Roguelike Genre Exploration | Design Club

[Music] Good time zone internet. Hello and welcome to Design Club. The only game design show on the internet that today and today alone will be giving you a definitive unambiguous definition of what the word roglike means. I am
100% 100%
right. No one no one will be upset about our definition. I am as always your humble design club host Will joined by my pal Jeff. Say hi to the people Jeff.
Hi to the people Jeff. Hey everybody. I am Jeff Zakin the studio director of extra credits and for this instance perhaps more importantly also a longtime game designer and game industry analyst.
Yeah
that um will come into both of those things will come into effect here. But joined as always by my friend and voice of the people, Will.
I'm pointing too far.
For those of you who have not watched a lot of us, I am on the West Coast. Will

is on the East Coast, but we are streaming to you live
to both the Twitches and the YouTubes.
Yes.
From a distance, which is why you will occasionally see
that happen.
Correct. Yeah. We're not actually in the same animated coffee shop. Wild. Um, also relevant to our discussion today, I have been hosting a show here on the channel called The Rogue Review for, oh god, a lot of years now. I have played hundreds of rogish games. If you have, if you care to name a Rogish game, I have probably at a bare minimum heard of it and probably played it at least a little bit. Um, it is one of my what I will say is an area of expertise for me as far as games go. Uh, it's one of my favorite genres. We'll talk about that word in a second. People were already getting in on the uh pre-con conversation in the YouTube chat about whether it's a genre or not. Don't worry, we're getting there. Um
uh as far as games go, uh one of one of the things that made Matt and I such

fast friends was our mutual love for uh Enter the Dungeon.
Enter the Dungeon.
You two on that game. Uh, by the way, well, for people interested in more Rogue content, when do you typically stream Rogue Review?
Tuesdays starting at 11:00 a.m. Eastern, 8:00 a.m. Pacific, it is currently uh been nudged, not bumped, nudged out of the way ever so gently so I can finish Silk Song in a reasonable period of time. Uh, because that game is difficult and requires a lot of getting good. Um,
so
so Will, is that game a rogike? Are you going to play it another 30 times?
No, it's not. And I really wish Steam would stop conflating Metroid vanias, Souls likes, and rogue likes. Now, I would understand if it conflated Metroid vanias and Souls likes because Souls likes are just threedimensional Metroid vanias. Um, but they're not rogue likes. They're just not. That's not part of their equation. Uh,

so yeah. So in the past, many and many a year ago, I believe an actual full year ago, we did we did sort of an interesting experiment, which is that we put together sort of a a script as an experiment on what it would take for us to introduce a genre, a category of games to a viewer from zero while still being interesting, entertaining for people who are familiar with that genre. So our example that we did like a year ago now I think was most
little less. Yeah. But actually it was whenever Deadlock it was like a month after Deadlock came out.
Yeah. I need to go back and play Deadlock now. It looks very different and much more polished. They still have problems but uh
they they introduced it spectacularly early. Like it was a really interesting peak into design thought and design process
because they put it out
and I honestly think they might have thought, hey, this is pretty good or

pretty well balanced and then immediately we started watching hundreds of thousands of people play it and went, "Oh, we have some stuff to work on."
Correct. The map has changed multiple times. They've collapsed it from, I believe, from four lanes to three. They had to redo the jungle. They've redone the map multiple times. They've redone the items, entire item system and the shop. They've redone the way that souls are collected. They've redone they've redone. They've redone, which to their credit is the point of a game like that. But anyway, we're we're getting super off base. We can talk fully iterative development, which is really great. Like we could actually we could do a whole episode later on de development, but that is not today.
Today we are talking about rogue lights and rogue lights. We'll talk about that difference here in a second, too. But uh first let's let's bring up for the purposes of our discussion let's bring up uh our notes I think so
oh and while you're bringing that up what we we're looking to possibly do again what we did last time which was we ended up taking a couple of weeks and

week number one and we may or may not do a couple of weeks with this was basically trying to say what are the categories of things you need to know if you're going to go play a MOA and maybe heard of them but had no idea what they were.
Yes. And this was explaining basically highlevel concepts that could apply to any any MOA,
right?
Because we acknowledge with any grouping of games, not everything will be exactly the same. But to be a MOA, there are certain things you have to do and general ways and concepts in the game. And that we are trying to explain those so that somebody say going to play Deadlock or League or Dota or Smite or any number of other ones might watch that one episode and say ah I now understand the concepts and have an easier onboarding process.
Right?
Recently we thought it might be fun to do the same for Rogues. And so part of today will even just be trying to figure out what are the categories of things we would have to explain as well as starting to fill in bits and pieces of

those. Is that a fair summary, Will?
I think it is. So you can see here our notes. Uh this is sort of our skeleton of of what what an episode about this would look like. So we always have a cold open.
We're probably much like a good tutorial going to write that last. Um, but it's good to remember that it's in there, right? Um, and then there's some sort of basic points that we're going to go. Uh, the history overview, why you should care. Um, there are sort of three major, I would say, in my opinion, uh, three major signpost moments in rogue likes. Rogue, the Binding of Isaac, Spelunky era, and Slay the Spire. I think those are the biggest ones. There are of course personal to many people a lot of little fine gradations and innovations along the way but those three major eras are sort of in my mind the big arc of rogue likes u and then uh you know there's other stuff
there might we might be coming into a

fourth era around like we have we just had monster train 2 we have slay the spire 2 we have blueprints like we're
and it might just be that the slay of the spire is the breakout where they started going wide.
I think that that's fair. I I also
D might be the polish.
Yeah. Yeah. Hades. Yep. Um you think of Spalunky and STS as being in the same era. I would never put them in the same era. So that's a very interesting uh point of contention that we'll have to deal with.
Oh, FTL deserves
Yeah, FTL also does. I'm I'm not That is
When did FTL come out? Uh, I will look that is a bl I will fully admit that FTL is a massive gap in my knowledge. Um, because I was never an FTL kid.
For a lot of people that was like that was one of the intros in
Sure. Absolutely agreed. Yeah. No, no, no contest. I just like if you ask me to name rogue likes, it'll never pop into my mind. Uh, 2012. And by the way, was

last updated in 2020. It got eight year FTL got eight years of updates for a $10 game. Wild
FTL also was a tiny dev team that sold a freaking ton of copies. So
that's true.
They they ended up in the uh in the um yeah uh Spalunky was 2013 and Binding of Isaac
uh Rebirth specifically uh was 2014, but Wrath of the Lamb uh which is what I would say really kicked it off was 2012. Um, and Wrath of the Lamb was bad. Just just so we're clear, Wrath of Lamb was actively bad. Um, yeah.
Uh, and yes,
Spy, how long has Spire been out?
Uh, Slay the Spire has been out since uh, 2019.
Okay.
Yeah. Um, I also think that this is very true. There's a whole generation who if

you said rogue like and then showed them the and then showed them rogue would say what even is this? Uh-huh. Absolutely 100%. It has become an interesting thing where the thing no longer like it is the what I will refer to in media as the Star Wars problem, right? that Star War and kind of the Lord of the Rings problem where Star Wars and Lord of the Rings both wholly defined the genres that they um are now sort of the original exemplars of and then those genres moved in so many ways away from those places that if you looked at modern science fantasy and modern fantasy neither of those would necessarily resemble Lord of the Rings or Star Wars all that much, right? Because
actually you might even end up saying the same for Rogue is like if you said you showed people Doom who who' never played Doom and said this is the one of the originators of first person shooters.
Yeah, absolutely. Um okay. So let's

let's we can we could we'll talk a little bit about the history as we go because I'm sure we'll think of major historical moments. Oh yeah.
I think the first thing that we need to do
actually hold on.
Yeah. And even before we get to that, there's both the history, but there's also the why should we care? Like what makes Rogues interesting enough that brings it into why do we care? And I'd love to go from that then into the genre or tag.
Sure. I I think though so I think it's very easy to see and to say that we have had several major roglike cultural phenomena recently. And I would say that those are those come in the form of vampire survivors, the rise of the survivor like/bullet heaven genre coming out of vampire survivors and Bellatro's overwhelming unmitigated success. Um would all be a thing. I also think we

could probably say that it started as early as Hades. Hades um release and its crushing performance everywhere that Hades could be found. Um what is Oregon Trail if not the primordial rogike? You know,
I have a really hard time arguing with that. Uh Araboros, I think that's that's a good point. Um oh, uh the somebody asked, "What's the difference between a bullet heaven and a bullet hell?" Uh, who is doing the bulleting? In a bullet hell, your enemies bullet. In a bullet heaven, you are the one who bullets. That's it. Um, the survivor. I I am a big opponent of giving genres names based on the first member of it. Despite the fact that we're talking about rogike and I mentioned Metroid vanias earlier, um I am a big opponent where we can manage it of

distinctly making a choice not to do that because it usually involves integrating a bunch of the chaff in that game's design into what people think of with the genre. So, I prefer the term bullet heaven to uh survivor like though many people do call them survivor likes. Um, yeah,
actually I'd even say what is blueprints now big enough?
I would say no. Blueprints was very big in and this is one of the things it's very big in the the the grouping that we frequently inhabit, but I don't think it was big outside of that in the same way that like Vampire Survivors had a Super Bowl ad.
Wait, I missed that. Really? I am reasonably confident that Matt and I spoke of this um at some point that Vampire Survivors was big on something and I thought it was a

