A few things in the video could use further clarification, but it was already pretty long so I left it at that. Hope you enjoyed it - took me a little while to make. In case you want to be the first to know about my future videos, subscribe and follow me on the bad website: twitter.com/Alex_Pinetree
I appreciated this video a lot. As both a roguelike veteran-all the way back to that ascii stuff-and someone who does UX/UI design in an unrelated industry for a living, I really appreciated how you built up the complexity of the design drivers in a way that made each step intuitive. This was a standout deep dive into the heart of the genre and I think you nailed the conclusions.
I know that I am very late to this video but I just must say that this probably is the best or second best video about roguelike design that I have ever seen, definitely hope you make more stuff!
Hey just wanted to say I enjoyed the meat and potatoes of this video and gave me a good sense of what I've been doing right and what needs improvement while creating my roguelite/village-builder game Kainga. Nice work!
8:30: Tile-based, hack and slash, and resource management DO describe the experience the genre provides. You can't seriously argue that Nethack, Enter the Gungeon, and Spelunky all provide the same sort of experience, they are all completely different games that are going to appeal to different players. If you enjoy top down shooters, you'll probably enjoy Enter the Gungeon. If you enjoy platformers, you'll probably enjoy Spelunky. But liking either of these fast paced action genres does not imply that you will like a slow, methodical, turned based game like Nethack. These grid based, turned based, dungeon crawling RPGs clearly form a distinct genre, and the name for that genre is Roguelike. It's not stifling originality to say so, it's providing clear definitions. Enter the Gungeon is not a Roguelike, because it does not resemble the gameplay of Rogue. It is a top down shooter, because it resembles the gameplay of other games from that genre like Robotron. Spelunky it not a Roguelike, it is an action-platformer because it resembles the gameplay of other games from that genre like Castlevania (or most specifically, La-Mulana). The term roguelite is useful for describing these games with permadeath and procedural generation, but roguelite is not a genre. It is a modifier. You can have a roguelite top-down shooter (like Gungeon), a roguelite platformer (like Spelunky), or a roguelite FPS (like Tower of Guns). Permadeath isn't even a strict requirement for Roguelikes, although it does complement the other mechanics well so it's usually found in the genre. But many Roguelikes have non-permadeath options, and some like the Mystery Dungeon series don't have permadeath at all.
Mostly I chose this definition because it fit the purposes of the video. The design ideas described in the video apply to roguelikes in the broadest possible sense - any games with the mentioned emphasis on structural randomness can benefit from the methods described, so, when describing these methods, it was simply a matter of convenience to define the genre broadly. I could have clarified it further, but to me, it seemed entirely besides the point considering that the purpose of the video was not to argue about genre definitions but rather explore the design implications of randomness in games that apply it this fundamentally. I'm entirely okay with people disagreeing on definitions because it seems like a tangent topic - one that is interesting to explore (I don't agree with you here), but it's not the focus of the video. Planning on doing a video about genre theory in the future though.
Myself, I don't entirely support berlin interpretation, because let's agree, it's factors are extremely limiting. Even angbard doesn't fit, since it has menus and interactables. However, I don't like modern "traditional roguelike" classification either, if anything, it feels like name stealing. One of the reasons why this term became so popular is because it's much easier to advertise, especially when consumer already has an idea of what this genre is supposed to be. It's much easier to say "Platformer with roguelike elements" than "Platformer with procedurally generated terrain and item/enemy placement" Still a big fan of traditional RLs, this genre offers such experience no other can.
Excellent points, a very interesting perspective. I think that the aversion to randomness stems from many players' expectations that the game will always be fair and every scenario is beatable. Many AAA games are power fantasies, which is an issue in its own right. Whereas roguelike games often create unique challenges and not every situation created is something that can be beaten. Once players accept this and build a tolerance for failure then the player can better appreciate the variety of the challenges and just enjoy the experience of playing, applying critical thinking on the fly to generate a sense of achievement and mastery, rather than only enjoying themselves when they are "winning".
Presenting the player with a choice between one out of a few random items can balance out the rng and make the player feel very clever for strategically choosing their synergy. Edit: never mind, you mentioned it right at the end lol.
