What a roguelike is
"What is a roguelike?" is a tricky question; it is hard to conceive a roguelike definition with which everybody will agree as this is a gaming genre that has evolved and has a dynamic definition as well.
However, roguelikes do share some elements. Some of the most common elements in roguelikes are:
- The User Interface : ASCII display of a tiled world has become a distinctiveness of roguelikes.
- The Game World : random world generation may be the most common feature of roguelike games. And they usually provide little plot.
- The Gameplay : turn-based gameplay and dungeon hack are most often proposed.
Even among the "major roguelikes", it is not uncommon for one or several of the above guidelines to be broken, such as ASCII character display (many offer a graphical-tile alternative) or plotlessness (ADOM is heavy on plot).
User interface
- ASCII character display: games use no graphic tiles or 3D models but rather a two-dimensional character grid viewed from above, in which each character represents an entity. For example, a human may be plotted as a '@', a dragon as a 'D', etc.
- Narrated action: short text descriptions are given for almost all game events except ordinary movement.
- Front-loaded commands: the player has knowledge of and access to all (or almost all) commands at the start of the game, often long before acquiring the objects or powers that make the command useful.
- Keyboard based interaction: The keyboard is the traditional way to interact with the game world, as it provides the quickest way to access the several commands that a roguelike may have. There are certain popular schemas of keyboard usage.
Game world
- Random world generation: some parts of the world in which the action is performed are generated using a random algorithm; this is made for the sake of replayability, thus every gaming session is unique.
- Spatial Consistency: All the actions happen in a definite space. No warping to fight scenes or minigames on a different reality.
- Little storyline: a gripping plot is not typically the selling point of any roguelike. The story is usually kept to a minimum to enhance replayability.
- World interaction: little or no objects lie as an adornment in the world; most of them have a use in the game.
- Setting: Some of the common settings for the world include the personification of a character fighting his way into a dungeon and adquiring items via monster treasures or town supply. The world commonly has magic forces of different kinds to increase the possible interactions.
Gameplay
- Permadeath: once your character dies your savefile disappears; this encourages careful choosen tactics, cold sweat when fighting big baddies and curses when your character dies; as well as a great sense of accomplishment in every Ascension.
- Freedom: the player may choose to do anything he wants in the game; there are no fixed plots, you can roam freely or look for the final game goal.
- Turn-based: the time freezes in order to take the best of decisions when time comes.
- Dungeon hack: your goal is to kill monsters and find powerful treasures in order to kill stronger ones and repeat the process.
- Tactical single character play: the unit of action is based on the individual adventurer. The game is not twitch oriented (like Quake, rewarding reflexes and well trained actions) nor is it strategy oriented (like Civilization or Warcraft, requiring working on the large picture).
Roguelike Definition, the Berlin Interpretation V0.2
This definition was created at the International Roguelike Development Confrence 2008 and is the product of a discussion between all who attended. It is based on http://www.roguetemple.com/roguelike-definition/ Most factors are newly phrased, new factors have been added, some factors have changed values.
General stuff: - This list just determines how 'roguelike' a game is, failing at
some points does not at all mean the game is not a roguelike
- A roguelike is not necessarily a game like Rogue, but a game that
incorporates some features of the 'big roguelikes' which are (in alphabetical order): ADOM, Angband, Crawl, Nethack and Rogue.
High value factors
Random environment generation
The game world is randomly generated in a way that increases replayability. Appearance and placement of items is random.
Appearance of monsters is fixed, their placement is random. Fixed content (plots or puzzles or vaults) removes randomness.
Permadeath, permafailure
Works good with replayability, even forces it. Presupposes random world.
Turn-based interaction
The game is not sensitive to time, you can take your time to think about the moves.
Grid-based
The world is represented by discrete units. Monsters (and the player) take up one cell, regardless of size.
Unimodal gameplay
Movement, battle and other actions take place in the same mode.
Violations to this are ADOM's overworld or Angand's and Crawl's shops. [Former title: Single command set.] Was: No "modes" of interaction, no "battle mode", "overworld mode" etc. Every action should be available at any point of the game. E.g. Nethack style shops vs. Angband style shops.]
Complexity [Changed title from 'Freedom', changed description.]
The game has enough complexity to allow several solutions to common goals. This is obtained by providing enough item/monster and item/item interactions and is strongly connected to having just one mode.
Resource management
You have to manage your limited resources (e.g. food, healing potions) and find uses for the resources you receive.
Hack'n'slash
Even though there can be much more to the game, killing lots of monsters is a very important part of a roguelike.
Low value factors
Single player character.
The player controls a single character fighting against a lot of enemies. The game is player-centric in the sense that there are no monster/monster relations (like enmities, or diplomacy).
Monsters are similar to players
Rules that apply to the player apply to monsters as well. They have inventories, equipment, use items, cast spells etc.
Learning curve
You have to learn about the tactics and/or strategy before you can make any significant progress. (Due to random environments and permanent death, roguelikes are challenging to new players.)
ASCII display
The traditional display for roguelikes is a character based display (e.g. as a console application).
Dungeons
Roguelike levels consist of rooms connected with corridors.
[Suggestion: "Roguelikes contain dungeons, ie. levels with rooms and corridors." Otherwise this point is not valid for Nethack or Crawl.]
Numbers
The numbers used to describe the character (hit points, attributes etc.) are deliberately shown.
Removed: Exploration and discovery
The game requires you to carefully explore the dungeon levels and discover the usage of unidentified items. This has to be done anew every time the player starts a new game.
External links
Many people have tried to define roguelike games. Here is a collection of links to pages that purport to do just that:
- See Roguelike Alphabet for some other minor aspects of roguelikes, and how they relate to each other.
- ADOM's definition.
- The Guide to Roguelike Games definition.
- POWDER's definition.
- Wikipedia's definition.