Super Bowl ad, but I could be wrong. Um and then
regardless, it was some some place very big that you would not expect.
Correct. Bellatro unseated Minecraft as the number one mobile game on several mobile stores. a thing which had not happened since Minecraft originally released on those stores. Um, and then Hades was everywhere for a significant period of time. Um,
unseated Minecraft is number one mobile game. What did you say for what the first time?
It's the number one paid mobile game on several charts. Um, yeah.
Um, vampire. Let's see. Hades. What? So, let's see. I'm just writing down notes here. What was the Hades one?
Hades was just ubiquitous, right? And it was and it was a
I would say it's probably chat. Would anyone argue with me if I

said I was reasonably confident Hades was the biggest budget rogue like to date?
What was the How about Returnal?
That's true. Returnal. Returnal might have a beat.
Returnal also made heavy use of being an Unreal thing. Yeah, besides Returnal.
Yeah.
What was the Vampire Survivor? Oh, basically wide pro. Let's see. Wide promotion.
Yeah. Yeah. Night Rain might be Hades who doesn't count. It's not out yet. It's in early access. Is Deadlock a rogike? No. Deadlock is a mobile. And I'm also putting the for why I should care the incorporation of game features into a wide game features into a wide variety of games similar to RPG mechanics.
Yeah. Because for example, for a long time the um RPGs were the place where your character is say leveled up and you

kind of have what we generally refer to as you know your character goes out does a thing levels up gets more skills like not most games didn't have those but that style of mechanic is now in almost everything like popular shooters like Call of Duty etc use RPG kind of level up mechanics as do hell a lot of racing games. Like so when you get something wildly popular that people look and say, "Oh, that is a cool thing." You sometimes see in game design, people just say, "Oh, that's a thing we should include in our game." And it becomes not unique to the genre that spawned it, but instead it kind of goes everywhere. And I think we're going to see that with a lot of the rogike or a couple of the rogike mechanics. and we already have, but we're seeing more of it becoming just a has these elements and we're sticking it in our game even though it would otherwise not be anything to do with what people would most typically consider rogue. Uh, for

instance, Jeff, did you know that there is a uh there have been several content creators covering a mo uh an MMO in development called Project Ghost and that Project Ghost has an entire game mode essentially, which is entirely roguish. Uh, and that it has it is a thing called that they're calling a blue zone which incorporates many elements of rogue likes into a zone like dungeon in an MMO which
wild
absolutely wild to me and I like it and there there you know there have been rogue likes in other dungeons right uh final or in other MMOs Final Fantasy 14 has the deep dungeon system which is a whole rogike dungeon system. Um, this is a little bigger and a little wider than that, but yes.
Yeah. So, that's kind of the like it's always interesting to set up if you're doing a video essay, why should you care?
Because you want to get your audience in

early to say, hey, this is why you should be interested in this thing. not just to kind of learn about how you might play it and understanding the concepts, but also why if you're just interested in games and even if you don't want to go play Rogues, why would you why should you go watch an you know 15 minutes of us talking about it? And this is letting you know a little bit around that.
Yeah, I like uh I like New Guys analysis that rogike modes are kind of becoming what multiplayer were were multiplayer modes were in the 2000s to 2010s. Ways to add replayability to a single player game.
100%.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, rogue likes are the modern version of arcade games. Eternal Paradox. Can you say more on that? cuz I'm not sure that I agree, but I think I can begin to see where your argument is coming uh from

like I think I get that, but I also am not 100% sure. Um let's see what what are other big things that like What are the other big why should I cares? Right. I feel like it's the ubiquity and the weirdness, right? Like that that they and I think this is a thing that has turned many people off of rogue likes in the past and in the present, which is that it is a significantly different mode of play than I think many people are used to in games like it, right? Actually, Will, I got one for you on that.
Yeah,
I think this may be the only format of game where you are expected to die repeatedly and not solve slash finish the game on

most runs. And I think for a lot of people that's a hard concept to grasp
where like game over is the anticipated result
in the modern day,
right? And in that respect it is like an arcade game, right? In that game over is sort of the anticipated result of you slinging a quarter in an arcade game.
Mhm.
Interesting. I'm going to add that. Let's see.
Yeah.
Main element number one down below.
I don't know that I agree with that. Oopsie. Most games don't expect you to finish most runs. I disagree with that. I think there is like there's you you dropping off is different than you

failing to succeed, right? Like your drop off is a fundamentally different and kind experience for the game than you losing at the game, right? Yeah, the non-permanent progress I think is a is a valid thing to call out and we're going to call that out in a bit. Right. I don't know that that's a why we care, right? Like again, we're we're still focusing on the big picture. Like why are why is this
for the moment genre of games so influential enough to deserve your time paying attention to what it is, right?
I think part of it like the culture phenomena, people really like it.
Yeah, I think it's very enjoyable. I mean, I certainly do. I'm going to add

that value people really like it.
Yeah,
it's funny. It's these game there's a lot of games where their very hardest mode, you know, be it Honor or Iron Man or whatever is basically treating it kind of like a rogike. It's like you got to get through without dying.
Correct.
You know, that's such an interesting one. Is honor mode in Balders's Gate 3 a rogike? Ah, that one I am struggling to find a way besides length of time invested to say it's not. That's an interesting one. [Music] Yeah. Now we're Yeah. Right. And then we get close to including civilization. And then

uh and then yeah uh then caves of Yeah. Caves of cud. Yeah.
Yep. Yep. Yep.
I think actually so well I think we're going to answer that as we get down further.
Yeah.
But I think the answer is no.
Civilization comes closer for a reason. But one of the things we're going to talk about is the expected replay with differences. And that when you start a rogike, there's you're almost always given a couple of wild cards that make your start significantly different every time you play through
beyond the extent of like normal RNG variants that we would expect in a thing like Balders's Gate, right? Like in Balders's Gate, you start with more or less the same setup every time, barring dice rolls being different, but the dice rolls aren't significant enough to mean it's a different experience.
Yeah. You don't start off with like a different assortment of starting gear and spells in Balders's Gate in the same way you do in a lot of the others.

Okay.
But civilization to me would be closer because your starting position,
right,
and starting resources and luxuries, etc. are somewhat similar.
So when we started Rogue Review, we had to have a bit of a knockdown dragout and the contents of that knockdown dragout were prove to me that 4X games and battle royale do not participate in being rogike. Uh and so we sort of made some arbitrary carveouts for that. uh 4X ended up not making it simply because of too big and too long, right? That the the the pacing wasn't conducive to reviewing them in a 4-hour block, which is fair. Um and so we've kind of ignored that question. And battle royale uh fail on being competitive multiplayer, uh which also sort of carves it out uh

because we generally don't think of rogue likes as being competitive multiplayer. Um,
right. Those might be games with roglike elements that are not roguel like.
Yeah.
Let's see. Um,
yeah. Uh, 4x is uh explore, expand, exploit, and one more x. Exterminate.
Explore, expand, exploit, exterminate.
There's a fighting one, right? Yeah, there's a fighting one. Yeah, exfoliate. No, I like blazes better. I like exfoliate. It's exfoliate now. That's right. All 4Xs demand skin care. Moisturize me. Moisturize me. Okay. So,
so genres that aren't but could be. You said 4x. What was the other one? Um, I'm just making notes at the bottom.
Uh, battle royale.

