The rogue-lite and roguelike genres have grown in popularity over the years as challenging games where players attempt to run errands with varying abilities and random elements that typically force the player to restart from zero or near zero for each attempt. Force to do. They stemmed from the 1980s game Rogue which established many of the mechanics that are now considered staples of the genre.
But the difference between Roguelite and the like has always been confusing, so we asked an expert from Dead Cells co-developer Evil Empire to explain. Lucie Dewagnier is the game director for the upcoming The Rogue: Prince of Persia (a rogue-lite) and appreciates the subgenre as such.
Dead Cells (2018)
“Roguelike is – like the game Rogue – a game where you play, you die, you hit replay, but nothing is put between your attempts. You always restart the game from a blank slate. will
Rogue-lite can add some things like constant upgrades and enhancements that make your future run – your future try – easier and have progression systems that roguelikes don’t have.”
Return (2021)
My hope, and I proposed this plan to Dewagnier, is that we drop the -lite and -like suffixes from the genre name and just refer to all games in the Rogue genre. Dead Cells, Hades, Undermine, Returnal, etc. are no longer variants of Roguelites and Roguelikes – they are all Roguegames.
“Yes, there are still games like Spelunky that are part of Roguelikes, but they have a progression system where you can get new content, so maybe it’s Roguelite? Maybe it’s Roguelike? They’re rogues.”
To read more about Evil Empire and Dewagnier’s next game, The Rogue: Prince of Persia (which is Rogue, “with a T,” says Dewagnier), go here .