The Weekly Discussion Topic - Roguelikes - 28-07-2023
Hello all, this is the first post in a series of posts I'll be making weekly to drum up some diverse discussion relating to all different aspects of gaming. I figured I would start with what I know, and so the first topic is thus: roguelike games. (If you think any of the below description is wrong or misleading, let me know - that's part of the discussion!)
The name of this genre is derived from the game Rogue, released in 1980. The exact definition of a roguelike has been a topic of discussion for a long time, but the core tenets are usually agreed upon to be random/procedural generation and permanent death (no saving and continuing a run, you have to start over). Many roguelikes have an additional increased focus on collecting items and assembling a "build" over the course of a run. A "pure" roguelike is often claimed to have no meta-progression (that is, no procedural unlocks) and focus more on the journey than the destination - seeing how far you can get, or how high a score you can achieve, rather than reaching a distinct victory condition (not that these games don't have victory conditions, but that it isn't the end-all-be-all). The secondary term "roguelite" is often brought out to describe games that deviate from this. Additionally, the term "traditional roguelike" is sometimes employed to indicate a more strict adherence to the older style of this genre, with grid-based dungeon crawling and high complexity. Ultimately, as with a lot of genres, pinning down a 100% ironclad definition is near impossible, but most people that like this type of game could tell you the general "vibe" at a glance.
Here are some questions and subtopics that I encourage people to discuss:
- What are some of your favorite examples of roguelike games?
- What roguelike games do you think stand out in terms of defying the conventions of the genre?
- Do you find there to be a meaningful difference between the usage of "roguelike" and "roguelite" nowadays? Which do you prefer? Where does the "traditional roguelike" fit into this?
- Do you continue to play roguelike games after reaching the "end" / reaching 100% completion? Why, or why not?
- What other genre do you most often enjoy seeing paired with roguelike?
- Is any game with procedural generation and a run-based structure a roguelike, or is there more to it? Where do you personally draw the line?
- What have been some of your best runs across all roguelike games? What's been memorable?
- Are there any upcoming roguelike games you're excited for?
Also feel free to bring up anything you like related to the topic! If you have suggestions for future discussion topics, leave them in the suggestion thread.
::: spoiler Additional Resources
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Roguebasin, a wiki dedicated to roguelikes (specifically traditional roguelikes)
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List of all Weekly Discussion Topics(this is the first one, be patient!) :::
I played Rogue a lot back in the day. Also Hack a bit.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a fantastic roguelike. I've been playing it for years. The developer is great about updating it and adding new content and adjusting the mechanics. There is a community for Pixel Dungeon over at !PixelDungeon@lemmy.world
Proper link structure for a Lemmy community is !PixelDungeon@lemmy.world - this should work!
And I also have played SPD quite a lot. Despite it being free, I tossed the developer a couple dollars - they've been doing great work with it, a whole new class was added not too long ago. I'm only now picking it up again after some time, and I've only beaten the game with 2/5 characters, so I got a lot to learn to get good at it again.
Thank you! Fixed my link.
It's a tough game. I managed to beat it with all 5 characters, but that took a while. Now I'm working on beating it with all 9 challenges enabled. I'm dying so much đ
I concur, too. So far, I have conquered said dungeon with at least 3 character types in 6 differing runs; the most fun I had fun so far was the Huntress herself, for in one of those winning run, I chose the Warden's path, coupled with the Nature's Wrath armor upgrade. It made most of the lower levels bloom in grass and all sorts of seeds that probably upped my farming time by a couple of turns.
Such a badass force-of-nature run that was.
Also, Sprouted PD has a sublevel every 5th or 6th where it's all hidden forest and mobs.
Sprouted PD is great! Lots of fun if you enioy grinding. The Wand of Amok is great in the lower levels.