Okay. Thank you. Okay.
Okay. So, we've got a bit of why a bit of the history,
a bit of why you should care.
Mhm.
We're ready to tackle this this big stinker of a question. All right.
I I need my caffeine booze. Let's do it.
Yeah. All right. So, here is the fundamental question before the court of of Brad and Janet and Will and Jeff. Are rogue likes a genre or a tag? Now, we have also shortened this. There is a third possibility which is the idea of it being a subgenre
that gets a little tricky too and I'll let Jeff explain that bit but the the before we get too deeply into our cases chat what do you think
let's explain about what we mean yeah sure
so a genre would be something like shooter games racing games sports games RTS games that they are a grouping
and again there will be no there are

good There are good definitions that help tie things in. There are always exceptions, but the purpose of a genre is whether it's in a store, when you're talking to your friend, to be able to mentally categorize a group of features. So, if I'm like, Will, there's this cool, you know, there's this cool racing game, and Will can just be like, you know, Jeff, I don't like racing games. By saying racing game, I'm giving him enough of an idea of what the gameplay elements in the game is that he can start with that. And this goes with books and movies. if like and if Will's like Jeff there's this amazing horror movie and I'm like you know Will I don't really like horror movie like genres are very useful because they let you shorthand a huge amount of information in for people to look to basically understand because you can be like it's a shooting game but with this really cool set of RPG progression mechanics and I might be like oh that sounds interesting. A tag would be more like

something like, hey, you know, this is a shooting game done in a cell-shaded art style. That could be a tag. Or a tag might be multiplayer. This is a single player shooter game versus a multiplayer shooter game. Most of the shooter game elements are still the same, but single and multiplayer slapped on as a tag make big differences to what they are. So a tag does have certain sets of features and things associated with it, but the general thought around it is a tag can go on almost any genre. So for example, you could say, you know, um, and one of my big examples for this is MMO. MMO isn't a genre, it's a tag. because you can have a MMO. The traditional ones people think about are RPGs, um, things like World of Warcraft and EverQuest and all the others, but you have things like Destiny, which is a basically an action shooter MMO. You had

um, Gran Turismo Online, which was a racing MMO. You have things like Guild Wars um, and more others that are more like Diablo style MMO. I mean, there's all sorts of different genres that you could put the word MMO on, and it's like, cool, let's make this into a huge, massively multiplayer game, but that isn't the actual genre because it's not saying, what do you do on a daily basis? Are you shooting? Are you RPGing? You know, are you racing with it? And so, that's kind of my big broad category.
Yeah. And I think uh as you've been laying this out, I think a lot of chat started on it's obviously a genre
except it's definitely more of a tag. I think now is is chat's general um
and that's why I wanted to define kind of what I meant by what does genre mean, what does tag mean,
right? Because you can have a you could have

Mhm. a game and have the mechan the the core control mechanics, art style, aesthetics, story, worldview, whatever, with and without rogike elements. The rogike elements don't necessarily have to be so deeply embedded that they alter the fundamentals, right? and the presence of rogike modes in many games, right, suggest that there is a um a taglike nature to them, right? And I'm not talking about like a racing mode, right? Like there are some MMOs where you have like everybody get on your map. We're going racing. It's a cart racer. Right? Like it's not that, right? Because it's more uh fundamental. It's more like the combat and the gameplay of the rest of the game just in a separate area where it has a rogike tag slapped on it as an example. Right. I I think the tag becomes more
Yeah. And I think in a lot of both of

these are really interesting because like a set of features that can be applied like again taking a thing like multiplayer. Multiplayer isn't a genre but taking a game that would be say typically multi single player and saying but it's multiplayer. Suddenly people are like oh
right
that's interesting. This is an interesting take on a thing. the same with, you know, MMO being like the widest swing up on multiplayer or taking a multiplayer game and making it MMO, but you have other like sets of features. You have other sensibilities.
You know, if you're like, "Hey, Will, we're going to take Diablo, but we're going to put heavy heavy story,
you know, into, you know, we're going to make it almost a narrative style game." And you might be like, "Oh, interesting." So kind of that set of collection and click mechanics but with super heavy in-depth story and you know voice over and cinematics that might be the breakout. So again you kind of look at the genre versus like you know this

is getting a um boware treatment,
right? Yes.
Or telltale games treatment and you're like oh I understand.
Yeah. Multiplayer Tetris. Right. Exactly. as an example. Sorry, I've got something in the back of my throat and it's making me cough a bunch. Uh, yes, I I agree. I think and I think we've successfully convinced chat that it's a tag. Um, and I think we could car I think we need to include that in the episode and that we have proven here that we can make a short coherent persuasive argument that will get most of the audience on board with the idea that it's a tag.
Right.
Pretty cool.
A tag. Yeah. And I think easy point things to point out is like Bellatro is one of the more recognized rogue likes right now and it's it's weird poker.
Yeah.
Like Bellatro and say
'8s 2 are both rogue likes but one of

them is gay panic God simulator and the other one is crunchy number go up poker but they're both unarguably rogue likes.
Mhm.
Right. And that's set of features that we are yet to define. Correct. Yeah. Like we don't that's pretty much all they have in common actually. Right.
Okay. So, it's a tag, not a genre. We'll try and be consistent on that language, though. I think genre is a common um when we're using genre non-technically, many people just use it to mean a group of games.
Uh and we'll try not to do that, but we'll probably slip up as we go.
Oh, yeah. it and it's just like there's industry like it's common vernacular.
Yeah.
This genre of things.
Yeah.
Okay. So then
I typed in main element number one didn't used to be there when we started this well but I think that actually is
element number one
I I would like to suggest alteration

instead of die it's uh game over right you don't die in Batro. You don't die in many of the other like if there was a racing or puzzle rogike, you wouldn't necessarily die. You would just have a
the game loss.
Yeah.
Is that better? Hit the game loss.
Yeah.
A lot of games have a game loss condition that is not death.
Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Um I just I love this. Uh this is this is great. We'll fight about this later. Anyway, we'll continue. Um, yeah. I I think chat, would it be fair to say that the rogike tag and forced loss while not complete overlaps have a lot of synergy that that vin diagram includes a healthy chunk of overlap in the forced loss category,

right? Like Obviously, not all. Elden Ring, not a rogike, but you and that first fight definitely isn't technically a forced loss, but it's really a forced loss, right?
Well, these I I think force loss is a little bit too harsh of a term. No, no, but I I I'm
the difficulty is set so that
I I'm specifically talking about the phenomena of including forced loss to reinforce to the player that hitting their game over state is part of the expected experience,
right? and that that I'm attempting to reinforce main element one by suggesting that the commonality of this phenomena reinforcing that your uh failure is expected and indeed part of the gameplay loop uh is a very roguish thing to occur.
Will quick grammar question. Yeah,
this Google wants me to change conceit

to concept. Is it a conceit of game plays that the expect the game loss or is it a concept?
It could be either concept is probably just as clear.
Mhm.
Yeah. No, and I'm not saying it's
fine.
I I'm not saying it's uh to to to Emily's place. I'm not I'm certainly not saying that all rogue likes. I'm saying that of forced of games which include a forced loss mechanic,
many potentially the majority of those games are rogue likes, right? You don't have to have one, but there is a commonality in that that shows the importance that those games place on losing. Right. Oops. I just saw a thing I need to add down here. Yeah, of course. Um, yeah, game design that new players will likely fail on their first attempt. Uh, what do I mean

by force loss? Great question. Um, I I literally mean the um the the the fight where like the boss has 9,999 HP and you have a a sword that does one damage and then the boss hits you for 10 million damage. Like those kinds of Absolutely. like Kobayashi Maru level no win scenarios where you're just like ha poof and then you die.
Can you think of a rogike that has that?
Uh I played one recently. What would
Spire doesn't train doesn't. Boltro doesn't.
Isaac kind of does in a very weird way. Isaac is also very bizarre and not a great example for the sake of completeness of argument. Isaac. In Isaac, you cannot reach the final ending on your first try. The best you can do is get to mom and then the game ends and you have to beat mom a certain number of time or a certain number of times before

you unlock the ability to go deeper and then fight mom's heart and you have to beat mom's heart a certain number of times before the next ending unlocks and so on and so forth. But that's not
okay. So, similar to Slay the Spire, where you can get up to the heart, but you have to win with each champion before you can then progress past it to actually fight it.
Uh, yeah, kind of like that, right? But I I'm definitely I'm I am given to recall one and I cannot place it. I believe it happened recently, chat. We might have to dig back through the rug review list. But
but so that's why I was just saying like I don't I think it's just the difficulty and one of the things I'll get to in common elements. One of the common elements I'm going to suggest is a super deep game knowledge needed to basically navigate and do well at the game that because you don't have that on your first playthroughs, you are unprepared for like when say the bos on on their fourth or fifth turn inspire on one of the bosses like and here's an attack for your entire health

