I've got the VIP Suite in Hell: Roguelikes, lets talk about 'em

[Deadkool]

I've recently picked up 12 is better than 6 and man am I enjoying it. I'm really a glutton for pain. I have about 200+ hours logged on FTL: Faster Than Light, 200 on each of the Hotline Miami games, and far more than I care to mention on the new Fallout 4 Survival Mode.


So, discuss fellow dwellers of the deep dark hole that is Roguelikes. Tell me about your favorite Roguelikes, what it means to fall into that genre, the future of Roguelikes, and anything else.

 

[augmentedspartan]

I wouldn't count Hotline Miami as a roguelike (or rougelite in this case), it just has the difficulty commonly associated with them, and death isn't permanent, quite the opposite, it's part of clearing a level.


The ones I keep coming back to are The Binding of Isaac Rebirth, Risk of Rain, and Teleglitch. First one because it's Isaac, can't go wrong with it and it's good for a quick game or two. Risk of Rain, on the other hand, tends to take me longer, since I like to do several loops before going into the final level, but I love going out of control in that one. Teleglitch is one I really like but I hardly hear anything about it. The shooting is really meaty and I actually like the art style, mostly the environments.


What I would like to see in future roguelites is combat that feels more punchy. While it is possible in Isaac and Risk of Rain for you to become OP later into the game, at the beginning all your attacks feel like firing a bb gun, which kinda makes it the more annoying to restarting after a particularly successful run. Teleglitch didn't have this issue (for the most part), since even the starting pistol was fun to use.


I keep trying to get into Sunless Sea. At first glance it has all it needs for me. Great writing, interesting world, non-generic lovecraftian elements, really nice visuals and environments, but the permadeath (pretty much the only roguelite element) kills it for me, since having to redo the same conversations and story missions over and over again kill the pacing and the world building, and the more I die (thanks to the rather slow and difficult combat) the smaller my newld stories ratio is.

 

[RooftopView97]

Risk of Rain was my first ever dip into the genre. I enjoyed it, but was never really good at it. The same can be said for Isaac, though I've beaten it plenty.


While Fallout 4's mode might not classify as a roguelike, the difficulty is on par with the genre. I can't tell you how many times I've been creeping around darkened streets, only to hear a mine tick to life and end me.

 

[HeyGayzelle]

Definitely a fan of roguelikes here. FTL is certainly a good one, and the vehicular aspect is fairly unique for the genre. Some other favorites of mine include Dungeons of Dredmor, Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer, and old-school NetHack. There's also a very nice mobile adaptation of Sword of Fargoal, one of the first roguelike-esque games from the C64. "Rogue-lite" games like Rogue Legacy and Spelunky were relatively trendy for a period of time.


One I've heard awesome things about, but never spent the time to actually play is Ancient Domains of Mystery. Seems really old-school and a little hard to get to grips with, but it seems like one of the only roguelikes to feature a quest system. There's another Japanese one called Elona that seems to have some really interesting sub-systems in it like the ability to mutate, which usually isn't beneficial, but can be under specific enough circumstances. I should probably give both a shot at some point, but roguelikes can take quite a few rounds to actually get a feel for.

 

[Negative Zone]

I love a good Roguelike. I'm absolutely terrible at them and I've never ascended a character but at the same time that's not really my goal, so to speak? I got back into the genre in the early 00s while looking for games that were free and would play on my at the time godawful computer. Back then there wasn't nearly as much variety and the big name games seemed to be Nethack and Angband with its endless variants. I never did really get into the latter but I spent a loooooot of time with Nethack.


Nowadays my fave is probably Tales of Maj'Eyal or Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. I'm really glad that the genre is experiencing a sort of renaissance with all these roguelikes and roguelites floating around, as well as old projects like ADOM coming back into active development. So many games I want to try but so little time to try them with, haha.