Testbed for new roguelike TLAs - ScottBurger/going_rogue_podcast GitHub Wiki

1990s: Doom Clone was the top term for things like Doom. Then Quake and Goldeneye happened. Eventually we landed on "FPS" as the genre. Can roguelikes evolve the same way?

PDL (procdeath looper)

  • Procgen: some element of major randomness or procedural generation that randomizes the play space or game environment to a large degree
  • Death: some kind of permanent failure state for that run of a character
  • Loop: death looping back to the top of the system, re-engaging the procedural generation of the gameplay that was different than before to some extent

PDL (procedural death labyrinths)

  • Procedural:
  • Death:
  • Labyrinth: implies some kind of dungeon or maze like navigation is required as part of an exploration-heavy gameplay design

PDD (procdeath dungeon)

  • Procedural
  • Permadeath
  • Dungeon: specifically navigating some hostile PVE maze

PRPG (permadeath RPG)

  • Permadeath focus
  • RPG lineage and expectations

Blank-like games

Hades-like. Isaac-like. Balatro-like. These are just marketing terms and borderline gimmicks that don’t really tell you what’s unique about a game. For the most part those monikers serve the function of “if you liked Blank, you’ll like this game”.

It’s a bold statement to make since many of those Blank games are extremely unique, top of their class, or otherwise exceptional in design. It’s a pretty unimaginative way to try and bolster popularity of a game by calling it a Blank-like instead of saying what its gameplay mechanics are.

It doesn’t roll off the tongue easier and is harder to fit in a Reddit title, but it’s always more interesting to me to see a game as a list of two or three game mechanics as opposed to a Blank-like. Spire-like, or “card driven dungeon crawler where the encounters are the cards themselves”. Interesting. Informative. Doesn’t try to ride the coattails of an already successful IP.

New Steam tag ideas

The words "Traditional Roguelike" by themselves offer a lot of wiggle room. Traditional meaning what? The ethos behind the "Traditional Roguelike" tag is for games that satisfy the Berlin Interpretation of roguelikes. Basically: NetHack or DCSS. See our podcast thoughts on the matter here. In particular, if you're developing a rogue-adjacent game and your theme features traditional Chinese mythology (Wuxia) elements in it, whose to say that doesn't qualify as a "Traditional Roguelike" in this instance? Is Spelunky or Binding of Isaac "traditional" because they're so old in the genre now?

The goal is to have some protected steam tag that keeps the filthy, real-time, popular game riff-raff out of the discussion.

Alternatives:

  • Berlin Rogue
  • NetHack-like
  • Hacklike (opening up the door for Hacklites)
  • Grid Bumper
  • 90s Roguelike