pool.
Yeah.
And you're like, "Oh, I was not expecting that." where having played it a couple times, you know, to start you start building decks and prepping for that turn.
Uh yeah. Um the tutorial in the last spell is a forced boss, for example.
Okay.
You start on a special tutorial map with a specific set of heroes that you get to go and you get a couple of knights to like mess around. Uh, for those unfamiliar, and I'll try and explain the more obscure games as we go. The Last Spell is a tactical um hero based
town building
town building apocalypse survival rogike,
which is great, by the way. Like,
it's phenomenal. The best part about it is that the soundtrack goes unreasonably hard for a game that is like pixelbased. It's really it's I highly recommend last spell anyway.
Yeah.
Um
but I guess I'm maybe so we can come

back to that in common elements. So I think we could leave it for just a main conceit of game plays the players expect to hit the game loss condition repeatedly and not finish the game finish the game slashf finish the run. It doesn't have to be on their first try. Like that's just a conceit that
unlike many other games where um let's see actually oh part of let's see part of actually I just realized part of this is that rogues typically don't allow you to save or revert to a safe spot instead. It's game over.
Yes, Grass. We're we're going to get to that distinction here here in a little bit.
Um, does that sound fair on like kind of

the concept? Because I think the big part versus a whole bunch of other games actually even on the difficulty is that some games are much harder. But you when you die, you're just like, "Cool, back to my last save point." And you get to try 15 times to figure out what was that boss fight or other thing. Correct.
Or hm, what was that choice of my choice tree in this one? It's like, oh, you made choice B. Cool. We're moving on. You don't get to back up and try it again.
Correct. And that the um uh that's a really good point I think that paradox has right um that that run cannot be done again
right that you won't get access to that run that set of circumstances is generally speaking inaccessible to the player the thing that is lost permanently is that arrangement of RNG

So each run is unique.
Yes.
And we could if we wanted to or needed to, we could say more about unique,
but we could take it or leave it.
Yeah. There are runs that are similar.
Yes.
Just by how the setup is done, but each run itself is unique.
Yep. And those are that that is in some cases part of the charm, right? Like Spire has a bunch of very weird things that only happen in specific seeds. For instance, there's a seed and it's a very narrow set of circumstances where performing a set of actions will allow you to make your deck an infinite size and gain infinite gold. There's uh there is another um one where you can uh where the where the run is impossible.

There is a seed that has been um developed in that has been found inspire that is entirely unwinable. Uh as an example, right those unique seeds are truly unique in the combination. Right. Yeah. By the way, I'm just pulling some of these out of chat. Um, so I can remember who
Yeah.
who sent them.
Yeah. Um, yeah. the the the I'm I'm by the way still incredibly happy that they found I predicted in an extra credits episode
I remember
that that there was going to be
a no win seed found in Spire uh and uh then then they found one and I was like called it it was like a year later they found it because there's

that also takes a very dedicated community
to go through Like because most I would guess that 99.9999993% of all played seeds never get replayed.
Agreed.
Oh just people on to the next.
Yeah. You also have to do it all out because you can't do it automatically because of the halting problem.
Yeah. I say it takes a very dedicated community. So you either have to do it manually or you have to interrogate every node and do the full tree diagram of all of the possibilities that emerge, right?
Um
if they're lucky, they found one that basically like somewhere around floor five or six was just like, you know, like jawworm goes aggro early as the first fight and
uh I think most of them are as the silent getting gremlin knob before you're ready. like most of their their focus in determining it was a forced

elite fight that would always be Gremlin knob as the silent with no access to an upgraded attack
and that was I believe how they did it but anyway um okay so that's
so basically main element one that helps define rogue likes is that you're expected to lose a lot
and that's okay
yes and then the second part is that you're expected to play it again and that each run will be different.
Yeah.
And that those and and and the extent of those differences will vary, but there is a minimum threshold I would say of difference between runs like it's not in this version the sky is blue and in this version the sky is purple, right? There's like some weird ineffable degree of difference there that like needs to be met.
Mhm.

For it to really be a rogike, it's not always the map, but it usually is the map. It's not always the starting loadout, but it's often the starting loadout. It's
not always the enemies, but it's often the enemies. Risk of brain is great. I put in there um kind of so we have different start uh starting elements such as load out map layout

um actually RNG um or um seedbased RNG
is somewhere in this uh this idea uh from Zerith uh nope not that one from the bull excuse me that progression comes from skill and knowledge not upgrades advantages of previous runs because it's sometimes and usually now both. But we do want to mention meta knowledge as a powerful advancement tool.
Yeah, actually met progression. I'll just type that in for later. Um
yeah. Um, yes. I Emily, I would say that Hades is kind of distinct in that. It's not always distinct, but often distinct, right? That many many rogue likes don't have enough of a story to acknowledge

that previous runs have existed. Hades kind of stands out in that regard. And to its detriment, I will say, um, there's a reason that a lot of people I know have been holding off until Hades 2 exits early access because Hades, like if you got too good at Hades one, the story, the primary driving factor broke
because it expected too far between
it it took it expected you to take a certain number of runs to do a certain amount of setup to reach each major beat. And then if you tripped too many I've been this far flags at once, it just kind of lost the thread of its own plot.
It's interesting. Actually, on a slight related note, I've been I I finally went back. I'm like, I'm going to finish Boulders's Gen. And then I looked at I'm like, screw it. I'm starting over. Which was a bad choice, but I'm going with it. But there's a mod I put in specifically that throws a little flag up on your character that says when there's a

nighttime story event that can now be triggered. Yeah.
Um because playing it a second time and even though I cranked the difficulty up to tactician mode, I'm just a good player at those kinds of games. And so I don't need to do the long rest condition like reset, you know, everybody go back for the next day. And so because of that, I at one point I think I spent eight nights in a row just doing camp without walked out, went back, settled down just so I could see all the story elements progress so that I didn't get so far ahead that they wouldn't then show up when I hit the places in the story because Larry and Studios had expected you camp a certain amount of times,
right? But you don't actually need to.
Yeah. And so it's it's g that can be an interesting part of these kinds of games is figuring out how you do and access that
excess and in anyway yeah okay so replay with differences let's talk about the

starting elements for a moment um so load is it actually to make that clear like load out like what is it um how do we def what is loadout out mean for this?
The tools that a player has at their disposal at the beginning of the run,
like whatever for whatever circumstance that is, whether that's a deck of cards or um a different gun, a different sword, a different companion, a different party loadout, a different Pokemon.
Mhm.
Right. because there's um
Kaiso Iron Man, right? Which is all RNG,
right? And so basically like very clear examples of this are in Slay the Spire. You get to start with Meow's or the whale bonus, which is a random set of

things that they will display a couple of and you get to pick one. um you get to pick one like that's in some cases that is a light version actually for a rogike. But then also what you find the first couple floors really sets the flavor for the run because one of the conceits of Spire is every encounter gives you one of three new cards you can add to your deck and your starting deck as you play a lot you realize is pretty bad.
Yep. Well, so be
sort of some of it some of the time.
Yes,
that's a there's a complicated tipping point. Um,
yes,
but yes,
you realize cards you find will be better than typically what started in your deck.
That is definitely true. I also think that it's not the best example. I would say that monster train has a better example. That is actually what my next one was big because in monster train your clans that you pick absolutely your clans dictate what your starting cards

are. But then at the start of every run you get five additional starting five additional starting cards,
right?
Two cards of the same type, two cards of the same type, one card of another type, as well as a starting relic artifact. I can't remember what
Yeah.
they call them there.
And
Mhm. You have you get to pick between two of the three possible upgrade paths for your CL.
All right. So, your champion has three possible upgrade paths.
Two of which you're exposed to. So, one of them isn't and you pick one. So, basically, your champion's major power is different or is one of three. The artifact you start with is you get to pick from two of maybe 150 or something. And then you also have different starting cards mixed into your pool, right?
And together that makes each run even from the very beginning
feel somewhat different.
Yeah.
Continued by as you then find more stuff,
right?
And that would be different from just

saying like if those weren't in but it was pick your clan and your subclan,
right?
Like but those were always identical like there weren't that didn't have the extra random. That would be very different on feel.
Yep. Um, by the way, I see a lot of people diving into the light like uh division. Hold. That is more complicated than I think a lot of people in chat are representing right now. We'll get to that in a second. That's literally our next
that is on our list. That is actually the one of the very next things we'll
Yeah, but the Yeah, humble humbly request to hold on that. We'll get to that in a second.
So, map layout. And by the way, these are examples. None of these um in in under a are required,
right? They could be different and often are, but aren't always. For instance, in uh Dead Zone Rogue, Dead Zone Rogue, um that I played recently, the map remains the same.

