead is broken but you can only have it if you obtain every mark in hard mode with the Lost
I agree, but it's not a PERSISTENT change across all runs since you aren't guaranteed to get it every run, which lessens its overall effect unless you're really committed to resetting every time you don't get a good item.
@@tylerboulware6510 I know, it works the same as Enter the Gungeon
I like my every game to have a sense of meaning and achievement. I'll always go for the lites
Your comment does not make sense. Progressing in the Binding of Isaac gives you tons of meaning and achievement, sooooo...
Ok
@gheddi lol what. 1) A run is extremely short 2) every single item is meaningful and participates in the narrative.
@gheddi lol what. 1) A run is extremely short 2) every single item is meaningful and participates in the narrative.
In that case, you should love the game that really kickstarted the whole roguelite genre: The Binding of Isaac! The sense of progression you feel as you unlock items and characters that are wildly more powerful than what you start with is awesome.
Technically speaking, Spelunky was the first big roguelite since it didn't fit into the already established roguelike genre without the turn based combat on tiles that every roguelike has to have in order to be a roguelike.
You should have mentioned that a few of the games you mentioned include mechanics that allow players to increase the difficulty, even after significant improvements to either their skill or characters. Slay the Spire with ascension mode, Dead Cells eith god cells and Hades with the pact of punishment.
I've spent the last few months wondering why Gungeon keeps my interest, but Dead Cells doesn't. Both have really great combat systems, so... what gives? I think you finally put it into words; in Gungeon, I don't feel like I'm grinding to unlock the tools I need to win. But that's exactly what it feels like to play Dead Cells.
I feel like the opposite is true. While Dead Cells gives me consistent upgrades over time, Enter the Gungeon is waayyyyy too dependent on luck in order to succeed. The luck of the weapons and items are basically my only determining factor on how well I do on each run. At least Dead Cells feels less luck based, which is typically what I prefer.
@@randomguy6679 I think Gungeon would struggle to be less luck based if it tried really. It has mechanics so many mechanics that reward you for playing well, it almost feels unfair because of it. Don't get hit for x number of floors and you'll increase your drop rate for items, hearts, keys and whatnot per room. Don't get hit on a boss and you'll get an extra heart container. By avoiding damage you ensure your success.
As far as weapons go too, the survivors start with capable weapons. If you're struggling just pick the marine, he has a good gun that can reliably kill any of the bosses in the game. In Dead Cells, you start with nothing and everything is given to you via rng. Don't find a good colourless weapon before the end of the game? Well, it's going to be way harder for you than it would otherwise be.
Gungeon is a much harder game than Dead Cells. Dead Cells is designed so that if you keep playing it, your runs will get better and better, without the player necessarily getting any better at the game. In Gungeon the players abilities are really the only thing that's variant (even though you can add more RNG to the dungeon, this doesn't really help or hinder).
If you feel you're dependent on RNG, then you're struggling with the core mechanics of the game, you haven't got to grips with the bullet patterns, enemy movements and room hazards. All of which, standardised so that they appear the same in every run (while the whole map is randomly structured, individual rooms are learnable). If you're in that position, then yes there are very strong guns that you might stumble upon and thereby, end up feeling that your dependent on RNG... but that's because of the strength of those circumstances, not the impossibility of being able to clear the game without them.
If we flip back to Dead Cells, and we tried to clear the entire game with your starter weapon. While that's very possible in Gungeon, it would be near impossible in Dead Cells. Why? Because the player is quite literally, dependent randomised upgrades distributed through each run.
@@Chronospherics gungeon is not a harder game than deadcells, at this point I have the same amount of time in both and I still have yet to beat deadcells on even its 3rd hardest difficulty, where with gungeon I can beat the lych pretty often. Deadcells is more rng based for sure but after a point in playing most items are as good as colorless but the enemy's are incredibly hard to beat and you have to improve to beat it. Even trying to unlock the 5th boss cell is a thing many players won't achieve let alone the 2nd or 3rd, simply because it is so hard. I think calling deadcells a rouglike is almost dishonest when it comes to skill curve because anyone can beat the first boss cell but after that it's gets much harder. The devs even see the first time beating the initial game as the tutorial and you don't even see the real ending till you beat the game on 5 boss cells. I love both to death, both are very similar in my opinion. I also gotta say if you can beat all bosses in gungeon with your starter pistol you are a god as its even hard to do with b tier weapons half the time. Saying reliably kill in an overstatement, its reliable if you play perfect. It would be just as hard as beating deadcells with your starter weapons.
