Whoa, either I totally misspoke or you totally misread what I wrote. Rogue Legacy is one of the few roguelikes that I enjoyed at least a little bit and I enjoyed it precisely because the way you get to keep some progression. As long as you're good enough to get some gold for an upgrade or new equipment, then dying doesn't feel like wasted time. There's also a way to lock down the previous castle layout for free, so if you saw something you want and couldn't get to it, you can lock down the castle before going in and you'll get the same one as before.

developers do little to exemplify what is needed to be done. e.g. the item pickups in The Binding of Issac; you do not know what they do until you use them or pick them up.

PRECISELY. It's about learning by doing, which is what I was trying to get at before. If you died, learn why you died, and then use what you learned in your next playthrough. Tutorials would completely ruin that. As someone whose favorite game is Super Metroid, which teaches you by making you do stuff instead of outright telling you, I can appreciate this.

Skyrim and Oblivion are games that I love, but they are not very good mechanically. Dragon Age Origins has potential but is pretty unbalanced and paced rather badly.

The appeal of some rouge-likes, like Spelunky, is the fact that your progression through the game is gated by skill and knowledge. The improvement in those games come from the fact that you have improved as a gamer in said game. In Spelunky for example you improve because you know how important the items are and which items to go for. You also now have the skill and experience to execute on some of the knowledge that you gained.

Sounds to me like you just don't enjoy the core mechanics that make rogue-likes enjoyable to others. Meaning.. rogue-likes aren't for you. It's as simple as that. Understand that others do like those mechanics and move on with your life.

(Also, all of the games you listed only have some very light rogue-like elements)

@believer258: Yeah, I think he started off responding to my comment and then started responding to you as well halfway through but only put your username...

@the_nubster: Exactly. I'm nowhere near as skilful as that to have completed the game on my first shot but I always felt like it was entirely possible. I picked the game up again recently, after not having played for quite a while, and got pretty damn far. Just had a small lapse of judgement at one point. Given how long it had been since I'd last played, though... It seemed like a primary example of how well designed that game is. That even after so long you can still do so well just by feeling things out and keeping focused.

@hone_mcbone: Unfortunately, or fortunately, I wasn't around for the major arcade scene stage of gaming.

@popogeejo: Labeling what is and isn't rogue-like at this point in time is, somewhat, an argument for semantics. The games I listed have rogue-like elements; just as shooters all have different elements within themselves yet remain a shooter.

@khann: Yeah, pretty much. They're not for me.

@believer258: I get what developers are trying to do, and it just isn't appealing to me. I can still learn mechanics when things are listed; BoI doesn't do that, it just sets you up to your own devices and while that may be the appeal it is simply too undefined.

This whole MB prompts me to question our learning methods. Individuals who are into rougelikes seem to enjoy the grinding educational tract, while I, on the other hand, enjoy both learning by grinding and learning by rule sets. I wonder what this says about human beings and their, 'real world,' methods of learning and understanding the world around them; based off of their enjoyment or disdain for roguelikes.

I think the main thing is to separate the idea of "roguelikes" from the idea of "hard games." Dark Souls has many elements of a roguelike, but it's not one. A roguelike is something likes Dungeons of Dredmor, or ToME.

I don't think difficulty is the defining feature of a roguelike; though then again I don't consider that the defining feature of Dark Souls either. If you believe people only play Dark Souls to challenge themselves because the game's hard, then I think you haven't grasped that game really yet.

Humans in general tend to learn very, very well by trying, failing, and then trying again, whereas we tend to forget instructions if we don't repeat whatever we were instructed to do over and over and over.

@believer258: Either way there's repetition. I guess I would rather have a rule-set than nothing at all; being aware of its nonsense though.

Something to note: Rogue itself is an ancient game where due to technology limitations, design and rules was a strategy to work around the limitations in technology. To say that there is some "coming age of Rogue-likes" is as goofy as suggesting there is some coming age of computers.

@extomar: But there was a coming age of computers; it was called the 90's. Who's to say that roguelikes don't have their rise coming?

I also dislike roguelikes, but that's because I'm not a perfectionist at heart. I'm not one to chase after high scores or collect everything. I play a game until I'm not enjoying it and soon after put it down. That means that the design of a roguelike, where you're essentially trying to perfect your passage through increasingly difficult sections of the game, is basically the opposite of what I want out of a game these days. I don't mind the challenge, but I don't like designs that intend for you to lose. I would prefer a game that presents a challenge but which you could beat in maybe a dozen attempts instead of a hundred. I think that FTL is an example of a properly-balanced roguelike (except for that boss battle, fuck that thing).