As for "“Posts focused on the definition of the term "roguelike" will be removed” -- wow I sure do wonder what happened here." We get lots of people in our subreddit who do not understand what the subreddit is about, and looking for stuff are not related to the core idea. It is not our fault, it is the fault of media who use "roguelike" as a buzzword. And these people write something which is totally unrelated to roguelikes, they get corrected, they then think they understand the genre better than us and they repeat the same buzzword bullshit again and again. Having this in every thread and post mostly clutters the discussion, so it is removed. I am surprised that the current discussion is not removed yet.
Must suck getting lots of people who misunderstand what the topic is about and cluttering the discussion with marginal matters. Can't imagine. My snark aside, the definition of roguelikes is a fascinating topic and it has been interesting for me to find plenty of heated debates online regarding the topic. I do plan on doing a video on genre theory at some point in the future to hopefully clear some matters up.
@@alexpinegamedesign Good luck with that video! The problem with roguelikes is that they are amazing and extremely influential games (Diablo is also heavily inspired by roguelikes, and more remotely, Minecraft) but for some reason they are ignored by media. And they are ignored by media for the same reason that the fans love them (they are free, new versions are released forever, most of the effort goes on the gameplay, etc.) I have asked people what they would consider "chess-like" and most people say something like "turn-based, played on a board". Now imagine that someone creates a team-based first-person shooter where the team who kills the leader of the enemy team instantly wins. It turns out to be really fun, so the game becomes very popular and influential. And the devs mention that they took inspiration from Chess, so now "chess-like" means first-person shooters like that. And people who just wanted to play Chess are now called gatekeepers and told they are actually playing "traditional Chess". I think that scenario could actually happen, and basically this is what happened with roguelikes, except it was worse because they are less popular than Chess...
Sometimes I don't care for RNG in Roguelikes and wish there's an option to REMOVE it. Like Risk of Rain's Command Artifact. I don't care if it breaks the spirit of the game, if the RNG keeps killing me I strongly wish to break it in half in return! EDIT: My main example is Enter the Gungeon, yes.
One thing that got me really bored with dead cells is the rooms felt same-y after a while snd trying to stray off of the initial items at the start was usually challenging. Along with that, to reach a satisfying conclusion with the game, you’d need to beat it on around 4 difficulties with not a lot of content added to satiate the time spent. They did find a solution to this where you can use custom loot pools and still achieve progress in the game but it felt like cheating kinda.
Bold of you to assume David Yu is not controlling absolutely every bit of "randomness" in the Spelunky games. Edit: What am I saying he clearly controls ALL gaming "RNG" ever.
I'm pretty good at predicting if channel blows up, did that with 15-20 channels. I'm telling you, keep making videos in this style, and you will get thousand of subscribers in a matter of few months.
[Copying my post from the Roguelike subreddit, as it will be probably deleted by mods there anyway -- as discussing roguelike definitions is generally discouraged to prevent every thread from devolving into a discussion of definitions with confused people] Have you played any games in our "popular roguelikes" sidebar? To be honest, you sound like yet another person who has never played any modern roguelike (DCSS, DRL, Brogue, ADOM, ToME, CoQ, Jupiter Hell, etc.) and has no idea what is the most amazing thing about them, and says things like "and certainly much better than Germany over here" despite never playing any game in the genre that Berlin Interpretation was talking about. "The Berlin interpretation is filled with weird, gatekeeping factors" -- sure, it does include some weird factors, and it is often critiqued in our community, but it also includes factors which are much more unique to roguelikes than the ones you mention. Run-based games (which your video is actually about) existed forever. It is run-based games that typically have one hour long runs, most popular roguelikes typically have 10+ hour long runs. And why "gatekeeping"??? Roguelikes are a genre that is almost never discussed in the media, and most of us are happy to welcome new people in our community. Please try roguelikes which feel interesting to you. DCSS is the usual recommendation, you can also try e.g. DRL which is short and sweet and shows what needs to be changed in Doom to make it a roguelike, and you can also find lots of other recommendation threads in this subreddit. It will be worth it, there is a reason why we care about definitions, why roguelikes inspired all these other games, and why people who try to sell games pretend that this genre does not exist.