@@randomguy6679 I have beaten the Lich on pre G&D difficulty with a 0 death save slot on my first try after 100%ing the first save slot
Luck definitely makes the game easier, but it is by no means a determinant, and getting something broken like Gunther or Polaris ends up being more of a rush than a saving grace
@@Chronospherics this is definitely not true. Dead Cells is mostly skill based when it comes to completing runs. Of course there’s an RNG element, that’s how all rogue games work, including Gungeon, but even more so than Dead Cells.
If you don’t get good weapons in Gungeon you’re pretty much screwed. In both games the most reliable way to win is to reduce as much damage taken as possible. In Dead Cells the most reliable way to do that is parry and they give you everything you need to do that at the beginning (the starter shield). In Gungeon the most reliable way to do that is to kill things as fast as possible and to do that you need better guns. The starter weapons aren’t going to cut it.
Saying that you can’t beat Dead Cells without good rng is just false. The starting gear in dead cells is all that you need to beat the game: a shield to parry anything, and a sword or bow to deal damage.
I'm not a huge fan of rogue-likes in the first place, but I'm personally a fan of Mystery Dungeon style games where rather than needing to do the entire game in one go, you do a series of smaller procedurally generated levels with story bits in between. That way, you're still going through the challenge starting from scratch, but you're definitely making progress along the way. My personal favorite is Dokapon: Monster Hunter for the GBA.
Not sure if it was implemented the same way when you made this video (I remember when it used to just be a lernie drop), but the heat system in Hades is a really great way they've counterbalanced the persistent upgrades from the mirror of night. As someone who's played since day one, the recently introduced Extreme Measures rank 4 difficulty modifier has proven to be way more skill testing than anything else they've put in. Broken tactics and cheesy builds aren't enough for it and I've still only cleared the final encounter once and died to it quite a few times. I hope Supergiant keeps making games forever.
One of my favorites is one way heroics, which has both the option for rougelike and roguelite play in the form of maniac mode.
I love your channel, I would really like to see you do a video about atmosphere in horror games and how it's done.
3:57 funny enough this "weird" difficult curve is quite common in RPGs if you play Dragon age, Witcher, Pillars, Fallout or any RPG the game is harder when you begin and when you get to some specific ability of your character the game becomes easier as time passes. Specifically if you play on the hardest difficulties that is really easy to notice.
Yeah but it's different in rougue likes for example it would be easier to start a fresh new save in any of those games with all of your abilities in the previous save so it would sucks the fun out of the challenge
Yup, that's mainly because of the leveling systems in the game. A lot of the same arguments made in this video about Roguelites can be applied to the leveling system found in most RPG's. Just by playing longer your character becomes stronger, thus making the game easier. And just like roguelites there's this ambiguity of whether you became better, or the game became easier.
As a guy that prefers Roguelikes of Roguelites for the reasons mentioned in the video above, the leveling tends to be the game mechanic I dislike the most in many RPG's (though I tend to actually enjoy a lot of RPG's). In RPG's like Fallout New Vegas the leveling system ads a whole new layer of role playing possibilities though, so I would argue that leveling systems (if implemented correctly) actually have a better reason to be RPG's than most roguelites.
I agree here. I've found a number of action games are generally hardest at the beginning, rather than the end. Because A: your toolset and health pool are smallest when you start and B: you're still learning game rules and enemy patterns.
Zelda games for example. Starting a fresh Zelda game, I will be much more likely to straight die in the first or second dungeon where I only have 3-4 hearts and no gear, than in the last couple dungeons where I'll have upwards of 12 hearts, potions, fairies, and all the dungeon items.
