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Rogue

GameBy Epyx, Inc.

Documents about Rogue

Cover of Roguelike Genre Exploration | Design Club
108 min
Extra Credits108 min

Roguelike Genre Exploration | Design Club

The roguelike genre has evolved from its rigid, turn-based origins into a versatile design framework that now permeates the broader gaming landscape.

  • The roguelike label functions more as a set of design tags than a rigid genre, encompassing diverse titles ranging from deck-builders like Slay the Spire to action games like Hades.
  • A core defining element of the roguelike experience is procedural alteration, ensuring that every individual run is unique through randomized seeds and encounters.
  • Player loadouts—the tools, decks, or characters available at the start of a run—are essential to the roguelike structure, often allowing for strategic variety without necessarily increasing raw character power.
Extra CreditsSep 2025
Cover of Alien: Rogue Incursion | Bridging VR and Flat Screen Experience with Ross DeVito | 366
60 min
Game Dev Unchained60 min

Alien: Rogue Incursion | Bridging VR and Flat Screen Experience with Ross DeVito | 366

The development of Alien: Rogue Incursion represents a strategic effort to bridge the gap between immersive virtual reality and traditional flat-screen gaming.

  • Adapting VR titles for flat-screen platforms requires implementing subtle aim-assist trajectory modifications and recoil curves to replicate the immersive feel of VR movement while accounting for the higher precision of mouse and keyboard inputs.
  • The development team for 'Alien: Rogue Incursion' utilizes in-house 'flat screen' (FS) terminology to distinguish non-VR ports from native virtual reality experiences, focusing on optimizing gameplay for traditional console and PC hardware constraints.
  • PlayStation 5's DualSense controller features linear haptic motors that function similarly to audio speakers, allowing developers to map sound waves directly to physical vibrations for enhanced tactile feedback.
Game Dev UnchainedSep 2025
Cover of Project RISE review: Supercells *NEW* Rogue-lite Game is in pre-alpha!
61 min
Two & a Half Gamers61 min

Project RISE review: Supercells *NEW* Rogue-lite Game is in pre-alpha!

Project RISE represents a strategic pivot for Supercell, marking a departure from the studio’s traditional focus on competitive player-versus-player experiences toward a cooperative, rogue-lite PVE model.

  • Supercell is pivoting from its traditional competitive PvP focus to a cooperative, rogue-lite PvE model set within the Clash universe.
  • Project RISE features a floor-based progression system with extraction-style mechanics that allow players to retain upgrades between sessions.
  • The current pre-alpha build suffers from technical instability, including performance lag and a lack of essential UI elements like mini-maps.
Two & a Half GamersJul 2024
Cover of Rogue Games | Publishing 57 Game Titles!
11 min
GameMakers11 min

Rogue Games | Publishing 57 Game Titles!

Rogue Games, a mobile game publisher founded by industry veteran Mike DeLaet, has established a significant market presence by managing a pipeline of 57 game titles with a lean team of ten employees.

  • Rogue Games manages a portfolio of 57 titles with a lean team of only ten employees, focusing on a licensing model rather than high-risk upfront development.
  • The company utilizes a data-driven methodology that prioritizes iterative improvements, including rigorous critiques of first-time user experience, retention, and monetization before committing to worldwide marketing.
  • By leveraging soft launches to gather analytics, the firm avoids the financial risks of large-scale, rigid marketing commitments common in traditional publishing.
GameMakersAug 2019
Cover of Game Dev Reviews A STUPID HARD Rogue-lite | Enter The Gungeon NEW UPDATE!
21 min
Thomas Brush21 min

Game Dev Reviews A STUPID HARD Rogue-lite | Enter The Gungeon NEW UPDATE!

The development and commercial success of the roguelite game Enter the Gungeon serve as a case study for modern game design, specifically focusing on the intersection of technical execution, player engagement, and marketing strategy.

  • Long-term profitability in the modern indie market relies on prioritizing streamability and replayability to foster organic marketing through consistent, long-form content creator coverage.
  • Game feel, defined by immediate and responsive feedback to player inputs, is a critical technical requirement for maintaining player engagement in high-difficulty roguelite titles.
  • Technical optimization, specifically the use of sprite sheets and efficient lighting, was essential for overcoming Unity engine performance limitations on consoles like the PlayStation 4 during the 2016 development cycle.
Thomas BrushApr 2019
Cover of Real Time Rendering for Feature Film: Rogue One
61 min
Game Developers Conference61 min

Real Time Rendering for Feature Film: Rogue One

The integration of real-time rendering into the production of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story represents a pivotal shift in visual effects workflows, proving that high-fidelity game engine technology can meet the rigorous aesthetic standards of feature film production.

  • The Advanced Development Group successfully integrated Unreal Engine into the production of 'Rogue One' to render the character K-2SO, proving game engine technology can meet high-end feature film aesthetic standards.
  • The workflow utilized open standards like Alembic and Material X to import complex ILM assets into a real-time environment without requiring custom rebuilding.
  • By employing custom solutions for geometry caching and temporal super-sampling, the team achieved film-quality beauty renders at 9K resolution.
Game Developers ConferenceJan 2019
Cover of Rogue Legacy Design Postmortem: Budget Development
22 min
Game Developers Conference22 min

Rogue Legacy Design Postmortem: Budget Development

The development of the indie title Rogue Legacy serves as a case study in budget-conscious game design.

  • Cellar Door Games developed Rogue Legacy over 18 months with a total production cost of less than $15,000, recouping all development expenses within one hour of launch.
  • The team achieved rapid development by prioritizing 'good, not perfect' solutions, focusing on gameplay mechanics over high-fidelity assets and reusing systems from previous projects.
  • To increase accessibility, the developers removed traditional roguelike 'floor clearing' and 'obscurity' mechanics, replacing them with a persistent lineage system that allows players to spend gold on character upgrades after every death.
Game Developers ConferenceJan 2018
Cover of Games You Might Not Have Tried - ep 10 - Find New Games - Extra Credits
10 min
Extra Credits10 min

Games You Might Not Have Tried - ep 10 - Find New Games - Extra Credits

This analysis explores a curated selection of video games that offer unique design perspectives, ambitious mechanics, or unconventional genre blending.

  • Game design innovation often requires balancing mechanical experimentation with overall polish, as seen in titles like The Way where variety can compromise execution.
  • Genre-mashing, such as combining deck-building with city planning in Concrete Jungle or card mechanics with roguelike shooters in Forced Showdown, creates novel experiences but carries significant execution risks.
  • Some innovative mechanics, particularly in games like Forced Showdown, require a substantial time investment from the player before the core design intent becomes fully apparent.
Extra CreditsJul 2016
Cover of Return To Adventure Mountain 2015
4 min
How To Market A Game4 min

Return To Adventure Mountain 2015

The year 2015 served as a period of significant professional transition and creative output for an independent game developer based in Phoenix, Arizona.

  • In 2015, a Phoenix-based independent developer shifted to rapid prototyping of small-scale titles following the dissolution of a previous business partnership.
  • The developer released a diverse portfolio of experimental games throughout the year, including Wizard Golf RPG, Rogue Drop, Drill Planet, and Ride Share Z.
  • Wizard Golf RPG achieved international press coverage, though the developer reported that it failed to reach significant commercial success.
How To Market A GameJan 2016