Mhm.
Between runs, but the contents of individual nodes and the weapons that you get and the upgrades that you get are all different. It's pretty inarguably a rog light, but the map stays the same, right? So, these aren't requirements. These are just strong examples as an
Yeah.
And that's why we're using broad terms like loadout.
Yeah.
And map.
Yes.
Layout.
Yeah. Uh different.
The seat based RNG is just there to also say that um
most but not all
Yeah.
have
have basically a predetermined set of roles. So, even if by some way the even if the game happened to have a save and reload, you actually let me give you a good example. If you're playing a match in Slay the Spire or in Monster Train, and you force quit the game, and so it loads back in at the last save point, the start of the fight, you're not going to get a different set of what order the

cards were drawn in. Or if you like, if there was something that involved like rolling a dieice, the die roll would always be the same. Like it's basically predetermined math going in there so that even if you do somehow force the game to replay part of it. Making the same choices results in the same results. Unlike say Balders's Gate where every time you do a skill check, it is a random D20. And if you save and reload, you might actually make or fail that same role because it's random every time.
Yeah. Uh, yes, Monster Train 2's undo is dope.
Um, the undo there is is huge.
By the way, the undo in Monster Train 2 is a phenomenal quality of life.
It keeps all of the Oops, I misclicked.
You're like, oh, I misclicked. Hold on, let me reset this the last 10 seconds.

Yeah. And that works because it is specifically you enter an entire set of moves
kind of and then it's enemy's turn,
right? So different starting elements and we're with a caveat but not just having selected a different class like that that that can be a different element but that in and by itself doesn't qualify.
Yeah. Um
yeah.
Do you think well those are the main two defining traits of rogue likes?
Yeah. the kind of the expected game loss and repeat game and expected replay with differences.
Yes. Because one is without either of them it ends up being this weird group that isn't rogue likes, right? So like expected loss, you could

just say it's battle toads, right? And you're like, well that's not it, right? And replay with differences is just dealing a different hand of solitire. So that's not it, right? But it's some combination of those. It's some place where those two ideas overlap broadly that we end up in a spot that we call rogue likes.
Hey Will, what was the Berlin interpolation's existence?
That's a whole thing. A whole bunch of people tried to define the difference between rogue lights and rogue likes and it ended up being unnecessary and unimportant.
That's the short version. Um,
Toad likes.
Yeah. Okay. Uh, so that brings us to, speaking of the Berlin interpretation,
the question of
what's the difference between a rogike and a rogue light? So,
oops, hold on. I entered the versus

player knowledge in a wrong place. Oof.
It's okay. So it is kind of but not entirely meta progression. I saw a lot of people saying it's meta progression.
I dis we need to narrow down what we mean by meta progression. And here is why there are many games which I would consider rogue likes that include character unlocks as a perk of winning the game.
You complete a run with character A, you unlock character B. That is a kind of meta progression, but it's not the kind of meta progression that a lot of people mean, right? So, we got to be very careful and lock down like where that line is when we're talking about this because again, we're doing this for like not an audience that knows what this is like. Yeah, character power meta progression is a good way to do it. And

then we're going to throw another wrench into the into the um into the the works, right? Which is what happens to a rogue light when you've unlocked everything inside the spire. There aren't terribly many unlocks. I have unlocked all of the things. I have all the cards. I have all the characters. Is it still a ROG light? Because there's an argument for yes and there's also an argument for no. That playing it in its finished state because you're done makes it a rog like not a rogue light. Right? So we have to talk about um
so okay actually here let's get the first part. Um character power we're saying the difference between rogue like and rogue light is character power meta progression.
Yes. Rogue likes do which will they

rogue likes have no explicit character power meta progression uh between runs
where rogue lights I'm going to actually throw a dash in just so it's easier to read.
Yes, I agree.
Rogue likes um For a while we were calling them Krogues and T- Rogues just because it was the only way to keep them apart um verbally. But yes, so and then we've got some very interesting and this and this I actually think when we're doing uh conversations about game uh types like this is a very good thing to do. Someone said, "Hold on, hold on, hold on. Where does risk of rainfall?" Okay, it's perfectly good. Risk of rain

pretty easily a light in that you have added new, more powerful items to the pool through your progress, right? you have added items to the pool of available items that your character can access by opening chests or doing the little threepart miniame or whatever. They're in the pool now. That is a way that you become more powerful because those things are generally excuse me generally speaking more powerful in the same way that enter the dungeon allows you to add more guns to the pool. You don't start, I believe, with a black hole gun, but you get a black hole gun. The black hole gun's pretty good, right? Um,
so adding more powerful items to the pool of what you can find during a run.
Um, I'm I'll say card slash items.
Yep.
Um, cards, items, actually artifacts.

Um, do are there rogue likes that basically just unlock more powerful characters? In other words, there's a starting batch of characters and you never really play those once you've un because I know, for example, Risk of Rain allows you to unlock lots of different characters as you play. But, for example, in Slay the Spire, arguably none of them are more powerful than the others other than Watcher. Like it's not like once you unlock once you unlock silent, Ironclad is still a perfectly viable champion to play.
Yeah. Um I'm going to say yes. I'm going to say that if a character unlock or choosing a fixed starting state is the only thing that you're unlocking and the only way that you're doing it is by meeting arbitrary criteria like beating a run then I think that still has the possibility of being a like

right if you're choosing a different starting state rather a specific locked starting state
rather than choosing or or adding more powerful things to the experience as a whole, right? You're choosing a new starting state for you that can still be a rogike. Um, yeah. Uh, someone was asking, um, is Blatro a rogue like? Yes, I would I would say h Well, let's talk about jokers. Do jokers count? Cuz jokers count, then it's a light.
Yeah,
right. If they don't count, then it's a like. But I think they do. So, I think it's a light, not a like.
Um,

this our definition is going to make rogue likes pretty rare. And indeed they are, which is one of the things I they are very rare. They're not very popular
because the failure conditions are very
um unforgiving, we'll say,
right? Because you just lose the entire thing. You don't get an opportunity to improve and make the game easier by adding meta progression. you just have to do it again and hope that your knowledge carries you through. They're pretty uncommon now. I would say Spelunky is probably the last of the really popular ones. And by really popular, I mean one that's holding on to a fair amount of relevance. Uh FTL is also like I believe you don't generally upgrade things. You get a different ship, a different starting state, but I don't
they definitely go wide. You can unlock different ships
and I would argue some of the ships are

actually some of the ships are a little more are a little stronger than others. But that's a hard one.
Mhm.
Let's see. We could actually um why let's see character unlocks that are roughly equal in power level like I'll put that as a
um card item So things that I put do not let's see this does not include wide gameplay meta progression character unlocks that are roughly equal in power level card item card item artifact pool that offers

versatility but not noticeable possible increases in power.
So in other words, if they're just saying you have more options, but they're the hey, you have access to more guns, but the guns are still balanced against the same formula.
Yes. Yeah. The I'm trying to think. So if I have a game and I have characters A, B, and C, and card pools red, green, and blue.
Mhm. and I unlock all of those and they're all roughly equivalent and all I've done is change my starting states and no other things. I think that's still a rogike.
Mhm.
Right. I can choose that I'm going to have a fire run with a water character and that's it. I think I'm okay. And like you don't get like extra HP or extra starting currency or whatever. And you're not adding things to a specific pool. just making a full substitution. I think that could also still be a like