My personal definition of 'roguelike' is a game that is turn based, with perma-death and procedural generation, and ideally is also grid-based. A 'traditional roguelike,' to me, is more a specific set of games (Angband, NetHack, etc.), rather than a genre, but if you did want to use 'traditional roguelike' as a genre, it'd have all of the above, plus be a fantasy dungeon-crawler RPG. I also do think roguelikes and rogue-lites are meaningfully distinct, or atleast should be, even if most people don't consider them to be. Rogue-lites can be very fun games, but when I want a roguelike, I want a roguelike, not a fast-paced bullet hell whatever. The best roguelikes I've played thus far are Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (CDDA), and Cogmind. Though I've been thinking of picking up Jupiter Hell and Dead Cells when I can, though AFAIK Dead Cells is more of a rogue-lite than a roguelike.
One more thing I think is relevant to the discussion on the meaning of 'roguelike' is the Berlin Interpretation, though I personally think it's a touch too narrow to be a usable, non-academic definition. Plus roguebasin (where that link is) could probably be placed in the Additional Resources section, being a wiki dedicated to roguelikes.
holy f.
what a buch of ner. . . i mean . . .rogues.
I think the Berlin Interpretation should be revisited. It should not be set in stone.
Oh yes, I found this and debated including it in the post but personally felt that it was an overly narrow definition. I'll add Roguebasin to the resources though!
... and this is why I will always prefer roguelites
Old school upvote and boost for the Angband and Hack links.
Though I've played games of the roguelike/lite genre for a while, I actually had to do a bit more of a deep dive to make this post. People ascribe a lot of different meanings to roguelike, and I got entirely conflicting messages on why the term roguelite was created. I hope what I put down is accurate enough!
Yeah, opinions on roguelikes/-lites are definitely very divisive, a problem I think that mostly comes down to prescriptive vs descriptive linguistics. Given that, I think you've done a perfectly good job in the OP.
Do yourself a favor and pick up Dead Cells. Itâs absolutely amazing.
Theyâve added so much content to it over the years but the runs are still like 30-45 minutes. The randomized items and gear are masterfully done. Itâs like mini-diablo gear builds in 30 minutes, but better than recent Diablos. You get item synergies going etc.
The platforming/combat is snappy and satisfying.
It also understands what makes roguelike games fun that a lot of roguelite games miss. Each run feels different and new so itâs always exciting to start a new run.
I like the more roguelite type of games. I like that each run is different whether that means procedural generation of the map or just the starting weapons and pickups change throughout a run. Some of my favorite are the following:
I could probably come up with more and these aren't in any particular order, but these are some standouts to me.
Inscryption is somethin special. It's both a solid deckbuilding roguelite, a deconstruction of a deckbuilding roguelite, and a classic "don't look up anything about this game just play it" game.
I'm a sucker for "don't look up anything about this game just play it" game, so they just earned a sale thanks to you
I agree with all points. I was hooked for several days. I look forward to playing Kaycee's Mod soon.
Slay the Spire is a complete 10/10 for deck builder roguelike.
I don't remember buying that, but it's in my Steam Library and Steam Deck Verified. That's going on the list.
I have dead cells and probably have about 45 hours in it and something about it just bugs me. I don't like the gameplay and can't really put my finger on why.
I absolutely love inscription and have been thinking about going back to play the mod version. That said phase 2 was my least favorite
I have just shy of 13 hours in Dead Cells. It's not something I play extensively. It's one that I pickup, play a run or two, and move on. When I don't have much time to devote.
I haven't tried the Kaycee's Mod (I didn't double-check my spelling) addon for Inscryption yet. I was trying to beat Cult of the Lamb first. Both are some of my favorite games in the last few years though.
Yeah Kaycee's mod is it. It seems like it adds a lot to the game.
Is it just not a campaign? Like you just keep going until you die? I feel like that's what I saw about it. I need to try it soon
Hades and cult of the Lamb are great
Both are đđđđđ games for sure, so polished.
Loved Hades, and Cult of the Lamb was really fun at first, but it lacked replayability in my opinion.
yea, hades is just a better game, but i still love cult!
Definitely in my goat list. It nails every aspect of what video games can be. I canât wait to start anew.
My favorite is Caves Of Qud. The amount of freedom in character build and progression options is just unlike anything else I've tried. Also the very distinguishable graphics make it more interesting to me, because "games don't need to be pretty to be crazy fun".
