Categories

Official Development State classification

• Major Roguelikes: Tested by time and found worthy, these are the representatives of the roguelike genre.
• Stable games: Playable games in their current state, these roguelikes merely lack a few thousand rabid fans to become the next generation of representatives.
• Beta Projects: Released for public consumption, but not yet considered a complete game. The public is warned that they might want to await a more final release.
• Alpha Projects: Released by their developers as a proof of work, although not yet playable.
• Talkie Talkie Projects: Projects that have been discussed, but for which no actual code or executable has been seen.

Roguelike engines

There also exists roguelike engines, which are not really games, but rather a way to build new games easily. See the RogueLike Engines page.

Evolutionary Branch Classification

These are the two main evolutionary branches taken from Rogue. Of course, many roguelikes belong to neither branch, especially the newer ones which take ideas from other gaming genres such as simulation and strategy. (Rogue itself, for example, can't be meaningfully ascribed to one branch or the other)

• Hacklike. These are games that owe inspiration primarily from the Hack line of games. NetHack is the most advanced in this genre. Adom and Crawl may also be considered Hacklikes.
• Band. These are games which owe inspiration from the Moria line of games. Properly, this would only refer to Angband and its variants (see Angband Variants), but one can extend it to other games with similar playstyle. Diablo is considered a Band by those who consider it a roguelike.

Another way to look at this is to build a tree of roguelike evolution. One problem with this approach is how to draw the lines. In some cases, it may be clear that one roguelike derives from another. NetHack continued with the source code of Hack, so a connection seems clear. Othertimes it is more difficult. Where does Adom fit? It is a Hacklike, but doesn't share any code from any other roguelikes. Similarly, Avanor is based on the gameplay of Adom, but again shares no code.

  ToME
   |
   |
Zangband
   |           Slash'Em   Crawl
   |    ADOM       \      /
Angband  |         Nethack
   |     \ Omega    |
   | Larn | /      /
   |     \ /      /
 Moria    |     Hack
   |      |      |
    \     |     /
     \____|____/
          |
          |
        Rogue
       
family tree of popular roguelike games