I'm adding then in actually will a point that you'd brought up earlier. Check out C below. Scroll down a tiny bit.
Yeah. Well, I I'm willing to be persuaded for or against that, right? But like or or progress to a point where the distinction between like and like is meaningless, right? Where you already have where you have everything unlocked, right? It's the they're the same. They're functionally meaningless
at some point because you can unlock everything i.e. there is a finite pool of unlocks.
Mhm. Some games transition from being rogue lights, i.e. you can still

unlock things to make you more powerful.
Yeah.
To rogue lights where
there is no more explicit meta progression between games.
Like top end slay the spire is played like a like not a light.
Yeah.
Right. There's no grinding to do. Right. There is the run that you have and you have a specific set of unlocks. Good luck.
Yeah.
Yeah. Jorb's playing Ascension 20 Slay the Spire is basically playing a roguel like
because all his games like at that point start out identically the same as Will and I because we've unlocked Ascension 20 and all the cards.
Yeah.
How controversial is that? I don't think it's terribly, but I also think it will only matter to a small group of people. Like I think this whole section gets ellighted to by the way, we're going to call them rogue like we're going to pick one for the episode

and then it's going to be a Matt aside probably. It's like, hey, by the way, technically there are two of these things, but we're going to call them all this and here's what the actual diff difference is, but this is fine, right? It's going to be mostly an aside. Um,
actually I almost can't think of a rogue light that once you've unlocked everything doesn't become a rog like
if you continue to play
like if you unlock everything with everything unlocked, monster train with everything unlocked, FTL with all the ships unlocked. But you're right. I think we could probably, you know, hold on. Try to do in scroll up a second.
Yeah. Yeah. Or less. Yeah.
I think 30 secondsish. Like it's enough

of a topic that people have heard the difference that we could kind of run into. Okay. Quick quick thing here. We're going to run through it. Typically, you know, the difference, you know, there are rogue lights and rogue likes. We're just calling them all rogues for a moment. The big difference is that likes don't have explicit progression where in likes, you know, characters kind of get more powerful between games because they continue to unlock things.
Yeah.
But hey, at a certain point once you've unlocked everything, it goes back to being a like because you've unlocked everything. There's no more meta progression, right?
So because of that, we're just putting them all together and going on,
right? Yeah.
Like I think something like that is
I think that's good. Yeah. We don't we don't want to dwell over long on this, right? Because that's actually the key problem of the Berlin definition is it's overly wordy and takes too long on things that people don't really care about. But we do need to cover this in some respect. Otherwise, it is something we're leaving on the table. Um
Will, if you can entertain for 20 seconds, I want to get to common

elements right after this.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh let's take some questions from chat. Do rogue legs have difficulty selection? Great question. They absolutely can. There's no reason they don't, right? There's no reason that they can't, right? Look at um Risk of Rain, right? Drizzle brainstorm monsoon. Very easy. Um Yep. Or you can do the granular difficulty like uh with the Hades heat scale, right? Absolutely. Although the Hades heat scale is ever so slightly different because it's an ascension mechanic and ascension mechanics are weird and we're going to talk about them in a little bit. Um but yes, that is that is still part of it. Um right, the I'm going to say that ascension and difficulty are different weirdly that those are two very closely related but often different things,

right? that the purpose of difficulty is to establish the base and the ascension is a slightly different thing in that it enables a climb, right? Um uh we will be defining ascension here momentarily. Odinir, uh
I think ascension is probably the first thing we mention on common elements.
I agree. Uh both alphabetically and others. Um except ah see but that that's the thing Blaze is that there is a way where you could have you could there is no reason that you couldn't have three different difficulties that impacted something like enemy AI and then an ascension mechanic on top of that that affected specific things about the player. Right? You could have both. And the fact that you could have both is why I'm sticking to my guns on this one and saying that difficulty and ascension are different,

right? Um, I think that's a theoretical. I don't think I've ever seen a rogue style game that has both.
I think the one I just played might, but I haven't gotten to the point where Ascension comes in. But it does have unlockable difficulty levels.
Okay. Um but I mean if you can imagine it in theory right I do think that it is important that we differentiate those two because they do serve different functions right not hugely different functions but there is a line between establishing the base difficulty and the base terms of play and then also the weirdness that comes with ascensions things like losing a potion slot is different than like
enemies have harder attack patterns right although both of those are ascensions. True. It's funny um on game difficulty because um we're actually writing an episode right now for extra credits. I

got to pull out a really interesting one. Um I was chatting with Matt about it because it was one he hadn't seen. Marvel's Midnight Suns, which was made by the same group as XCOM, doesn't quite have ascension level difficulty, but at certain points in the game when you win fights or when you win encounters by enough, it says, "Would you like to go from like normal one to normal two difficulty, this means that enemies are X, Y, and Z, but you get rewards increased by
QR and S?"
Q. Yeah. And it does this multiple times, but you basically have to win a fight by enough at that difficulty to tell it you are now allowed to select the next one mid run. And then once you're going, you can switch back and forth at any time.
It sort of dials it in.
But what you're doing is you're saying I will get harder encounters for better treasure.
Yeah. But it does it in the middle of the game with a whole bunch of minor gradations,

which is um it's just it's an interesting thing.
Yeah. Okay. So, let's talk about what ascension is then because we're we're using it a bunch and we should probably um we should probably uh
is there more is accepted term than ascension? Not one that I can think of. So, let's see. Asion. It is.
Yeah. I was I was thinking Monster Train calls it Covenants. Yeah. Um, new game plus, right? Right. Right. Yeah. Um, so
actually I'm going to put that similar to the NG+ concept.
Yes. When you win a game,
you win a We should probably say a run.
Sure. When you win a run.
We also probably need to define a run at

some point in this, but we'll work on that in a second.
Yeah.
This one game calls the new game mode Steel Soul. True. When you win a run, it offers the game offers the ability to start your actually to start all future runs at a at an at an an increased difficulty level. Um each of difficulty increased has a specific um set of criteria
usually non-randomized. I don't know that we need to say that. I don't know that anyone would assume that it's randomized, but like

because I um let's seeite there's a lot of I'm going to go back and put site examples because I think for a lot of for a lot of things too helping people understand will be like inspire this this and this and monster train this this and this and Isaac this this and this are things that might happen as you increase
because you could have a rogue game without I think for common elements one of the we should say here is you can have a you can have a rogue game without these.
Mhm.
But they're very commonly seen.
Mhm. Uh Blaze says, "It's wild to me that Monster Train 2 has unlockable for beating the game on the highest cinch with every combination of all 10 clans." I mean, of course they do. It's there, isn't it? That's kind of the point of rogues, right? Rogue Rogues are like, "It's there, isn't it? Great. Someone's gonna do it. Have Have a shiny sticker. Ha. Have a shiny. Right. Isn't that There's an achievement for beating all

of the decks in Bellatro on gold stake.
Have a shiny sticker. Right. Like cool.
Actually, I know somebody in Nebula who did that.
Everybody else in the game channel. Everybody else was like, "You did what?"
Yeah.
And then he spent like a couple paragraphs explaining his strategy,
which actually got helped me change a little bit of my strategy.
Yeah. They're there. Yeah. It's wild. Um,
and that actually I will say um we should put that in. Um, I'm just going to throw it at the bottom for a moment. Um, rewards slashchievements for beating the game in a variety of ways. SL Yeah, like
I think that is a common element,
right?
Okay. So, ascension levels for

difficulty, similar to the new game plus concept where when you win a run, the game offers you the ability to start all future runs at an increased difficulty level. Difficulty level is a high set of criteria. Um, most communities. Consider playing the game at its maximum difficulty level to be the actual base state of the game. Um the
I Okay, I'm going to h the more I think about this, the less sure I am, right? Like
A20 Spire. Like I don't think Okay, so we both play Spire on A20 cuz we've played entirely too much Spire.

Yeah. And maybe this is that's a bad assumption of mine. Like
right
the same on like Monster Train or a whole bunch of other though. Actually, hold on. Let me go against my own thing. If you go play a community challenge,
right,
on any of these, it's always at ascension zero.
Correct.
It is the easiest possible level variation of the game
so that it is accessible to everyone, right? Like there is
just because we fly in communities that have
masochistic opinions of the way that we do difficulty does not mean that that is true for everyone. there. I'm going to re I'm going to say the opposite. Most games with community challenges run these challenges at the base gameplay level rather than the ascension level.
Yeah, I think that's that's definitely true.

