I have a clear picture in my mind of what roguelike is, and that picture is nethack because someone introduced me to nethack and said 'This is a roguelike' and I still basically believe them - trying to abstract the specific mechanics that make something a roguelike is hard. When you move that scout you don't know if you're going to encounter a barbarian or a tribal village - do you hold off on building a warrior to escort your settler hoping that you can settle without it being captured? So would playing Civ6 on ironman mode (assuming it was enforced and/or you did it by honor) and with a random map and a randomized tech/civics tree count as a rogue-like? And there's even a 'recover my save' sort of game more in launching an expedition to reclaim your fortress.Įveryone who has ever played a dwarf fortress game for longer than four seasons will tell you 'Oh yea - I realized you're going to need plump helmet' - compare that to starcraft where often times players will realize they'll eventually need a military of some form in their first game. In DF the presence of your prior fortress can potentially make your life a lot easier (or more difficult) by tackling overworld threats and providing security (or becoming a hive of scum and villainy). in fact Dwarf Fortress is notably _less_ roguelike than those other games - it's just more 'brutal' almost certainly because there is no ability to tune the difficulty and some gameplay requirements are not clearly explained as necessary.

every RTS ever from Starcraft to AoE2) don't. Oh it's definitely arbitrary, the reason why dwarf fortress made the 'sorta' list but other strategy games that are technically just as perma-death (i.e. I have my own classifications for what roguelike would be and Diablo (even in permadeath mode) wouldn't fit into it - it's far too fixed and predictable of a game and quite easy to initially get into - I'd consider a lack of accessibility to basically be a rogue-like requirement. the market is open and new games just add to the collection of choice - it might be that rogue-lites end up stealing some community support and income from more classic rogue-likes but nothing has destroyed Rogue or any of the other games people have fallen in love with along the way. I think this is just like music genres - nobody owns a genre and games will come out that do different things with that genre.

permadeath a mechanic lots of devs have used to make their games less stressful by keeping expected lives rather short - a usage of a mechanic for a purpose far different from original rogue-like's intentions). The real 'problem' here is that we're getting more lines fuzzing right? Instead of just having Rogue, Nethack and Caves of Qud we're getting some games that dip their toes in the water to grab a few features those designers appreciate (i.e.

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