Roguelike

A roguelike is a specific style of role-playing video game.

These games are defined by a sense of unpredictable adventure. Most players engage in a dungeon crawl through various levels. They often navigate high fantasy settings inspired by tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons. Players control a single character that they can customize. This customization usually includes choosing a race, a class, and a gender. They can also adjust specific skills and attribute points. This depth allows for a personalized experience in every new playthrough.

Gameplay in a roguelike follows a very specific mechanical sequence.

The game is typically turn-based. This means the game world only reacts when the player takes an action. This structure lets players evaluate difficult situations at their own pace. Movement usually occurs on a uniform grid of tiles. To fight a monster, a player often moves their character into the same space as the enemy. The game then calculates the damage dealt by both parties. Players can also use ranged attacks, like firing arrows, or cast offensive magic spells.

Success in these games requires careful resource management.

Characters must find food to avoid starvation. They must also collect items like torches for illumination or potions for healing. Most roguelikes use procedural generation to build their worlds. This is a process where developers use sets of rules to seed the generation of the dungeon. Because of these rules, no two games are exactly the same. The layout of the levels, the location of treasure, and the population of monsters change every time. Even the effects of items can vary, such as a potion that heals one time but poisons the player the next.

One of the most defining features is permadeath.

If a character loses all their hit points, they die permanently. This ends the current "run," and the player must start over with a new character. There is no way to reload a saved state to fix a mistake. While some players use "save scumming" to bypass this, it is generally considered cheating. The creators of the original Rogue added permadeath to make every decision feel more important. This creates a highly immersive experience where the stakes are always high.

The genre traces its origins back to the 1980 game Rogue.

This early game used ASCII graphics, which are simple text characters used to represent objects. In the 1990s, players used Usenet newsgroups to discuss various similar games. They wanted a single umbrella term to group games like Rogue, Hack, Moria, and Angband. After three weeks of debate, they chose "roguelike" because Rogue was the oldest of the group. By 1998, the term was firmly established in the gaming community. This naming process is similar to how "Doom clone" once described many first-person shooters.

Because the definition of a roguelike is debated, experts created the "Berlin Interpretation" in 2008.

This set of criteria was drafted at a development conference in Germany. It established high-value and low-value factors to judge how "canon" a game is. The interpretation is based on five specific games: ADOM, Angband, Linley's Dungeon Crawl, NetHack, and Rogue. For example, NetHack and Linley's Dungeon Crawl scored very high on these metrics. Other games, like Diablo, score much lower because they lack certain traditional elements. This helps players distinguish between different types of games within the genre.

Today, the genre has expanded into many different styles. Many modern developers create games that use some, but not all, traditional roguelike features. These are often called "roguelites" or "roguelike-likes."

Examples include popular titles like Spelunky, Hades, and The Binding of Isaac. These games might use different graphical styles or incorporate other genres. However, they often still use procedural generation and permadeath. Even though the terminology is debated, many of these games still use the "roguelike" tag on digital marketplaces like Steam. The genre continues to grow through the work of indie developers and powerful new gaming systems.