Um, ide's a pretty good ascension. like it's a choose your own ascension, but it is an ascension. Uh, and I would also say that um with love and respect to Team Cherry, I don't know that they knew what they were getting themselves into when they made a rogike. I I kind of I like I feel like the the level of picking apart Hades that has happened is so far in excess of the amount that um Bastion or Transistor or Py was picked apart and scrutinized and optimized because it is a rogike is kind of a different thing with which they're unfamiliar.
Oh, did I say TC? Yeah, Super Giant. Excuse me.
Yeah, I apologize. I have I have TC on the brain.
What?
Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Okay. So, that kind of explains ascension levels. Um actually, we um I will say though, mini game endings can only be found or can only be accessed.
Yep. um by playing at the maximum.
Yep,
there we go. I think that like that's I think kind of a good balance in there.
Yep.
Okay, that's ascension levels. I think my very next thing I would say for common elements is that deep game knowledge is essential for continued success.
Right. that like
and I think
player.
Yeah. And I would say that we we introduce that by saying uh in addition to meta progression

making the player more powerful and the ascension level making the game more challenging. The player's knowledge of the game's systems and elements proves to be one of the most important factors on the player side.
Systems, cards, encounters, strategy, move, let's see, opponent. I think Hades was one of the best at forefronting the idea of a rogike. I think Hades has a bunch of holes in it. I'm It's one of the things I'm very interested to see about Hades 2. Um
I'm also very interested in not getting an RSI when I play Hades 2, so I'll be playing it with a controller. Yeah,

let's see. The game the players knowledge of the game systems are an essential part of the player success.
Yeah.
Of
Yeah.
Actually of successfully navigating a run.
Yeah. Uh I'm going to I'm going to call something out real quick and and push back uh real quick. Uh Bull says, "I think it's important to ask, does this document describe Rogue?" No, it's not. I actually think it's not. And here's why. In the same way we we were talking about genres earlier, right? We have drifted far enough from the origins of the thing, right? This is one of the reasons I don't like naming game naming tags or genres after specific games is because we have now drifted far enough from the idea that was the genesis of rogue into uh a new space that we define as rogike but is not necessarily adjacent to the

idea of rogue.
Mhm. It is a very weird concept, right? But we have drifted conceptually into an entirely new space. And that's why I don't think it's important, right? Because there's sort of a like there there is a sort of a change over time, a drift over time that has happened to move away from that into this new space which we still call broke. Yeah, that's that I just wanted to address that because I think that is a common that is a common uh point that I see brought up when we talk about what makes a rogish game, right? And I don't think it's applicable anymore.
It might have been at one point, but we're very far away from Rogue now in that in the same way that we're very far away from adventure and Pong and Right. Like Yeah. Yeah. I think there's classic rogue likes. Sure. Mhm. What do you think? Okay. So, we've said ascension levels for difficulty, deep player knowledge essential for

continuous. Oh, let's see. Actually, this means that there is that that these games are crafted um with encounters, etc. that allow a player with knowledge to perform better.
Yeah.
Like that that's kind of a handinhand thing. There are games that don't do that.
Yeah, that's true.
And some of it is kind of weird. I'm thinking about like why studying spire is different than studying a fight in Elden Ring, right? Like to give sort of like a very polar polarized different example, right? Once you know like, okay, there's not a

community dock or at least if there is, I'm not aware of it with like all of the moves that a boss can do in Elden Ring because you just kind of have to feel that out. But I need you to understand that every enemy's attack patterns and uh underlying algorithm for the way that it attacks uh are all on every ascension level are all in a giant community document that a bunch of Slay the Aspire players use as an example, right? And like that that feels like the difference in kind.
Yeah.
Actually that allow a player let's see or a community play inspire. That's a good example to call out. Like knowing the possibilities of what they might do gives you an

advantage in playing the fight.
Yeah. Um, what is the next most common element from what we have listed or for things we don't think we we're starting to get like out of the realm of we are getting a little bit out of the realm of like these are super common into like these are a little weird and intangible, right? So I don't know
the matter the like the the order matters as much. I think something like relics
are actually a very common part of rogue likes. Kind of like um

powerful items that you get and stick with you for the remainder of the run. Mhm. Which um
hang tight.
Which significantly increase your power? That is such a weird thing. Okay. All right. Well, okay. That's all right. Thanks, YouTube. YouTube sent me a message. It was like, "There's a problem with your stream." And then I looked and I was like, "No, there isn't." And it was like, "But there's a problem with your stream." And I was like, "There actually isn't." Okay. Anyway, thanks, YouTube. Um,

Joker's items and rescue brain relics and slay the spire. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, I'll answer this while just typing. Are Mo is the type of role? No. Oh, I can understand why you would ask that with that profile picture. Uh, I was also a Liquid fan back in ye olden days of Dota 2. Um, uh,
I only know Liquid from League.
Yeah, Liquid was one of the only NA challenger, one of the only like strong NA teams for a really long time in Dota 2. Um, yeah, I I would say no. And the core reason uh is several. We haven't explicitly said it here, but sort of baked into a lot of what we're talking about is the assumption that it's not PvP.

Even if it was going back up, um
I I would say
um main element number two, expected replay with differences. The thing about MOBAs, because they are almost always designed to be esports, is that there are no random elements, right,
in them at the beginning,
right? And if you think that something is random in a MOA, it's not.
It it it is at most what I will call I know there's a better word for this, but like bag randomness, right? So, there's die randomness where like I take two dice and I roll them and I can roll them a 100 times and I'll get different results every time. But if I have a hundred tokens in a bag and I pull them out one at a time, every time I've pulled a token out, it's not in the bag anymore, right? Um, pseudo random crits, uh, dragons in um, League, right? Uh, where Ro spawns, right? It's a coin flip the first time and then ever every time after that it alternates. Right. There are a bunch of different things in MOBAs that have moved away from randomness in

favor of pseudo randomness and more tight control.
Yeah. Scrabble random. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. banded randomness. Thank you, Snacken.
Yes.
But even then, most MOBAs have gone to great lengths to eliminate as much randomness as they can because when you're watching a sport style thing, esport prof like physical sport like basketball, football, they don't want randomness. They want the players skill and the fe like the field of play is the same, the rules are the same. like the thing that's supposed to make a difference is the players in the strategy and not weird random coin flips or other things,
right? Despite the fact that those often get uh shown as uh major moments and gifts and stuff for um
uh for for moments in like magic tournaments, right? Magic is kind of weird in that it's a lot of luck. It's not all luck, but it's definitely a lot of luck.
Um
Oh, yeah. Well, magic has one specific element of luck associated with or

randomness associated, which is the shuffle order of the deck, but that is pretty much with exceptions the only major random element in that entire game. And it's one of the whole conceits of the game, right? You build a deck, it gets shuffled. You then play your deck against the other person's deck which they constructed and got shuffled. And whoever can take the best strategy from what you have drawn
and first player and um every other besides deck deck order and first player, every other every other instance of randomness is something you've chosen to put in or your opponent has chosen to put in.
Allah him to tak right. You have to discard two uh your opponent cast him deter. You have to discard two cards from your hand. Those are random. But someone chose to put the randomness in. It's not inherent to the game's design.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But so I think that's what to me the big difference on MOBAs. Don't start out with the let's throw in a huge random

element at the beginning of every game because that would honestly make for a bad esport experience.
Yeah. Actually a great example if you play League that's why there is no esport version of AAM which is let's give you guys some random champions to play against each other because often one team selection of champions will just be better
counterpoint counterpoint I I hear what you're saying I 100% what you're saying counterpoint there should be do it Riot you won't cowards competitive AAM league I would watch the crap out of that pro players playing AAM for like fun charity events and other things.
Yeah.
But
yeah, they've done similar stuff with Dota. They had one Allstars match where the people in game who were watching the matches in game got to draft two teams and uh across team lines and play them against each other. And they got to play with like the doors on the sound booths kicked open. So they were like yelling

back and forth at each other across the sound booth. One of the best matches I've ever seen played of a MOA ever was just 10 international Dota players hanging out and having a really good time. It was excellent. Anyway, um
but anyway, slight sidetrack, but that that is kind of and that is like but that is a huge difference and it kind of explains philosophically.
Yeah,
MOBAs want to start out on even ground. Rogues specifically don't. they kind of almost want to and you'll see this in cases and it's not easy to put in so it's not in the episode but you'll often see something like Isaac's special item system
right if you're unfamiliar is Binding of Isaac one of the sort of um not quite one of the rogues but like a very strong contender for an influential early roguish game uh has a system wherein
it is there is an increased probability that you will find an item marked as special until you find an item marked as

special and then you are very unlikely to see a second one until you've accomplished some truly ridiculous gamebreaking things. Um it's literally called breaking the game. Uh and so those items are very rundefining items, right? It's
but that's an intentional part of the game design too.
Correct. And so and that would never work in another style of game, right? because the runs would be that's not what the game's based on, right? The game is based on you finding the secret sword behind the waterfall, not
you playing the game until the game kicks out one of seven secret swords randomly to make this run different,
right?
Um yeah,
and that actually that really actually gives part of the definition of MOA is here you go, you're starting the run, you've been handed something pretty cool and powerful. How is, you know, how does that affect your strategy for playing it? And when you play the next game, here's a new random cool powerful thing.
Yeah.
Go do it.
Yeah.