Oh yea the good old "mage builds" Where on lvl.1 your fireball is milder than bread, but at lvl.15 you are basically a nuke machine.
This "backwards difficulty curve" is the most extreme in Dark Souls imo.
It starts of crazy hard but once you've leveled up your character, unlocked some shortcuts and collected some powerful items the games difficulty starts to feel quite normal. I remember in Bloodborne I struggled for hours in the first area but later on killed both final bosses back to back in one try
One game that does something interesting with progression is Shiren the Wanderer (1995, Super Famicom). The game was an early attempt at the home console implementation of the genre in its strictest sense (procedurally generated levels, permanent death, turn-based RPG combat on a grid, unidentified items whose effect must be determined by cautious experimentation, the whole shebang) yet was far ahead of its time in its _metaprogression_ (roguelike jargon for progression that persists between runs). It has sidequests that take multiple runs to complete, which in the dungeon unlock new items to find and NPC allies to recruit and in the game's towns open new stores for you to shop in.
But its most interesting form of metaprogression is probably the way it lets you save resources between runs. In some of the game's towns, there are storehouses where you can stash your items, whose state persists between games. In one town you can keep a sword in the storehouse and, every time you pass through, take it to the local blacksmith to be upgraded. But since you can't keep an item in the warehouse _and_ use it in the dungeon, actually using that sword you've been improving for so long is a huge risk! Every run is a gamble on the combined value of all the resources you choose to take with you that those resources will be sufficient for you to win the game. To fully benefit from the progression, you have to risk _losing_ it.
Completing the sidequests does make the game easier, but even once you've done them all -- which doesn't take that that long -- the game is still bitch hard. The storehouses represent the biggest change from the classical roguelike rules, yet they form a balanced risk/reward system that, if you're not careful, will crush your dreams much faster than it took to build them up. Ultimately the game is more accessible than the classical roguelikes but not, I think, actually that much easier.
Roguelites aren't very different than RPGs. You level up your character and situations become easier and easier as your character and equipment improves.
@Vinicius Villela so some roguelites
Vinicius Villela Flinthook has something akin to that.
And rogue-likes aren't different from any slasher/platformer - you just run around killing mobs and that's it. Only that good games like Mario actually have some form of progression and checkpoints, instead of forcing you to start from the very beginning.
TheTekOr Oleg I mean, flint hook has tangible progression, Swords of MoMo has progression, Binding of Isaac has progression (just to a lesser extent than the others), Dead Cells has progression, and many more.
@@soriso717 well, I meant having "meaningful" progression - the one that doesn't reset every time you die, so you don't have to feel like you completely wasted the last couple of hours.
Rogue-likes are like if Dark Souls deleted the save file every time you died, and rogue-lites - if DS respawned you at the Firelink shrine and there were no other bonfires. And the map would be random every time. Maybe that sounds fun to you, but that game would be dead on arrival because very few people would enjoy that kind of bs.
Thanks for the reupload! I enjoyed it just as much both times, but there is one thing that bothers me a bit. In your section about gungeon, you said guns are no stronger than the ones you can find at the beginning. I'd like to believe this is true, but after a couple hundred hours in the game, I've found it to not be so. While you can beat the game with the guns you can find at the beginning, guns bought in the breach such as the black hole gun, yari launcher, or even the clone item, found after finishing a certain side quest, can make the game extremely easy if found.
Anyway, I just wanted to put my opinion out there. Thanks for the amazing content!
You have a point. During his points about Enter the Gungeon I found myself thinking about how increasing the variety of loot seems to influence how well I do in my runs. Things like health upgrades and very powerful guns make future runs easier, but not to the point that it ever trivializes the game, at least as far as I know. I haven't beaten it yet.
Yup. That argument he presents regarding Gungeon is fundamentally flawed because it presupposes that some sort of "perfect balance" is achievable, or even desirable (neither is true). By changing the offerings in something random, you inherently shift it to favor certain traits, be that more favorable for the player or less. In either case, the difficulty is changing, and invariably, some weapons will be meta-viewed as making or breaking a run. Either these defining drops are not unlockable, in which case the progress system is undesirable from the player perspective (if they're trying to optimize their chances of winning) or they are unlockable, in which case you fall into the grindiness of something like Rogue Legacy. You could have them split between unlockable and not, but that presupposes that you as a developer can correctly assess how players will value them or patch them to be so, although with patching, you've now fundamentally changed the game, and so how they are viewed will itself shift. There is no "winning" if your goal is to achieve some mythical "balance"; it doesn't exist.