Outside of the classic roguelike fanbase, the term "roguelike" tends to be used more broadly as an umbrella under which both roguelites and classic roguelikes fall. This acknowledges the fact that these games, albeit different and with different appeals, have some fundamental design similarities that set them apart from other genres, with the characteristics that differentiate between the two subgenres being far less interesting from a design perspective. This is also why I decided to use such a broad definition - because this video is about the design implications of applying randomness on a fundamental level (and not about definitions or genre theory), the subgenre doesn't matter here. I did play a handful of roguelikes in the classic sense, and enjoyed my time with them. They're not featured much in the video considering that what you'd consider roguelites tend to be far more legible and are recently taking off in the mainstream, with classic roguelikes remaining a comparatively niche community. For an audience that's more familiar with roguelites and that's intent on learning lessons about applying randomness fundamentally (rather than discuss definitions), viewing this footage simply makes a lot more sense.
The bit about hating women in the beginning, as your intro, is a yikes, especially considering you made a similar joke in your tutorial video for the skill gates section. Also, the several comments saying they liked the intro/subscribed because of the first couple of seconds is concerning. I am hoping in good faith that these are just jokes and aren't showing some underlying incel mindset you have or something. These are your early videos so I'm being more lenient and will hope they will go away in future videos as I binge the rest of your content, but I'd just like to say outright that they aren't funny and can attract the wrong kind of audience if you aren't careful.
It's a joke about the absurdity of sexism in gaming culture. At the time of writing I did not see how it can be read as a joke at the expense of women, and I still think such a reading has to be bad faith. I like to believe that the people commenting about this joke read it the same way. Either way, now that I feel like I've found my style, I can say that this kind of joke is too crude/edgy for me to include anything similar in my future videos.
@@alexpinegamedesign Apologies, then! I suppose I'm a bit more sensitive to those kinds of jokes than others. I'm glad they aren't in your future videos though
@@Sunny_Haven I don’t think you were being sensitive. The butt of the joke was women, not sexist men. If you repeat something a group says to make fun of that group, but don’t have a clear attitude towards what you’re repeating, you’re not parodying it; you’re just parroting it. Mockery is an art form~ he just whiffed this one. Happens to all of us, especially when we think that everyone has a similar perspective because it seems obvious/sane/rational to us. We think the crazy attitude speaks for itself as being crazy,,,forgetting sometimes that crazy people do exist, and we might be talking to one or confused as one. But if you’ve been in the ~gamer girl trenches~, you know that stuff is very real. It’s not dumb to look at a stray dog and think “coyote” first when you’ve run into them a few times.
Permanent death isn't critical to your shoot them ups/platformers/top down shooters, being able to respawn doesn't change the mechanics of the game, I don't think it matters at all. According to your definition, russian roulette is a roguelike
Just 2 minutes afterwards, I elaborate on why games like Darkest Dungeon (much closer to roguelike than russian roulette, by the way) aren't roguelikes due to the narrow variance. The game having _some_ randomness doesn't matter much, but I specifically talk about the importance of structural randomness, by which I mostly mean input randomness that fundamentally affects how a player interacts with the game. As I also mention in the video, it's not a perfect definition by any means, but is insightful from a design perspective, and you'll see that it excludes russian roulette, Tetris, and many other suchlike games. This topic could be elaborated on further, but it's not the point of the video.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
A few things in the video could use further clarification, but it was already pretty long so I left it at that. Hope you enjoyed it - took me a little while to make. In case you want to be the first to know about my future videos, subscribe and follow me on the bad website: twitter.com/Alex_Pinetree
this is a very very good video that touches on views i wouldnt think to ever actually hear anyone voice
the first ten seconds already got you a new sub
Same
agreed
Great vid. You come across as a genuine insider of all the games you talk about, and the writing here is good.
I did a spit take at your quote about fighting fire with fire ending up with a bad noita run been there way too many times.
