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Roguelike vs Roguelite - what's the difference? (whatnerd.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

69 comments fedilink hide all child comments

My takeaway is that it's only original Rogue fans that care about the delineation of the terms. Is there a modern (i.e. post 2000s game) that matches the definition of a roguelike as given in the article?

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I've stopped using the word "roguelite" because most people who play roguelites just call them "roguelikes" and adding "lite" to the end makes it feel like those games are "lite" versions of roguelikes.
When I play Nethack, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Cogmind, Brogue, etc. I call them "classic roguelikes" or "traditional roguelikes" which feels a lot more precise than having a distinction between "like" and "lite" and it also feels a lot less combative to "roguelites". It feels like the term roguelite exists mostly to just correct people who incorrectly use "roguelike" and be like "unm, actually that's not a roguelike 🧐 only my game is a roguelike 🤣"
Most people call roguelite games "roguelikes"; it should be on the fewer people who play traditional roguelikes to change what they call their oddly specific genre.
Also, for those who have never played a traditional roguelike, I highly recommend Brogue. It's free and has much easier controls than most other old roguelikes, and the graphics are also pretty good for ASCII.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

This should be higher up. Roguelite is a dead term imo. Language has evolved such that roguelike and roguelite are basically the same. The nuances change between every person you ask. So the debate is completely pointless. Just call them all roguelikes, and if you are referring to the traditional ones, call them as such. Traditional, classic, true, whatever.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Your method makes more sense to me.

The need to gatekeep a genre which - by now - I reckon has far more entries that don't match the definition of a traditional/classic rogue-like game just seems unnecessary.

Giving a qualifier to 'roguelike' to delineate the classic versus more flexible/modern style makes more sense.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If everyone treated it like you do, this wouldn't be an issue at all. But these days everything with permadeath gets the roguelike label and that makes it hard to find the traditional roguelikes if you don't already know about them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Is it any easier to find roguelites instead of roguelikes, or vice versa? The terms are so similar, and everyone has a different definition, that any nuance when tag searching is lost. I respectfully disagree, I feel like anyone asking where to find traditional roguelikes knows where to find them better than finding roguelikes instead of roguelites, etc etc.