I discovered it thanks to Sseth. His other recommended roguelike games (Synthetik, NEO Scavenger, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead) are all great in their own way.
Have you ever "won" Qud? I've playing it intermittently for several years, and eventhough each time I get farther and farther I usually get bored and die. It doesn't help that I only play in the ironman mode hahaha, the other modes seem too vanilla, but who knows.
"Sometimes it's not about the destination, but about the journey itself"
- Aoygtetherox-No-Longer, Queen of the highly entropic beings
Before I get into curmudgeon mode, I want to plug my two favorite roguelikes:
With that out of the way, let's move on to "old man yells at Rogue Legacy":
The term "roguelike" has been stretched to the point of uselessness, often for marketing purposes. This necessitated the introduction of the term "traditional roguelike" for those of us that still want to discuss actual roguelikes. Binding of Isaac, Dwarf Fortess (fortress mode), Dead Cells, and Slay the Spire are all excellent games, but they're not roguelikes in any useful sense. If I'm looking for games that are "like Rogue", none of those are good suggestions. Moria, Nethack, Pixel Dungeon, DCSS, and DoomRL are.
Cataclysm: DDA occupies a bit of a weird space here. It fits within the technical definition of a traditional roguelike, but the overall experience is more of a departure from Rogue than other traditional roguelikes are. It's almost more akin to Minecraft or Terraria, in that you face dangers to gather resources to create items to face bigger dangers to gather more exotic resources to create more powerful items... and so on. I sometimes refer to this type of roguelike as "neotraditional", in order to acknowledge this departure.
Before anyone accuses me of being prescriptivist, sometimes prescriptivism is important. I'm not for haranguing people over every terminological deviation, but some terms are unique and useful, and we should try not to muddy them. "Begs the question" and "reactionary" come to mind. "Roguelike" was one, but it's pretty far gone at this point.
The trouble with "gamelike" as a descriptor is really well illustrated here. People will always disagree on how alike the games have to be for it to fit or what particular things it needs to do the same to match, while others will argue that something they play feels like game so it is now gamelike.
Early roguelike games took something rogue did first (repeating often procedural gameplay that at least mostly resets on death) and often ignored other aspects. Arguing about what exact criteria necessary or sufficient to make a game roguelike is like arguing whether a song counts as "punk" or "pop" or "metal". Different people will feel like it does or doesn't fit into any particular category for one or another reason, but ultimately the categories exist because some people put things in them and that's it.
How come nobody mention The binding of Isaac???
You just did. What'd you think about it
I think itâs genreâs definition, any dev who want to make a rogue-like game should at least play this game before start making their game.
I like the more platformer style rogue-lites, a couple favorites that haven't been mentioned yet are 20XX (rogue-lite tribute/spiritual successor to Mega Man X) and Rogue Legacy (first rogue-lite I ever played, perhaps not as hard as others). For top-down ones I had a bit of fun with Wizard of Legend as well. Never have beaten a roguelike/-lite, but I've gotten a decent way into each of the above.
IMO it's not really a genre, since gameplay can vary so widely. It's more like a template for a progression system that can be applied to many different genres.
Yeah I'm making a rogue like RTS.
Really? Would love to learn more
Against the storm is a "no combat" rogue-like RTS.
It has a progression system, random starting building, difficulty modifiers, and each "round" is you building a colony with various challenges that you wont visit again, but has persistent effects that grant unlocks.
Calling it an RTS is probably going to give people wrong expectations, as they tend to be built around unit-to-unit combat tactics.
I'd say it's a town builder with time pressure.
Sweet! I think I saw trailers for it 6 months ago.
I'll check it out
NetHack. With the ASCII graphics. And not because I'm hardcore, I'm actually really bad at it. And I hate the item identification mechanic. But there's something magical about this game. It feels alive, and the ASCII graphics give it a mystery that can't be matched by visual spectacles. Idk it's hard to explain, it's like a love hate relationship
Against the Storm is a pretty interesting roguelike I played recently. In each "run" you build a small town. It's kinda like Banished or SimCity.
I'm not playing it anymore, but I thought the concept was cool.
