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What Is A Roguelike Game?
This is an informal history of a special genre of games, the roguelike game. Those of you unfamiliar with the term may be asking, “what is a roguelike game?” Well, it’s a game that’s like Rogue. More specifically, it’s a game whose gameplay and presentation are similar to the game Rogue. Opinions vary on what exactly constitutes a roguelike, but at its heart it is a roleplaying game (RPG). This means it’s a game where you create an alter ego and send them on quests through an imaginary world. Characters are typically defined in both RPGs and roguelikes by three basic sets of traits: attributes, race, and class.
Attributes are traits such as strength and intelligence and are represented by numerical values which determine such things as how well you can swing a sword or pick a lock. Other common attributes include “hit points”, which track how much damage your character can take before it dies, and “experience”, which is gained from successful actions and allows you to increase your attributes and acquire new abilities. Race is what species of (usually) sentient life your character belongs to. Some games only let you play as a Human, while others let you pick from fantasy standards like Elf and Dwarf, and still others let you choose an unusual race like Vampire or Cyclops. Class is essentially your character’s career or area of expertise. As with race, some games offer no classes at all and you play a simple adventurer. Others let you pick from typical fantasy roles like Warrior, Wizard, or Priest, and a few give you more varied choices like Monk, Valkyrie, or Psychic.
Okay, so apart from the basic trappings of an RPG, what else do you get with a roguelike game? Well, one thing you get is text graphics. At the time roguelikes were first created, text was basically all that most computers could display. So text is used to create the imagery of the game world. Some of the text symbols chosen resemble what they represent, like a # for a piece of wall or a | for a sword. Other game entities like monsters are represented by the first letter of their type (such as the letter d standing in for a dragon), and the player is typically the @ sign (because that’s where you’re “at” in the game). You might think it requires a bit of imagination to turn a screen full of characters into a fantasy environment, and you’d be right. But there’s something to be said for relying on internal visuals, which unlike other game graphics don’t look dated after a couple years.
Something else you get with a roguelike game is the chance to die, permanently. A rarity in computer games today, the roguelikes take the arguably realistic stance of giving players only one life. Once this life is lost, there is no going back and loading it again for another try. You have to start all over with a fresh character. This also means that, just like real life, every action in the game is irrevokable.
Another thing roguelikes feature are randomized world. The game environment is generated randomly each time a new life is started. New dungeon layouts, different monster and item placement, and in some games new town and wilderness configurations, all add significantly to the replayability of roguelikes. Factor in the opportunity in most roguelikes to create unique characters and you end up with one game offering many different playing experiences.
So let’s take a look at these roguelike games. We’ll go through them in chronological order, so that you can see how they have improved and diverged over the years.
