Categories

See also: category:roguelike games

Development State classification

• Talkie Talkie Projects have been talked about to the point where they develop a well known life onto their own. However, no actual release of a functional game has occurred.
• Alpha Projects are roguelike games which, while released, are not yet playable. This means you should not be surprised if there is no win condition, or no monsters, or things generally go bad after the character creation screen.
• Beta Projects are roguelike games which, while available to the public, are not yet ready to judged as finished products. Unlike alpha projects, they have progressed to the point where they are fun and enjoyable games if you can handle a few sharp corners.
• Defunct Games are roguelikes that are both no longer being developed and are not considered finished by the authors.
• Stable Games are roguelikes that the authors have believed reached a level of maturity that allows them to be judged as games in themselves. Often, development is still ongoing, as roguelikes are hardly ever finished. (Except for those that were developed in a definite amount of time, like Dungeon Monkey and the 7DRLs, of course.)
  • 7DRLs are stable games created within a seven day window.
  • Major games are stable games that have provided significant influence to the roguelike genre.

Master lists

• Major roguelikes and roguelike reviews

• List of roguelikes by name, author, theme and year

• List of Angband variants, of recently updated roguelikes, of handheld roguelikes and of roguelikes based on existing IPs

• Tree of roguelike evolution

Evolutionary Branch Classification

These are the two main evolutionary branches taken from Rogue. Of course, many roguelikes belong to neither, especially more recent games which often borrow from other genres, such as simulation and strategy.

• Hacklike: these games take inspiration primarily from Hack and its descendants. NetHack is the most advanced in this genre. ADOM and Crawl may also be considered hacklikes.
• Band: these are games which take inspiration from Moria and its descendants. Properly, this term would only refer to Angband and its variants, but one can extend it to other games with similar playstyle. Many consider Diablo to be a band.

See Tree of roguelike evolution

Special Categories

• Handheld roguelikes - for cellphones, Game Boys, etc.
• RogueLike Engines, which in and of themselves are not games, offer the means to construct new games.
• Coffeebreak roguelikes - extremely short, but fun
• Console roguelikes - for video game consoles