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TheRoguelikeGenre features some incredible games, with their procedurally generated stages and permadeath offering a uniquely addictive gameplay loop to players. Although these games are often quite difficult, the willingness to keep trying after defeat is a key part of the genre as well. Named after the game “Rogue”, which was created around 1980, the genre has seen countless entries as it continues to grow in popularity.
Roguelites, similarly,utilize procedural generation and permadeath to offer players hugely replayable experiencesthat encourage you to try again and experiment until you find a strategy that works. The question, then, is what makes a Roguelite different from a Roguelike. While the difference between the two can be hard to define, this article does its best to break down the core differences and offer an explanation, while also touching on the genre’s origin and history.
What Defines a Roguelike Game?
Roguelike games derive their name from the 1980s genre-defining dungeon crawler “Rogue”, also known as “Rogue: Exploring the Dungeons of Doom.” In this game, players created a character and navigated the many floors of a procedurally generated dungeon, with the ultimate goal of reaching the lowest level and acquiring the “Amulet of Yendor.” Should your character die, you’d have to start the entire game over again with a new character and a newly generated dungeon. Until the Amulet of Yendor is acquired, players cannot return to previous floors, meaning any treasure you leave behind would be impossible to retrieve until you start making your escape from the Dungeon.
Rogue wasn’t the first game to feature procedurally generated dungeons and permadeath, but its vast popularity led to the genre being named after it. Several games were created based on Rogue during the years that followed, including the game that introduced me to the genre: Hack (More specifically, I played NetHack, which Hack was the basis for), and the Tolkien-inspired “Moria.“The main defining traits of these early Roguelikes were the creation of a character, the navigation of a procedurally generated dungeon, and permadeath.
Many more recent roguelike games follow the same basic formula, putting their own spin on the procedurally generated dungeon-crawling that initially defined the genre.Games like Tales of Maj’Eyal and Caves of Qudexpanded to include world maps with many explorable locations, while games like Dungeons of Dredmor took a more satirical approach to their tone while retaining the crunchy RPG mechanics familiar to fans of the genre. Path of Achra condenses the same basic principles into single-screen combat encounters, while retaining the same gameplay formula and implementing a greater focus on combos.
As the genre continued to develop, it expanded to include other games that featured the key elements of procedural generation and permadeath, but shifted the setting and genre, such as Spelunky,FTL: Faster than Light, Rogue Legacy, Binding of Isaac, and Slay the Spire. These all shared procedural generation and permadeath elements, but many of them diverge greatly from the genre’s dungeon-crawling roots, swapping turn-based combat for fast-paced twin-stick shooting or real-time combat with platforming. Indeed, games diverging this far from the genre’s roots are often classified by the sub-genre “Roguelite”, which we’ll be discussing next.
What Defines a Rougelite Game?
This brings us to Roguelite Games, all of which can accurately be called Roguelikes as well. This is because Roguelite functions more as a sub-genre of the Roguelike genre, designed to further specify games that are several steps removed from the original style and formula. Games like FTL, Rogue Legacy,and the Binding of Isaacall fall into this sub-genre, since they feature vastly different gameplay when compared to the more traditional dungeon-crawlers, but retain the permadeath and procedural generation that is central to the genre.
Many games in both genres will feature some form of meta-progression, allowing players to unlock permanent upgrades, new characters, and other useful features as they continue to play. This doesn’t work too well as an identifier of one genre over the other, since plenty of more traditional roguelikes (like Tales of Maj’Eyal) make use of this mechanic, though this feature does tend to be slightly more common in Roguelites specifically.
In Roguelite games, if Meta-Progression is present, it will often be directly tied to an ongoing story that persists between runs. Good examples of this include Hades, with your returns to the deepest part of the Underworld triggering new dialog and progressing character stories,and Elden Ring Nightreign, where interactions between the various Nightfarers and the reveal of their histories and relationships take place at Roundtable Hold between expeditions.
What’s the Difference Between Roguelikes and Roguelites?
So, at its core, it would seem the two genres can be summed up like this: “All Roguelites are Roguelikes, but not all Roguelikes are Roguelites.” Ultimately, the key difference between the two is whether they feature turn-based dungeon-crawling gameplay, reminiscent of Rogue itself. Games that switch up the playstyle will be further classified as “Roguelite” to aid in distinguishing them from those that err closer to Rogue’s gameplay style.
Alternatively,some players might consider any game with substantial meta-progression to be a roguelite, rather than a roguelike, as many classic roguelikes do not offer progression that persists between runs. The main problem with defining them in this way is that several games that decidedly feel more roguelike than roguelite would fall into the roguelite category if appraised with this as the criteria, such as Tales of Maj’Eyal and Path of Achra.