I have no idea what the actual statements here are, mostly because they sound like you don't like something, know that they're not for you, and don't really want to carve out the time to understand them in order to like them....

So...

Okay? There are plenty of other games in the world. Go play those. I really don't get this thread at all, especially saying that "more fun games" should exist. Who are you tell me what's fun and what isn't? Its fine that you don't like these games, but threads like these make people sound like they don't want to take an extra 14 seconds to scroll the Steam New Releases tab to look for games they actually like and want to play.

@anxioustube: Your thoughts on education relating to rogue-likety-like-likes is interesting.

I'm someone who feels like the existing education system in many places is pretty significantly flawed in that it often penalises for failure. I'm of the belief that, as human beings, our most effective way of learning is through our own failures. To see why something doesn't work a certain way is a far better way to justify why you should do something another specific way.

I feel like this genre of game is very much so about encouraging this type of learning through the fact that failure is to be expected but not necessarily discouraging. I'm talking primarily about Spelunky here, as I said I have some mixed opinions about some rogue-like-a-lo-los...

In essence, you're forced to learn from and appreciate your own failures in order to effectively progress, rather than fear failure and avoid it as much as possible from the get-go. That second part comes later when there is no longer a lesson to be learned from certain failures... if that makes sense...

Of course, this all depends on whether you're interested in investing that time to learn in the first place. Which is what might be keeping you and many others from enjoying this type of game and that's probably totally fine! I'm sure we'd all like to be able to make our own games, it's just that not all of us want to go through that learning process.

Because Rogue and games like it have been around for some 30+ years. There are more styles of Rogue-like games that look like Rogue and Hack/Nethack that have been lost to the 80s and 90s than there are today. The suggestion that they are something new or on the rise is quite frankly silly.

A theme you maybe missing in the response is that you are misrepresenting your argument because what you really want to say is "I don't like these games". Its fine to not like this style of game. You don't need to worry about anyone liking or disliking the things you like or dislike. What you shouldn't do is try to present your stance as an argument that is unarguable and cloaking what is basically your taste in something erudite.

@extomar: I actually just found the version of Hack we had back in 88, I'd more or less completely forgotten that I used to play it when I was 9. Didn't understand jack shit, obviously, but I've loved'em ever since, pretty much.

Really want to download hack DOS and play it again. It's beautiful:

@anxioustube:

I've been playing roguelikes since way before they turned into a fad, when the only real roguelikes that existed where all open source sort of things that you could get for free like nethack, dungeon crawl stone soup, powder etc

And for me at least the biggest draw of these games was the difficulty, and how everything is procedurally generated, because it is the sort of thing I can go to whenever I am feeling bored, play for like 30 or 40 minutes trying to get to the lowest level, get the artifact (or whatever the objective might be), then dying.

And the next time I try again everything will be different, and everytime you learn something new, you get better at it, you start to identify patterns, and man when you finally accomplish the objective it feels awesome.

But yeah it's not for everyone, some people just like to have their hand held all the way through and enjoy the story, no problem with that, and there are still plenty of games in that nature, besides just to make one thing perfectly clear, at least 80% of games today that people call roguelikes are nothing of the sort, nowhere near.

You should be more worried about all the stupid survival games, I mean try to envision a future where more than half the games that come out are some sort of "well Idk just survive and shit, also zombies" online griefing simulators ala dayz.. I prefer the roguelike road if you ask me..

OP just doesn't like gaming to be very difficult or require tons of critical thinking, which is a totally valid opinion and perspective.

I'll explain why I like Souls, even though it is an Action RPG with a relatively high challenge level and requires lots of adaptation.... Not a rogue like. Basically, I like solving puzzles and problems. I like developing solutions to tough questions. And, I'm good at those things. I also like a lot of different types of games, and don't require them to be challenging necessarily, I just enjoy it more when they are.

Wanted to stay out of it, but can't help myself: a game cannot be rogue like unless you stand to lose something you had at the start. If I die in Souls, I may lose time and some potential souls, but I'll always have basically at worst what I had at the start of that life. Punitive curses, scaling hollowing or whatever is okay, but is not the same. I've always wanted modes in Souls where you have a set number of "lives." You could always possibly get more in the form of limited items, but ultimately would be GAME OVER START AGAIN if you ran out. That, or have it set to where you had to buy a new life with a Soul Level (with some kind of obvious minimum)..... Then I'll call it rogue like and love it all the more. The End.