Rinse and Repeat - The Power of Rogue-like Games.

Imagine that you made a game, an excellent one. A game that is so good that more than 30 years later the title of your game defines a game genre and have a multitude of titles outside of the genre being heavily influenced, creating hybrids of the original game mechanics. Rogue is such a game. Rogue is a ASCII graphic role-playing game that innovated dungeoncrawling by being able to generate an unlimited number of unique dungeons; an algorithm partitions dungeons into solid rock and empty space and afterwards fills the space with monsters and loot. The player would then roam around in the dungeon while collecting the loot and fighting the monsters until they died and the game ended. Rinse and repeat.

The original Rogue

From the perspective of game studies the major key features of a game that fits into the category of rogue-like(I'm using the term loosely here for the sake of clarity. Some claim that rogue-like is only ASCII games with procedurally-generated levels and refer to games that contain some or all of the mechanics below as rogue-like-like, rogue-lite, rogue-like hybrids, or even 'games with rogue-like elements') games could include:

• Procedurally generated levels – This assures that no playthrough is the same. Starting the game gives the player a layout to explore with randomized locations, monsters, loot, and obstacles.
• Permanent Death – It is not expected to win the game the first time around. Dying means that you start a new game from the first level. Some games do have a save function though the save game is deleted upon loading.
• Story or narrative that runs parallel to the game and have little to no influence – This feature assures that the game is not required to have the player experience something specific during a game. The setting of the game is told in the beginning and what the narrative end goal is. For example in The Binding of Isaac Isaac needs to go deeper into the basement to escape his murderous mother. In FTL: Faster Than Light the player needs to traverse galaxies to find the Rebel flagship and destroy it. In Don't Starve you need to not starve(duh).
• Single Player – The world in player-centric and viewed through a single character. The game ends when the character dies.
• Turn-based – This is one of the features where the '-like' in rogue-like is evident. Many rogue-likes, such as the first Diablo, Don't Starve, The Binding of Isaac, and Rogue Legacy, have real-time interaction with the game while still containing some or all of the above mechanics.
• Grid-based – Another feature where '-like' is evident. The world consists of a uniform grid of tiles. Every element takes up one tile; the player, enemies, loot, and obstacles, regardless of size. (Rogue Basin, 2013)

The Binding of Isaac

So what does this mean for the player experience? The most distinct feature of rogue-like games is the extremely high replay value due to the randomly generated world layout so no two games will be the same. A player might have a game where he/she only collects mediocre or no loot and then stumbles across one of the very best items in the game within the first 20 seconds of the next playthrough. This longevity of a game with randomized worlds is also evident in many other games which are not explicitly rogue-like such as the Heroes of Might and Magic and Civilization series. The procedurally-generated levels paired with an often very extensive amount of loot(The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth for example have more than 300 different items and a player ordinarily only encounter around 20 of these in a playthrough) assures this replay value even further.

FTL: Faster Than Light

The almost endless possibilities of configurations of a single playthrough is the most prominent feature of rogue-like games and is probably the direct cause for why these types of games often become incredibly popular. Procedurally-generated content is the king of replayability and this is vital when considering the amount of work it takes to create games like this. With an increasing amount of indie-developers and small game studios procedurally-generated content becomes even more relevant for the future of games. As a developer, Daniel Cook, from Spry Fox put it very succintly:"One- or two-person teams can't afford to make 100 hours of sexy 3d-storytime. But they can make 100 hours of roguelike bliss". Personally, I could not agree more. Steam tells me that I have clocked more than 400 hours in The Binding of Isaac(a game made by less than five people) alone and I have just invested in the sequel(which have more enemies, floor configurations, items and playable characters). When comparing this to the 66 hours I have spent in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel(a game that I feel confident in saying have been made by a substantial amount more than five people) it is clearly the way for indie-developers to go when creating a long-lasting gaming experience.

Bibliography:

• Compton, K. & Mateas, M.. Procedural Level Design for Platform Games. American Association for Artificial Intelligence. 2006.
• Rogue Basin. Berlin Interpretation. 2013.
• Nutt, C.. 'Roguelikes': Getting to the Heart of the it-genre. 2014

Ludography:

• Toy, M. & Wichman, G.. Rogue. 1980.
• McMillen, E. & Himsl, F.. The Binding of Isaac. 2011.
• McMillen, E. & Himsl, F.. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. 2014.
• Subset Games. FTL: Faster Than Light. 2012.
• Klei Entertainment. Don't Starve. 2013.
• Cellar Door Games. Rogue Legacy. 2013.
• Blizzard North. Diablo. 1996.
• 2K Games. Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth. 2014.
• 3DO/New World Computing. Heroes of Might and Magic III. 1999.
• 2K Games/Gearbox Software. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. 2014.