I picked this up, played it for about twenty hours. I definitely enjoyed my time, but I could clearly feel how most of the game loop was just scraping by until you could fully pop off at the end - I liked that, but I grew a bit weary of the initial setup on each run.
My top three are FTL, Hades, Enter the Gungeon
I really enjoyed Everspace. Space-shooter roguelite.
Loved this one too. It's a first person space dogfight simulator with a few secrets and an enjoyable progression as you move through your first full run and then subsequent runs after you learn the twist.
Maybe it's just me (and there are many popular ones I haven't tried, because money), but I've always liked the idea but found actual implementations of it unsatisfying.
The average low viability of the systems (and that a good hand is unlikely) feels too much like real life, and even games with the most options (like Shattered) don't offer enough flexibility to deal with the annoying elements of the game that could be entirely removed while still remaining difficult. (commonly, anything related to: inventory management, hunger, currency/resources, equipment restrictions/pitfalls/unavailability. That's not including ineffective positive elements)
I have won Shattered at least 5 times and still feel that way, I lose many more times and it does seem that the biggest factor in winning is what the game gives me.
Thanks for the explanation!
The roguelike I keep coming back to these days is Dome Keeper. Resource mining + fighting monsters + casual play duration is a combo I find hard to beat at the moment.
Unreal World is probably one of the more interesting roguelikes I've ever seen but never played. Also, a lot of people talk about Dwarf Fortress, but don't mention the adventure mode which is a more standard roguelike adventure, but still very interesting because of the stuff that can happen and how powerful you can get.
My only contribution to this conversation is that not only does steam seem to have no fucking clue what a rogue like is, but that it certainly can't tell the difference between the two. So many games are in both of those lists, and many more shouldn't have the tag. Which sucks cuz I own most of the ACTUAL rogue-likes/lites on steam and am still looking for more
Steam doesn't add the tags, I think? I remember they were user submitted.
Huh I had no idea, makes a lot more sense!
I think this is one of the big pitfalls of community prescribed tagging. Lord knows the Psychological Horror tag must be a mess.
Lol yeah I didn't even realize they were user added!
The difference between roguelike and roguelite is quite significant. I play almost exclusively roguelites but have never touched a single roguelike
I don´t think most roguelites actually have an end because of the "just one more run" gameplay loop. After the run is before the run if you ask me
The most memorable run I ever had was in FTL: We killed the flagship while using no shields and no cloak in hard mode, advanced edition. I had tailored a special build for the challenge and it worked out! A lot of people on r/ftl didn´t even know it was possible until then- good times!
FTL - Faster Than Light: The first roguelite I played, it converted me and is my all time favorite video game across genres. I have 1400h+ in it and still play it sometimes. The combination of unforgiving gameplay and real time with pause, that keeps you constantly under pressure but also gives you unlimited time to think about your next actions makes it unique for me. I enjoy the complexity of the game when it comes to builds, its retro aesthetics and the "race through space" atmosphere
NOVA DRIFT: My most played game right now. When Asteroids, arpg and roguelite had an amphetamine fueled orgy this baby was the result. NOVA DRIFT is all about fast gameplay and quick reflexes. I love how NOVA DRIFT gets me "in the zone" every single run. It is so much fun when the game throws wave after wave at you while you are constantly dodging, killing and leveling up with crazy speed while power ups keep popping up every few seconds. The highly stylized neon art style looks great
HADES: I guess you know it already. If you don´t - try it
Children of MORTA - Family Trails mode: Best roguelite, arpg, dungeon crawler imo. This game distills everything I like from arpgs like Diablo2 and PoE - drastically simplifies the formula without sacrificing it´s soul and then makes a roguelite out of it. It also has very beautiful pixel graphics and is great fun in couch co-op runs
DEADđĽCELLS: King of the Metroidvania subgenre and for good reason. Waiting for a nice package sale of all DLC until I start playing again
NUCLEAR THRONE: Crack in videogame form, played best with lots of caffeine
STEREDENN: A (really well made!) R-Type/Darius Twin clone roguelite
NEON CHROME: Top down cyberpunk shooter
NINE PARCHMENTS - Hardcore difficulty: If you enjoy playing roguelites in couch co-op sessions, I very much recommend this one
Darkest Dungeon: Do you enjoy feeling depressed, haunted and anxious - all at the same time? Do you also like turn based combat? Then this is the perfect game for you
Nobody here is talking about Risk Of Rain 2. This shit is really perfect if you have a "Goopy Goblin Gamer Brain â˘". Non-stop action and item combination is just wild.