But dosent that work against better guns too you will.unlock a lot of useless guns so your chance of getting those good guns lowers.
Still the fun is even with bad ones with the amount of synergies you can save a run
Yeah I also noticed he skipped over 'item strength'. The one thing I would add is that although you can acquire more powerful items this does not mean they make the games significantly easier as opposed to a 500% health increase a roguelike could maybe offer. And if the items do make the run significantly easier it would often be just for a single run which still is in line with the roguelike principle he outlined.
Crypt of the Necrodancer did it best in my eyes. Of course, there's the standard Rougelike mode where you go through Area 1, 2, 3, and 4 in order without dying. However, the regular and probably more often taken path (and the one you showed in the video) is the segmented Area run, where you start at Area 1 and just get to the bottom of *that* to unlock Area 2. Because the game's areas are way more drastically different than other rougelikes, because you have to learn new enemy patterns, music, it's encouraged to play this way so you can learn the Area and really get good at it before moving onto the next. The segmented Area runs also have persistent upgrades, ranging from health to items, which can make the game significantly easier. However, these upgrades don't persist though the All Areas mode, as every upgrade is unlocked from the start in that mode, except for health upgrades.
This system makes the difficulty curve natural, letting players start from whatever Area they want. It also encourages them to try All Areas after beating the game, because they now have the knowledge they got through the segmented run, so they won't have to die on an enemy not knowing what the hell they do, an issue that I tend to see a lot in modern rougelikes. Another issue they fix is making All Zones marathon safe, because if shit hits the fan they can always go into a segmented area and finish the run there. (Thats what they did in AGDQ, for example.)
However, like it's said in the video, some players might never beat the game. Me included. Aria is just wayyy too hard for me and it's still part of the story mode. So, I'll never actually complete the game.
@@kyutora1024 To me beating the game is beating it on the default character. But yea, locking story behind a challenge was a little bit dickish.
Can't believe I'm just finding this channel, it's brilliant
I honestly love both, they are 2 of my favourite game genres! my attention span can be wary at times especially for games but i find both rogue types easy to pick up again and I just keep going back to them!
i believe hades removes that skill or time feeling, as all upgrades only really improve your chances, or give you more health, so if you get hit, it's still your fault.
Thank you for the semi-reupload!
Thanks for making this Video. Now I can link it anytime someones doesn't know that rogue-like and lites are two different variations of the same genre.
Very good video and extremely informative. As a Gamedev looking into making my own roguelike, this was a good entrance point, so thank you.
One thing I would have liked to see added, is that a lot of roguelites also have climbing difficulty through "ascensions", "hard mode" etc. For example Slay the Spire gets you more unlocks for your character each level up, but each time you beat the game you also unlock one higher difficulty, ramping up to 20.
Beating the game on Ascension 20 is still extremely hard, and you need the experience and the unlocks. So both is possible
Just FYI he is wrong about a lot of things in this video. Most importantly the difference between roguelikes and roguelites. The term "roguelite" only exists because Spelunky didn't quite fit into the roguelike genre seeing as how it does not have turn based combat on tiles. Then there was The Binding of Isaac which cemented meta progression into the roguelite genre. It's really odd how he calls Spelunky and TBOI traditional roguelikes when these games are the reason the roguelite genre exists in the first place.
He's also terribly wrong about the difficulty curves. In The Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon the game does, objectively, get easier when you unlock more items (he says that those items and weapons are not any better than the ones unlocked from the start but that is straight up misinformation) and you unlock more enemies, more bosses and more endings. In Dead Cells the game progressively gets easier as you unlock permanent upgrades but then it gets massively harder as you unlock more difficulty levels. I hope you notice the similarity there, in both these examples you are progressively unlocking things that make you stronger and you're unlocking new challenges, usually in the form of a further and more difficult finish line. So why is he putting them into two different genres? They are fundamentally the same, they are both roguelites.