Very glad to have stumbled upon this. Doing a deeeep dive of rougelikes for a personal project and you break it down nicely!
This is really really interesting especially as someone who is struggling with designing a rogue like. I really hope you make more videos!
I appreciated this video a lot. As both a roguelike veteran-all the way back to that ascii stuff-and someone who does UX/UI design in an unrelated industry for a living, I really appreciated how you built up the complexity of the design drivers in a way that made each step intuitive. This was a standout deep dive into the heart of the genre and I think you nailed the conclusions.
I know that I am very late to this video but I just must say that this probably is the best or second best video about roguelike design that I have ever seen, definitely hope you make more stuff!
never thought of the reset abuse
Hey just wanted to say I enjoyed the meat and potatoes of this video and gave me a good sense of what I've been doing right and what needs improvement while creating my roguelite/village-builder game Kainga.
Nice work!
8:30: Tile-based, hack and slash, and resource management DO describe the experience the genre provides. You can't seriously argue that Nethack, Enter the Gungeon, and Spelunky all provide the same sort of experience, they are all completely different games that are going to appeal to different players. If you enjoy top down shooters, you'll probably enjoy Enter the Gungeon. If you enjoy platformers, you'll probably enjoy Spelunky. But liking either of these fast paced action genres does not imply that you will like a slow, methodical, turned based game like Nethack.
These grid based, turned based, dungeon crawling RPGs clearly form a distinct genre, and the name for that genre is Roguelike. It's not stifling originality to say so, it's providing clear definitions. Enter the Gungeon is not a Roguelike, because it does not resemble the gameplay of Rogue. It is a top down shooter, because it resembles the gameplay of other games from that genre like Robotron. Spelunky it not a Roguelike, it is an action-platformer because it resembles the gameplay of other games from that genre like Castlevania (or most specifically, La-Mulana).
The term roguelite is useful for describing these games with permadeath and procedural generation, but roguelite is not a genre. It is a modifier. You can have a roguelite top-down shooter (like Gungeon), a roguelite platformer (like Spelunky), or a roguelite FPS (like Tower of Guns).
Permadeath isn't even a strict requirement for Roguelikes, although it does complement the other mechanics well so it's usually found in the genre. But many Roguelikes have non-permadeath options, and some like the Mystery Dungeon series don't have permadeath at all.
Mostly I chose this definition because it fit the purposes of the video. The design ideas described in the video apply to roguelikes in the broadest possible sense - any games with the mentioned emphasis on structural randomness can benefit from the methods described, so, when describing these methods, it was simply a matter of convenience to define the genre broadly. I could have clarified it further, but to me, it seemed entirely besides the point considering that the purpose of the video was not to argue about genre definitions but rather explore the design implications of randomness in games that apply it this fundamentally. I'm entirely okay with people disagreeing on definitions because it seems like a tangent topic - one that is interesting to explore (I don't agree with you here), but it's not the focus of the video. Planning on doing a video about genre theory in the future though.
Myself, I don't entirely support berlin interpretation, because let's agree, it's factors are extremely limiting. Even angbard doesn't fit, since it has menus and interactables.
However, I don't like modern "traditional roguelike" classification either, if anything, it feels like name stealing. One of the reasons why this term became so popular is because it's much easier to advertise, especially when consumer already has an idea of what this genre is supposed to be. It's much easier to say "Platformer with roguelike elements" than "Platformer with procedurally generated terrain and item/enemy placement"
Still a big fan of traditional RLs, this genre offers such experience no other can.
3:49
A Noita classic 👌
Excellent points, a very interesting perspective.
I think that the aversion to randomness stems from many players' expectations that the game will always be fair and every scenario is beatable. Many AAA games are power fantasies, which is an issue in its own right. Whereas roguelike games often create unique challenges and not every situation created is something that can be beaten. Once players accept this and build a tolerance for failure then the player can better appreciate the variety of the challenges and just enjoy the experience of playing, applying critical thinking on the fly to generate a sense of achievement and mastery, rather than only enjoying themselves when they are "winning".
Presenting the player with a choice between one out of a few random items can balance out the rng and make the player feel very clever for strategically choosing their synergy.