It's also the most fun co-op roguelike out there. There's an incredible modding community and it's easy to drop in and play with others. It's also not a super hard game to wrap your head around so there wouldn't be a massive skill gap for new players vs veterans.
Me and my friends have had our fill over the last few years but there really hasn't been another game to replace it.
I like RoR2, it is really good, just not in my top 10. Probably because I am not particularly good at it and only tried solo ...
It's one of my favorite genres because they're the perfect games to play in-between other things. I would play a long campaign game and take breaks by playing a roguelike. If I have to leave the house in 30 minutes or so I'd play a round of a roguelike since there's no long-term attachment. It's just great to fill in the gaps.
Despite being kind of an overdone genre I think there are pretty few games that really nailed it. A lot of them tend to feel repetitive or have issues like being too luck-based. While Hades is pretty close to a 10/10 I think we can agree it's a bit repetitive going through the same rooms and fighting the same enemies every run.
My favorites are Binding of Isaac, Risk of Rain 2, Enter the Gungeon, Monster Train. There's a ton of other good ones but these are the S-tier ones for me.
I've been playing some Noita lately. Really interesting concept of mixing and matching spells to create some wonky combos. The reality falls a bit short, though, as a lot of early combos are useless or detrimental and you have no way of knowing unless you test them out. You also don't unlock new stuff unless you test them out. That can lead to a lot of runs being wasted, you end up playing the early game too much, and it gets a bit repetitive. Fortunately, there are mods that make it a bit less obtuse and more approachable.
Oh man I wish I could get into Noita. It is by all merits a very good game, but I bounced right off it - it was too complex for my brain to get a good grasp of.
I think most of the games I've liked lately are roguelites:
Except for BPM and Noita, I'd recommend all of these as excellent coop games too. Here are some summary descriptions:
Bullets Per Minute:
Crypt of the Necrodancer:
Plate-Up:
Unrailed:
Noita:
Risk of Rain 2:
Noita is a game I keep coming back to, it has mod support and SO much to discover by exploring. It's a good palette cleanser and just a good bit of fun when I need something for a bit between other games.
I have been playing UnderMine. The game plays a lot like The Binding of Isaac, but has a few differences like the meta profession after every run where you can unlock new upgrades and you can rescue people inside the mine that are vendors and the like.
The game scratched an inch I had for a new roguelite since I haven't played one in awhile.
FTL: Faster than Light, and Into the Breach.
Both are fantastic and made by subset games. FTL the better of the two imo, but that's personal preference.
CDDA, Dwarf Fortress, and FTL all had a huge impact on the genera of Rougelike or free-form games, and all 3 have slight variations in the degrees of free-form game play which is very welcome.
Most rougelikes I enjoy have a set ending, that being death, or rarely triumph, and playing after either isn't possible or just not the point for me.
As for the most memorable moment? To set the stage, I was 13, playing FTL blind. I had made a few runs before it, but I had just reached sector 8, the federation base and the last stand for the federation against the rebels.
I had fought the flagship once before, so I knew it was a big-fuckoff flagship with multiple weapon systems, but I had died really quick.
I had my faithful burst lasers, Artemis missiles, and beam, and was charged and ready to take this ship down. And it was a slog of a fight, I lost a lot of ship HP, and was in the red from the flagship missile launcher.
But it died, as my final shot landed, I rejoiced as its left wing broke apart, until I realized the noise and flash of FTL. It escaped. It had multiple stages.
I resolved to chase it down and desteoy the ship once and for all, victory or death! I died to the supercharged drones in about 2 mins flat.
It was then I learned, you don't win FTL, you just do a little better every run. It still kills me on the harder starts with Captains Edition on.
When he was alive, TotalBiscut made an excellent video on it which does it far more justice than I can in text here.