I can't tell you too much about pure roguelikes because I'm not terribly into them, but look into games like Dwarf Fortress and Caves of Qud.
I'm quite fond of Roguelites. Neon Chrome is one of my favorites, with it being persistent in it's u locks and stats, but each successfully completed playthrough unlocks another difficulty tier. It gets painfully difficult over time
well deadcells implemented a cool feature where the game favors people that are good at the game like killing 60 enemies without getting hit and the only upgrade that really effects the game is the potion
There also getting to the door as fast as possible which can lead to leaving behind cell,scrolls, money and potential blueprints to make the current run easier.
Super interesting video Mark!!
I know this is an older video but after watching the most recent video about Deathloop, I had to come back to this.
Huge fan of the Roguelike/lite genre but Dead Cells stands out to me in particular because of the Boss Cell system or Difficulty system they have. Even after getting literally all of the permanent upgrades the game is still quite challenging plus there is a secret area only available for those on the hardest difficulty. I would like to see more roguelites take inspiration from Dead Cells because it is the only roguelite, specifically for me, that I can keep coming back to. Makes it go from lite to like.
I'm incredibly bad at video games, yet i cherish rogue-likes for some strange reason. Something about finally FINALLY getting to the heart of The Binding Of Isaac (which i've done a miserable 10~ times winning 4 after 300 hours lmao) and beating it made me so happy i couldn't get enough.
It's the same video, but's still different! :D
ThePinkArtist it’s so fucking trippy xD
I feel the same, I'm not sure if it's just cuz I wasn't paying attention the first timem
Much like a new run in a Roguelike (or even Roguelite).
Excellent video! Thanks again for the quality analysis and content. I generally like my games a little easier so I personally prefer roguelites. I find that I need that knowledge that I'm always making progress in order to not get discouraged and stop playing a game; I would feel like my time was wasted otherwise. I've recently been playing children of morta, a top down hack and slash roguelite rpg, which I feel like balances the progression and difficulty well. As you play through the game your characters earn levels (netting you skill points to spend on new abilities) and you can spend money earnt during runs through dungeons on persistent upgrades. As the game progresses, the dungeons get more and more challenging. The game is definitely harder at the start when a character has no levels, but difficulty so far has kept pace well; as soon as my character clears one area, the next one is usually too hard to beat on the first go, and requires me to get better to learn how to use new abilities better or more efficiently, in order to surpass it. Lastly, the only way for characters to heal is to pick up health potions which only have a chance of dropping randomly. Otherwise, there is no healing. Combat is fair and balanced, but mistakes are hard to take back. Getting enough money in one run for a large upgrade requires you to survive through most of the run, and thus make less mistakes.
This negative slope of difficulty curve in roguelites reminds me a similar response curve in a feedback loop of an adaptive system. You actually said something along these lines (with how low level you can finish that game). My point is, we can look at it as a game dynamically adjusting to player's skill. I'm okay with that.
Love your videos, BTW. :)
This is first time I see someone splits these two types of games as rouglikes and rouglites.
As far as I've seen from other sources "rougelite" was usually used as a more fair synonym for what is generally today called rouglike, in order to make difference between games that are actually like rouge (and should be called rougelike), and what is popularly today called "rougelike", that has just several elements from rouge.
player1 Rouge is makeup. Rogue is what you mean
I was so confused watchig that videos...
"Oh, a new videeo on rogue likes... Wait, didn't i watch a video like this before? Eh, must be from another UA-camr!"
Then at 5:39 i really got that feeling of Dejà Vu.. I went to the commentr section and oh! It's a reupload lmao. Great work dudo. You made me laugh too ahah
I really appreciate that you took the time to reflect and correct yourself and make a better, fairer video! Taking a peek at the original, it's night and day. ^^
I'd still comment though that your simplistic difficulty curve thought process which treats the number of runs as a continuum, simply doesn't capture the progression *during* the runs.