Edit: never mind, you mentioned it right at the end lol.
As for "“Posts focused on the definition of the term "roguelike" will be removed” -- wow I sure do wonder what happened here."
We get lots of people in our subreddit who do not understand what the subreddit is about, and looking for stuff are not related to the core idea.
It is not our fault, it is the fault of media who use "roguelike" as a buzzword.
And these people write something which is totally unrelated to roguelikes, they get corrected, they then think they understand the genre better than us and they repeat the same buzzword bullshit again and again. Having this in every thread and post mostly clutters the discussion, so it is removed. I am surprised that the current discussion is not removed yet.
Must suck getting lots of people who misunderstand what the topic is about and cluttering the discussion with marginal matters. Can't imagine.
My snark aside, the definition of roguelikes is a fascinating topic and it has been interesting for me to find plenty of heated debates online regarding the topic. I do plan on doing a video on genre theory at some point in the future to hopefully clear some matters up.
@@alexpinegamedesign Good luck with that video! The problem with roguelikes is that they are amazing and extremely influential games (Diablo is also heavily inspired by roguelikes, and more remotely, Minecraft) but for some reason they are ignored by media. And they are ignored by media for the same reason that the fans love them (they are free, new versions are released forever, most of the effort goes on the gameplay, etc.)
I have asked people what they would consider "chess-like" and most people say something like "turn-based, played on a board".
Now imagine that someone creates a team-based first-person shooter where the team who kills the leader of the enemy team instantly wins. It turns out to be really fun, so the game becomes very popular and influential. And the devs mention that they took inspiration from Chess, so now "chess-like" means first-person shooters like that. And people who just wanted to play Chess are now called gatekeepers and told they are actually playing "traditional Chess".
I think that scenario could actually happen, and basically this is what happened with roguelikes, except it was worse because they are less popular than Chess...
I enjoyed the video. It's a shame it wasn't on my feed 2 years ago. Good luck with your channel, if you're still doing it.
Sometimes I don't care for RNG in Roguelikes and wish there's an option to REMOVE it. Like Risk of Rain's Command Artifact. I don't care if it breaks the spirit of the game, if the RNG keeps killing me I strongly wish to break it in half in return!
EDIT: My main example is Enter the Gungeon, yes.
One thing that got me really bored with dead cells is the rooms felt same-y after a while snd trying to stray off of the initial items at the start was usually challenging. Along with that, to reach a satisfying conclusion with the game, you’d need to beat it on around 4 difficulties with not a lot of content added to satiate the time spent. They did find a solution to this where you can use custom loot pools and still achieve progress in the game but it felt like cheating kinda.
Bold of you to assume David Yu is not controlling absolutely every bit of "randomness" in the Spelunky games.
Edit: What am I saying he clearly controls ALL gaming "RNG" ever.
I'm pretty good at predicting if channel blows up, did that with 15-20 channels. I'm telling you, keep making videos in this style, and you will get thousand of subscribers in a matter of few months.
♥️
[Copying my post from the Roguelike subreddit, as it will be probably deleted by mods there anyway -- as discussing roguelike definitions is generally discouraged to prevent every thread from devolving into a discussion of definitions with confused people]
Have you played any games in our "popular roguelikes" sidebar? To be honest, you sound like yet another person who has never played any modern roguelike (DCSS, DRL, Brogue, ADOM, ToME, CoQ, Jupiter Hell, etc.) and has no idea what is the most amazing thing about them, and says things like "and certainly much better than Germany over here" despite never playing any game in the genre that Berlin Interpretation was talking about.
"The Berlin interpretation is filled with weird, gatekeeping factors" -- sure, it does include some weird factors, and it is often critiqued in our community, but it also includes factors which are much more unique to roguelikes than the ones you mention. Run-based games (which your video is actually about) existed forever. It is run-based games that typically have one hour long runs, most popular roguelikes typically have 10+ hour long runs.