We all share that great WTF moment my fellow captain!
Ahh, the classic "Oh God, everything is on fire" video. Sold me on the game, too.
I found myself really invested in Into the Breach because canonically every run you do is a different timeline so you have to fight just as hard each time and it un incentivises just restarting because you would be abandoning the humans to a grisly death. The mechanic where you can bring one pilot with you is great too.
Speaking of subset games, FTL and especially the mod FTL Multiverse have been very fun.
Dawncaster is a fun deckbuilder one, better than Slay the Spire to me.
SFD is a fun tactics one that I just started playing.
I donât know if itâs my favourite, but Crypt of the Necrodancer is a roguelike/lite is one I still play at least once a week since I bought it in 2017, and itâs not one I see mentioned that often.
I never gravitate towards roguelikes tbh, but I ADORE rhythm games. Necrodancer really hooked me in with itâs variation on the rhythm gameplay loop, adding complexity that doesnât seem arbitrary or frustratingly difficult (at least to me). Playing through the game with the different characters you unlock has yet to get boring after almost 6 years.
And of course, the absolute BANGER of a soundtrack helps a lot (thank you Danny Baranowsky and team). The remixed Zelda soundtrack they did for Cadence of Hyrule is also amazing, and I would sell every organ I have to be one of the 20 people with a vinyl press of it.
Iâve played the other roguelikes everyone likes (Slay the Spire, Gungeon, Isaac, Hades, etc) but nothing has really stuck to me as much as vanilla Necrodancer.
I havenât really liked any Roguelikes, and that includes all-star Hades.
It mostly just feels like repeating the same thing. In some cases, eventually and with much skill you can gather a build that actually changes the dynamics of the game a bit - but until then, it usually just functions as a brutally hard version of some genre youâd normally enjoy, where every little mistake youâd shrug off now becomes a long-term debilitation you have to worry about.
Hadesâ assist modes werenât even giving progress fast enough - it requires you to die many times before giving you anything that might actually improve your odds at any of the boss fights.
So far, the only Roguelike Iâve enjoyed is Backpack Hero. Itâs on the easier side, and plays very much in promotion of getting you your OP build options with relatively little time spent.
I have Backpack Hero, and while I do enjoy it I feel like runs can become too static (at least with the starting character) - you get your OP build, and getting to that point is pretty fun, but then you can just coast with that for a long time, maybe forever. The other characters and their gimmicks/playstyles help alleviate this problem at least.
I've been having a lot of fun in Halls of Torment lately. The updates and patch notes are promising for an early access game.
Then I play a TON of Slay the Spire.
My top picks are Synthetik, Dead Cells and Nova Drift
Synthetik is so much fun. I don't know many people who play it though or know of it.
I love roguelites and the genre melding you can do with them. I've been searching for one that competes with Risk of Rain 2 for me. I've played all the big ones but none have had the same staying power.
The biggest bummer for me is Dead Cells. For most of the run, I slaughter. First two original bosses I can pretty consistently no-hit. Then I get to the hand of the king and die in about 5 seconds every. Single. Time. It's 100% a skill issue but I feel it just asks so much of me compared to the rest of the game on the same difficulty, and I'm only on boss cell 1. I've even gone I to the training mode vs him and his tells paired with my time to respond just have not clicked.
There's also Enter the Gungeon. I also have struggled with it but actively plan to get back into it to work through it.
Lastly, shutout to Dicey Dungeons. It's lesser known and I think everyone should play it.
Hades is potentially my favourite game of all time. For me to absolutely nails this style of game by perfectly weaving in a compelling narrative to the rogue mechanic. It's also gorgeous with the most ridiculously tight gameplay.
Honourable mention to Enter the Gungeon, haven't seen that mentioned yet. Very fun game.