RogueliKes don't have a flat curve: as the player makes more runs, they generally get further into the game (interspersed with some embarrassing, highly-clippable early fails, of course!), and as they get further they're confronted with more complex challenges. Sure, the further into a run the player is, the more geared-up they are, but brawn *shouldn't* entirely make up for skill and game-sense required by the complexity.
RogueliTes simply allow the player to keep some of their hard-earned "tangible" accomplishments between runs, without going from a flat curve to a backward curve; the curve might be flatter than a roguelike's, but still rising. And as you described in this improved version, the games still require skill because they somehow make sure the player can't really "grind": by requiring them to "bank" their accomplishments, which can only be done at specific points, and by scaling the prices of upgrades.
I just wanted to make this correction, because i think this is important. Overall, I think we must avoid elitism *as well* as anti-elitism, which is what you sought to avoid by re-doing this video. ^^ Let's enjoy games the way that suits each of us.
My first real experience with a game of this genre is Enter the Gungeon, at first it was a bit frustrating to not really have a sense of progression other than making it to the next floor or room but i discovered that I loved the feeling of "just one more run" in the hopes that i get better gear, loot, weapons etc. I have over 500 runs in the game and about 175 hours clocked and I love it! Easily one of my favorite games
I disagree, Rougelites do have a traditional difficulty curve. The accumulation of power over time doesn't invert the curve, but lowers the y intercept.
The the whole of the game gets easier, but the later levels are still much harder than the start.
Playing through hades right now, first time playing this kind of thing
3sec in and I had to subscribe. Amazing voiceover. Good content. Thank you.
One interesting approach to this is the Roguelike Gameboy game Cave Noire which is divided into 10 levels that unlock as you beat each in turn.
The 1st level is stupidly easy but the 10th is super hard and long. Each individual run is distinct, starting from the beginning but you feel progression as you unlock levels.
The game is also divided into 4 separate dungeons with different winning goals. 10 levels each.
*Reuploads video*
“Well, time to go get killed again”
I choose Roguelites. I've never managed to beat an actual roguelike before I got tired of the game.
pathetic
Same. For me, I need to be unlocking stuff and actually see my progress even if its cosmetic. If the game doesnt change at all, or lacks even small rewards, I'll jist stop caring.
I would like your comment
(so it's 69) but it's so pathetic
Cas Kar same. Rogue like games are boring as shit imo. Binding of isaac being the worst offender. It’s praised as one of the best roguelikes and I guess it is for the genre but the game itself is so boring.
What’s the point? One mistake and you lost all your progress. It’s not exactly enjoyable to me to restart a game I sunk time into with zero change.
Roguelites however are more fun. Sure, you may die but you’re going to get cool upgrades and maybe choose some weapons to start the game with.
@@ryujinjakka4518
That's the problem, people act as if it those games were a OHKO like Crash or like they have an unfair Difficulty Level, but they don't. It isn't just *1* mistake, it's a shitload of mistakes.
Most BoI Characters have around 3~4 Hearts (some even more), that's 6~8 Hits before death, not counting Health Pickups or Items that rise your Max Health. The only way you will have any problem is if playing characters like Azazel or ???, since they lack any Normal Hearts (Azazel can gain them via Items, ??? can just have Grey Hearts) but those aren't ment to be used by Noobs, unless you want/like challenges.
If the only way you can beat any game is by using a Character that's a goddamn Damage Sponge, then the game isn't the problem, it's you. Don't blame the game for your lack of skills or incompetence.
Just *G I T G U D*
Like you would in any other game
One way to avoid the difficulty curve how slay the spire does it. You get the weird difficulty curve at first but each time you beat the spire you unlock an ascension with a new higher difficulty. This paired with the limited unlocks for each character means that eventually the difficulty curve will flip to that like a traditional roguelike.
I was starting to think you were the voice of Zagreas, interesting to hear both voices side by side.
I like how Risk of Rain 1 and 2 do it, by letting you unlock new characters, items, and even bonus modes. It lets you feel like you're making progress without forcing you to beat the game or making it demonstrably easier.
Honestly I really could care less if I’m “good at a game” but rather that it is fun to play and a great experience.