And why "gatekeeping"??? Roguelikes are a genre that is almost never discussed in the media, and most of us are happy to welcome new people in our community. Please try roguelikes which feel interesting to you. DCSS is the usual recommendation, you can also try e.g. DRL which is short and sweet and shows what needs to be changed in Doom to make it a roguelike, and you can also find lots of other recommendation threads in this subreddit. It will be worth it, there is a reason why we care about definitions, why roguelikes inspired all these other games, and why people who try to sell games pretend that this genre does not exist.
Outside of the classic roguelike fanbase, the term "roguelike" tends to be used more broadly as an umbrella under which both roguelites and classic roguelikes fall. This acknowledges the fact that these games, albeit different and with different appeals, have some fundamental design similarities that set them apart from other genres, with the characteristics that differentiate between the two subgenres being far less interesting from a design perspective. This is also why I decided to use such a broad definition - because this video is about the design implications of applying randomness on a fundamental level (and not about definitions or genre theory), the subgenre doesn't matter here.
I did play a handful of roguelikes in the classic sense, and enjoyed my time with them. They're not featured much in the video considering that what you'd consider roguelites tend to be far more legible and are recently taking off in the mainstream, with classic roguelikes remaining a comparatively niche community. For an audience that's more familiar with roguelites and that's intent on learning lessons about applying randomness fundamentally (rather than discuss definitions), viewing this footage simply makes a lot more sense.
Please do explain the statistics and dont do the shut up nerd joke. Who else would watch these vids if not nerds?! We can handle it
As a statistics student, _I_ can not handle it
Best intro ever. Thanks.
Savage intro
0:14 That was sexist as hell
as an isaac player, i agree, play another game
The bit about hating women in the beginning, as your intro, is a yikes, especially considering you made a similar joke in your tutorial video for the skill gates section. Also, the several comments saying they liked the intro/subscribed because of the first couple of seconds is concerning. I am hoping in good faith that these are just jokes and aren't showing some underlying incel mindset you have or something. These are your early videos so I'm being more lenient and will hope they will go away in future videos as I binge the rest of your content, but I'd just like to say outright that they aren't funny and can attract the wrong kind of audience if you aren't careful.
It's a joke about the absurdity of sexism in gaming culture. At the time of writing I did not see how it can be read as a joke at the expense of women, and I still think such a reading has to be bad faith. I like to believe that the people commenting about this joke read it the same way.
Either way, now that I feel like I've found my style, I can say that this kind of joke is too crude/edgy for me to include anything similar in my future videos.
@@alexpinegamedesign Apologies, then! I suppose I'm a bit more sensitive to those kinds of jokes than others. I'm glad they aren't in your future videos though
@@Sunny_Haven I don’t think you were being sensitive. The butt of the joke was women, not sexist men. If you repeat something a group says to make fun of that group, but don’t have a clear attitude towards what you’re repeating, you’re not parodying it; you’re just parroting it.
Mockery is an art form~ he just whiffed this one. Happens to all of us, especially when we think that everyone has a similar perspective because it seems obvious/sane/rational to us. We think the crazy attitude speaks for itself as being crazy,,,forgetting sometimes that crazy people do exist, and we might be talking to one or confused as one.
But if you’ve been in the ~gamer girl trenches~, you know that stuff is very real. It’s not dumb to look at a stray dog and think “coyote” first when you’ve run into them a few times.
@ I don’t have anything to add because what you said is great, so thank you
Permanent death isn't critical to your shoot them ups/platformers/top down shooters, being able to respawn doesn't change the mechanics of the game, I don't think it matters at all.
According to your definition, russian roulette is a roguelike
Just 2 minutes afterwards, I elaborate on why games like Darkest Dungeon (much closer to roguelike than russian roulette, by the way) aren't roguelikes due to the narrow variance. The game having _some_ randomness doesn't matter much, but I specifically talk about the importance of structural randomness, by which I mostly mean input randomness that fundamentally affects how a player interacts with the game. As I also mention in the video, it's not a perfect definition by any means, but is insightful from a design perspective, and you'll see that it excludes russian roulette, Tetris, and many other suchlike games. This topic could be elaborated on further, but it's not the point of the video.
s/roguelikes/roguelites
At least play a roguelike before making a video about them pls!