My top three, in no particular order, are:
I started playing roguelikes with flash Binding of Isaac I bought for 99p in a steam sale, pre-Wrath of the Lamb. I'm still playing Rebirth and its expansions well over a decade later. I'd describe it as the perfect game. Why it shines as opposed where other great roguelites don't is because of how the items interact with each other. The interaction is key. It's still pure joy to walk into a room and absolutely melt everything in a second because of a synergy you've never seen. And now I think about it, what really makes the roguelike genre a favourite of mine is where every run is a challenge from the game: break me. I'd point at Noita as another game with this philosophy. Being given a random selection of tools and trying to cobble them together into something unstoppable.
Dungeon crawl stone soup. Vampire summoner or octopus berserker?
Hadn't heard of this one! I'm gonna have to check it out.
Thanks for adding the link!
I'll go ahead and start off with responding to some of the points:
All-time favorites have to be Slay the Spire and Hades. StS was one of the cornerstones of deckbuilding roguelikes while still remaining one of the sleekest of all of them; mechanics fit together perfectly, with each loss leaving you working out how you screwed up rather than cursing the game for unfairness. Hades I like for entirely different reasons - it absolutely oozes style, with excellent presentation in terms of art direction, music, and copious dialogue. The rougelike nature of the game is woven directly into its narrative in a way I find very satisfying.
Enter the Gungeon should also be noted as one of the few games I've 100%ed. Although it has some flaws, the sheer amount of combinatory item synergies (both actual mechanical synergies noted by the UI and otherwise) gives it great replay value while not ballooning to absurd levels ala The Binding of Isaac (which, while still great, can be daunting in its scope).
Personally no, unless there is some sort of prestige mechanic that adds new challenges on successive runs (though one may consider beating all prestige levels part of 100%ing); I am still grinding out Ascension levels on both Slay the Spire and Monster Train. I find satisfaction in finishing a game that actually has a win state, and often lose interest after it's been achieved. Enter the Gungeon was one of the few exceptions to this, although by the time I had truly finished the game I was already very close to the full 100%.
Hades II, for obvious reasons of course. Other smaller titles on my radar include Wizard with a Gun, whose demo I played and (while rough around the edges) had an engaging and swift core gameplay loop with metaprogression (though one must question the fuzzy distinction between a roguelike and a run-based game in general, or if there is one at all) and Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, a tiny but funny little deckbuilding roguelike that smashes together a lot of different card games and concepts for a wacky time.
I have hundreds of hours in Slay the Spire of both IOS and Steam. Phenomenal game.
I struggled with getting past the first boss in Hades but I loved the art direction, story, and voice acting. I will probably give Hades II a try as I am sure there are a lot of improvements.
Steam tells me I've clocked 297 hours into StS. I've only barely reached I think A17 or 18 with Silent, ~A15 with Defect, and only 1-2 for the other two. Still got a ways to go!
If you really like StS, I can recommend Downfall, a fan expansion for the game on Steam. It is not as polished, and the mechanics aren't quite as tightly wound, but it offers a whole lot of very novel new mechanics and characters as well as an entire new mode where you play as a Boss working your way downward instead of the reverse.
I tried Downfall and I like it. Sadly it does not really work on Steam Deck last time I tried.
Is Remnant 2 a roguelike? Pretty sure it is.
Fantastic game, played it a fair bit since launch so I know most of the encounters in the N'Erud place, so I join random players in the other areas hoping to learn those encounters and get some sweet, sweet plunder.
No Rogue Legacy love? I played the heck out of that one on both PC and PS4. The 2nd one is good as well, but it hasn't grabbed me quite like the first.
Hades is probably one of my most played ones of recent time.
This has become one of my favourite genres and I own a good number of them.
Iâd like to mention Dreamscaper and One Step from Eden as notable ones.
Monster Train as well because of how unique it is.
I enjoyed Hades more than FTL and Sts, because of the story progression between runs. Seems like I prefer roguelite than. I'm wondering, if Vampire Survivors is still in this genre with it's 30 min gameplay loop.
Rimworld is life.
Does it count? It has the hallmarks of procedural generation and technically has distinct "runs" (though a single run can last dozens of hours, I know from experience). It just seems too "grand scope" for me to consider it a roguelike, I suppose.
I think if Dwarf Fortress is considered roguelike then Rimworld is too.
That would be the DF Adventure mode, which is roguelike in the original sense.
DF colony sim is not roguelike.