You've had an exceptionally stressful day. Neglecting household chores, you instead boot up your current game and proceed to play far past your bedtime until your bleary-eyed stare can no longer withstand the captivating glow of the screen.
Unfortunately, you died moments away from an autosave checkpoint or a predesignated save location. An inflexible save system is a prescription for headache -- as numerous articles from Bitmob indicate -- but at the core of this is our frustration with the concept of losing progress. In fact, we’re so overly concerned with being productive that some of us even feel guilty dicking around and neglecting story missions in open-world titles like Grand Theft Auto.
We’re frustrated because we know what it means to lose progress in most modern games. I dreaded reloading a sequence in Killzone 2’s linearly designed single-player campaign at one particular checkpoint save over and over again. Why? Because I realized that the game forced me to perform the same actions in the same order -- repeatedly -- to progress further.
I walked the same hallways. I ducked behind the same sandbags. I shot the same enemies in the same sequence. Each reload unfolded almost identically -- except for the few moments after my previous death and before my next one. I was bored out of my mind. Only perseverance and trial-and-error deduction got me through to the next section.
But what if we measured progress differently? What if progress meant not driving the narrative or reaching the final stage in a series of carefully crafted playgrounds but instead meant understanding game mechanics? What if progress meant learning to play more proficiently at a deeper level?
Enter the roguelike.
Rogue was the culmination of Michael Toy’s and Glenn Wichman’s efforts to create a graphical appropriation of a text-adventure game, known simply as Adventure, popular on college campuses. Back in 1980, most university computer labs were based on a shared mainframe accessed by a network of dumb terminals that could only display text characters; thus, Rogue broke new ground with its use of ACSII code to represent the game world.
The duo’s seminal title also popularized the dungeon crawler -- each level of Rogue is a procedurally generated series of rectangular rooms connected by snaking corridors. The game randomly allocates monsters and treasures for the player to fight and discover throughout the journey. This aspect of content creation brings seemingly infinite replay value and means that no two playthroughs are ever the same.
But the defining features most identified with Rogue are the fragility of your character and the institution of permanent death. When you die in the game, you cannot return to a previous save state. You cannot reclaim your avatar and retry the situation that killed you.
Therefore, progress in Rogue is not progress in the traditional sense. Descending lower in the dungeon and advancing in character levels are secondary to the real meat of the experience: understanding gameplay systems and how they interact. Through experimentation and exploration, which are core design tenets of the genre, you slowly become a better player.
You needn’t build yourself an ancient mainframe to play Rogue, though, which is now available as a browser-based Java game. The genre built by this graphical adventure continues to thrive in small, dedicated corners of the larger gaming community, and I’d like to highlight a few titles on the next page that I’ve played recently.
These are by no means definitive or exhaustive; I hope to pique your interest in others, such as direct inspirations Hack and NetHack, the charming platformer roguelike Spelunky, the intimidatingly ambitious Dwarf Fortress, and the less unforgiving Shiren the Wanderer.
If you only play one Shiren game, play the DS game. It is one large dungeon, but the world itself is persistent. As you die, things change in the villiages and such, with different events happening that can help you if you choose to take part. Plus the bonus dungeons in the post-game all have very pleasing gimmicks.
The Wii Shiren is disappointing because its efforts to make things more accessible actually short-circuit it. The fact that it is made up of lots of smaller dungeons means that if you lose all your gear, you have to go back to a previous dungeon to scrounge up some decent equipment. Plus occasionally you will be stuck in an area without any lower level dungeons except for the Portal dungeon, which tends to be fairly crappy for that sort of thing. The DS game has only one dungeon, so when you start over, things are scaled properly and you can always come back from a loss fairly easily. Of course, these complaints with the Wii version go away if you switch the difficulty to Normal so you can keep equipment if you die, but then you lose the sense of loss that characterizes roguelikes completely.
But yeah, DS game is aces and I would highly recommend it.
I've learned its important to take a slow, methodical approach to roguelikes. You don't want to blitz through or listen to a radio show in the background. They demand your concentration. I'm a big fan of Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, but it kicks my ass on a regular basis.
If you're a gamer who thinks the industry has "dumbed down" its product, you should download some of the roguelikes listed here. And prepare to get your ass whooped.
I've never played the DS Shiren (only the Wii one), Jeremy, but your description intrigues me. I'll have to track down a copy.
Jason's right, especially so when multiple enemies pop up. I neglected to mention that roguelikes are turn-based, so with every action you take, all enemies perform one, too. You have to carefully decide your moves, otherwise you'll end up dead. Such tactical puzzles are a real treat to solve, too!
And Stone Soup regularly kicks my ass as well. I haven't brought a character past the fifth dungeon yet.
My only current experience with Roguelikes would be my short lived jaunt into Dwarf Fortress. These games are so dense and intimidating that I haven't taken the plunge again. I am going to give Dungeon Crawl a shot and see if I have any better luck.
Great read! I'd never heard of the "Roguelike" genre until Demon's Souls came out last year; a lot of the reviews compared the two. I quickly learned, of course, that Demon's Souls really isn't a roguelike, but the similarlities actually lead to me hunting down Shiren on DS earlier this year. It's an awesome game!
Jason H., you jumped into one of the more complex roguelikes right off the bat! Try Aliens Roguelike -- it's much more accessible than Dwarf Fortress.
@Jason H I see Demon's Souls as one evolutionary track of the roguelike -- one that will likely end, as I think no one wants or can create another Demon's Souls.
I think we may see more Demon's Souls -- Jason, did you read the July issue of Edge? An article based on interviews with the game's lead designer and producer talks about their interest in making a sequel. And Sony regrets not publishing Demon's Souls, too.
That was a great article in Edge! I popped Demon's Souls back in after I'd read it, haha!
Ben, I'll even reread it every once in a while. I can't get enough Demon's Souls info!
Great post, many thanks. Zombie Survivor looks utterly charming; I'll be downloading it later. I hadn't heard of the genre until I was recently shown Dwarf Fortress, which seemed to me to be less a game than a lifestyle choice.
My only experience with roguelikes so far has been with Nethack and it wasn't exactly my cup of tea. I do, however, enjoy reading of the myriad of things you can do in that game, including all the creative ways to die.
Angband is one of the better PC roguelikes out there, but that's not what I came here to say.
For those out there who want the full roguelike experience without any of the heartburn of "control" or whatnot, there's Angband Borg, a program that essentially creates a computer-controlled character and tries to get as far into the dungeon as it can. It's facinating to watch and a neat way to experience a roguelike without actually playing one.
Plus you can even get it as a screensaver!