Game makers toolkit is so educational about a topic that isnt discussed in such a manor very often and these videos are relaxing as fuck. I truly love these videos.
I like how in The Binding Of Isaac, every time you come across a new upgrade it can be viewed in an archive. You can see what you've found and how many things there are left to find, so in a way you're making progress as a collector.
I cant believe that he did this video without even mentioning Isaac :,v
I'm foaming about that too, showed a few clips as well
“that creates in a weirdo backwards difficulty curve that brings in an unpleasant ambiguity over whether your success is due to your increasing skill, or the game’s falling difficulty”
If I’m being honest, I’m pretty sure the only people who care about that are the ones who are already good at really hard games. XD
I care and I'm terrible!
As someone who likes to play hard games
Yeah its not fun to win because you failed enough times for the game to hand you the win
Its fun to keep trying over and over again until you get good enough to beat whatever was standing in your path
Well you can highroll pretty hard in most roguelikes. I beat Mom in The Binding of Isaac 1 in one of my first runs (I believe it was my third) because I got a ridiculous item combo in one of the first stages.
Yep, that's about right I think. I love difficult games, so when a game gives me the option to reduce the difficulty or even skip hard sections, I feel insulted to the point of wanting to put the game down. But that's not how everyone feels.
There is the question of games which reduces the difficulty, but the drop must be quite small: you must have played tens of hours to have the maximum bonuses.
See for an options for weak player which drastically reduces the difficulty without making it easy (after that depends on the level of the player). "Skull Héro Slayer" is good game at this level.
Everyone wants chalenge but it has to be lowered enough to make it accessible (in action Rpg die dozens of times yes but not hundreds).
Honestly if dying 10 times on the same boss (story boss) a 10% difficulty reduction could be useful. I say 10 because it's enough for a player to get tired of the games and give it a extra hope.
Returnal
I keep coming back to this video
That "weird backward difficulty curve" is just a function of any RPG style level up system. I've been playing one of the souls games, and I was banging my head against a wall fighting one of the bosses, so I leveled up a little until I could beat them. The fact that it was my time investment and not my skill which beat the boss doesn't bother me.
Rogue Legacy also has ascensions, where you clear all the bosses and restart the dungeon with the same character at a higher difficulty.
My new favorite Slay the Spire is *freaking hard*, mostly because the card draws are randomized and the bosses hit like freight trains.
Well, after playing it for like a month, it becomes *fricking easy*.
I have to disagree with what you said about the difficulty curve in Enter The Gungeon and TBOI.
Unlocking new items or characters has the intention of giving you better opportunities to win by getting STRONGER stuff, for example playing as Azazel or finding Brimstone makes the game way easier.
Thats the same case with Gungeon, only that I can't give examples because I didn't play it for some time.
For Gungeon
Getting the Clone item is basically a free ticket to getting a strong run due to going through all the Chambers again with all the items you got the previous life
Yari Launcher and Makeshift Cannon are the 'instant boss health-deleter' that trivializes the fights
Yes and no, for TBOI, you can unlock good thing in your progress, but you also unlook more difficult things to defeat,when you start a game you only have to kill mom, and then the challengegoes up to 4 more bosses with more difficult enemies, and with teh items is the same, yes is true that you have better items, but it isbalso true that you will have worse items while you progress, making your pool exactly the same,even with pick ups happen this, like the souls hearts at the start gives you a full soul heart always, but yo can unlock the half soul heart, meaning less live in your campain... and also you can play with azazel in the game sure, but you also have to play with the lost and the keeper if you want to finish the 100% of the game
Great in depth video
Talking about Hades, I don't know what state the early-access was in when you made the video, but the game does something interesting about the weird difficulty curve you talked about, with the Pact of Punishment system. Once you have got 5 or 6 Titan Blood (the item that makes the game easier by unlocking weapons and improving them), you can't find others until you finished the game. And then, the only way that you can find more after finishing the game, is to make the game harder with the Pact of Punishment. The difficulty curve of the game then progress with the strenght of the character, and you actually have to improve your skill to beat the game without unlocking everything.