Yeah. So, buildarounds are, I think, a thing. Yeah. So, the style of upgrades.
What do you mean by style of upgrades here, Jeff? I forget what we meant when we were talking about those.
Give me a second. I just um the buildaround. Buildaround is a great thing, I think, to um to stick in here. Yeah. Yeah, often one offered at near the start.
So why boss like swap so interesting in uh Spire,
right? You get a build around very early, but you don't get to choose which one. And you might just get ectopplasm. Good luck.
It's the number one reason to not boss relic swap, by the way, is ectoplasm. You might think it's runic Dome. No, Rudict Dome is great, especially early because then you know that you're not going to see stuff and there are plenty of ways to figure out what something's going to do that isn't seeing their
ectoplasm's no gold, right?
Ectoplasm is no gold the entire run. Get hacked.

Yeah. And what that what that really means is no access to shops.
Correct.
I mean, pretty much there's there's some other things, but it's pretty much no access to shops.
Yeah. Correct. And that's actually not terribly bad on Ascension Zero and really hard on ascension 20.
On 20 it's not quite a death sentence, but you are routing very specifically around that for the rest of the run.
Yeah. Um
I did just look at the time. Jeff, do we want to do we want to do one more and then wrap up for today
or do we want to wrap up? Um, and we can't even decide if it's worth following up on this with more like we could take this review with everybody a couple weeks from now and be like, "Okay, what have we missed?"
Yeah.
Let's talk about it again. Um,
yeah.
And if so, I don't mind stopping now or doing one actually, let's see, will look down there. What What is the one most

interesting thing that's a couple minutes? Um,
pick from three probably. And the rise of pick from three. Choose one. The choose one of three system is so interesting.
Actually, let's change it to choose one of X usually pick from three.
Yeah. So, this is the spire style and like it's not the only place that does this, but it's certainly one of the places that does it most prevalently. Um, rogues often give you the option during at specific junctures to choose between several upgrades, resources, whatever. Um, and the way that it happens over time means that it is possible to sculpt your run, but not

completely, right? You don't get to choose between everything. You get to choose between these three things, right? It's better than not being able to choose at all,
but it's not as good as being able to choose from anything that you possibly could, right? It's really easy to see this in risk of rain. It's uh one of the reasons that I believe unless I'm completely misremembering in both Risk of Rain and Risk of Rain 2, choose from three uh item uh selections are more expensive than small chests because you have no idea what's in the small chest and you do get to know exactly what you're getting from the choose from three.
Um
yeah,
some choice is better than no choice.
Absolutely. And yes, uh that is many have ways to alter the choice to roll, banish, um lock. Yes, th those are pretty common as well. Um
actually, I'm just going to copy that one verbatim in.
Yeah.

Um
actually, um
some
most expensive or is it against
only allow a choice to show up once per run? Yeah, like I hate
because that's a variant of like banish which is for example if you see a relic in a shop in slay the spire it will never be offered again for the rest of the run. So not buying it in the shop means that it is effectively banished from the pool
and that spire learned from Isaac. In Isaac in originally in Isaac it was possible to completely empty all of the item pools and then force the item pools to refill. Hm. That was a mistake. Uh I Isaac is not a well-coded game. Isaac is not a game that is balanced well either. There are games where Isaac just craps

on you. Sometimes literally. And there are runs where you just pick Isaac up like a bundle of twigs and snap it over your knee because you got the d20 at the right time.
Wild. That's actually just right. Expected game play involves powering up to a level trying to think of this like it's powering up to like an almost not ludicrous level but um
powering up to a level significantly beyond the starting level or something like that.
Starting level Yeah.
Like that's an accepted part of
Yeah. And that's that's odd, right? Like if we found a sword of slaying gods in

Elden Ring, that would trivialize the rest of the game, and that's not good,
right? But if if you found a sword of slaying gods in Night Reign, then you'd get to use it to slay a Night Lord. Great.
Yeah,
you slayed a Night Lord for one run. Good job. Right. The the consequences of becoming monstrously overpowered are very different between those two styles of game. Right. I think that does apply.
Yeah. I would say this is fine because it only sticks around for one run and because loot rewards are randomized and therefore hard to achieve. Yeah.
Therefore, these combos Yep. Cool. That's one that is actually absolutely an expected
Yeah, that's that's a good one.
Yeah.
Cool, cool, cool. Yeah, this one this one's much harder than MOBAs because rogue likes are both more nebulous, more varied, and also um harder to nail down as a result of that than like MOBAs where we're like, "Yeah, here's all the

MOBAs we can think of because you can name all of the relevant MOBAs on less than two hands, right? League Dota Hot Smite. Um, Unite Deadlock,
right? Okay. Uh,
I'm getting unstable. Deos's um
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Smite, too. Yeah. Smite. Smite and Smite, too. despite the fact that I believe they abandon Smite for uh in favor of supporting Smite 2. But yes, uh he said jokingly as if Smite 2 was relevant. It theoretically is. Um yeah, to be hon I I think um I think choose one of X is one of the best uh things for allowing people to have control over their runs. And it is a

thing that enders many people because it is
making those choices and being rewarded for it in the form of becoming more powerful is a very good brainch, right? That's a very good reward response generator, right? I do think that that is one of the key things about it, right? especially when you have to like choose things and be clever about it like um vampire survivors, right? You need to know what all of the items combo with which all of the other items and then you're choosing from three to try and sculpt your choices to end up as Po where you sit there and don't move and everything dies and it's great, right? Like
and you feel okay with this because it isn't Yeah. getting to pick from the entire card pool or pool of options would be everybody would just go for the most OP strategy. A an OP strategy would be determined or two or three and you would just draft towards that
or pick towards that if you only get one every time. You don't feel like you have

the agency.
Yeah.
So there's it gives the player a certain amount of agency.
Agreed. Agreed. Uh friends, thank you so much uh for coming along for this little uh tour through Rogish Games. I hope you all have enjoyed it immensely. Thanks for helping us sculpt this episode. Uh by the way, if you're I if I'm going to save all of you the trouble, I know I hear people. I hear people now. Y'all, you said this is for an episode. When's the episode coming out? Later, TM. Uh this is this is a glint of an idea in our minds. Um there's
this may never I am by the way actively finally
writing the episode from almost a year ago
right
um that we did on Mobus.
Yes.
Like it it will Matt has a due date for me because it needs to go into production at a certain point.
Yep.
Um but it took a long time because we've been doing a whole bunch of stuff.

Yeah, absolutely. There's there's been a lot of things going on. So um please join us next week. I think we've decided that next week is going to be more
we may head back to Pokemon unless something big pops in.
Yep. Uh and then of course, as always, please join us Monday, 11:00 a.m. Eastern, 8 a.m. Pacific, uh both here on Twitch and on YouTube for more breakfast, uh where Matt and I will cover all of this week's gaming and tech news. Uh just a fair bit. It'll be a good time. Uh
actually, what's happening next?
Right coming up right after this, Matt and I are going to dive into Hearthstone. Matt has heard that this new Hearthstone expansion stinks, and he wants to know why, and I kind of do, too. So, we're going to go into Hearthstone and see what all the fuss is about. So, if that sounds interesting to you, come join us on Twitch right after this, and we'll be diving in tomorrow. If you're watching this in the VOD later tonight and you're like, "What's Will doing on Friday?" I'm glad you asked, invisible person. Uh, I'll be playing more Silk Song tomorrow, slowly crawling towards 100%. I've made it to act two.

Um, I have uh so many thoughts and I am getting so good at this game. And by so good, I mean I'm suffering a lot and it's entertaining. So come watch as I play tomorrow. Um, yeah. Uh, I think that's it. I think that's everything. All right, that means that there's only one thing left, which is for Jeff. Say bye to the people.
Come bye to the people. Thanks everybody.
See y'all next time. [Music]