WEBVTT 00:00:03.139 --> 00:00:08.309 One of the most fascinating genres in gaming, is the roguelike. 00:00:08.309 --> 00:00:14.039 The term was originally used to describe games that closely mimicked the design of the 1980 00:00:14.039 --> 00:00:19.170 dungeon crawler Rogue - but in more recent times, it’s been commandeered to describe 00:00:19.170 --> 00:00:24.770 a whole fleet of indie titles that share two very important characteristics: 00:00:24.770 --> 00:00:28.240 The levels must be randomly generated each time you play. 00:00:28.240 --> 00:00:35.480 And the game must have permadeath, which means all progress is reset to zero whenever you die. 00:00:35.480 --> 00:00:39.690 But that second characteristic isn’t always what it seems. 00:00:39.690 --> 00:00:45.490 In some games, like Spelunky, permadeath means permadeath. When you die, all progress through 00:00:45.490 --> 00:00:50.609 the game is reset - and you start your next run with exactly the same starting criteria 00:00:50.609 --> 00:00:55.480 as your very first. So that means you always begin with the same amount of health, bombs, 00:00:55.480 --> 00:00:56.809 and money. 00:00:56.809 --> 00:01:02.670 But in others, like Rogue Legacy, dying isn’t quite so harsh. When you mess up in this game, 00:01:02.670 --> 00:01:07.970 you can use any money you’ve found to unlock upgrades that will improve your health, magic, 00:01:07.970 --> 00:01:13.950 attack power, and so on. And those upgrades persist from run to run, and will be applied 00:01:13.950 --> 00:01:16.620 to all characters going forward. 00:01:16.620 --> 00:01:22.580 Some have taken to calling games with no persistent upgrades, “roguelikes” And games that 00:01:22.590 --> 00:01:28.259 do carry persistent upgrades, “roguelites”. And in this video, I’m going to look at 00:01:28.259 --> 00:01:33.590 both the advantages and disadvantages of these two approaches - and also look at how clever 00:01:33.590 --> 00:01:39.599 designers have tried to find ways to design around those drawbacks. 00:01:40.599 --> 00:01:46.060 Let’s start with roguelikes - the games that don’t have persistent upgrades. I’m 00:01:46.060 --> 00:01:49.250 talking about games like Spelunky and Enter the Gungeon. 00:01:49.250 --> 00:01:55.340 The key advantage of this design, is that the games almost exclusively reward player skill. 00:01:55.340 --> 00:02:00.540 Because the game never changes from run to run, the overall difficulty level of the game 00:02:00.540 --> 00:02:06.820 - across multiple attempts, that is - is completely flat. That means the only way to smash through 00:02:06.820 --> 00:02:12.430 that barrier and win is to improve your own skill: by learning the ropes, practicing the 00:02:12.430 --> 00:02:16.350 controls, and becoming more familiar with the game’s world. 00:02:16.350 --> 00:02:21.220 Nothing is standing between you and the final boss, except for your own ability and knowledge 00:02:21.220 --> 00:02:27.310 of the game’s systems. Other than a particularly lucky, or unlucky random roll, of course. 00:02:27.310 --> 00:02:32.319 And this means that a highly skilled player has no barrier to simply finishing the game. 00:02:32.319 --> 00:02:37.400 But the disadvantage is that a low skilled player may never finish the game. Roguelikes 00:02:37.400 --> 00:02:42.819 ask you to play through a really difficult game in one go, and offer no real way to reduce 00:02:42.819 --> 00:02:49.260 the difficulty. And so if you can’t do that, you’ll just never succeed. Ouch. 00:02:49.260 --> 00:02:53.590 Another drawback is that because your progress through the game must be wiped clean every 00:02:53.590 --> 00:02:59.050 time you kick the bucket, every failed run can feel like a waste of time. Sure, you’re 00:02:59.050 --> 00:03:03.760 improving your skills - but with nothing tangible to show for it, you don’t get that unique 00:03:03.760 --> 00:03:09.340 dopamine rush that comes from numbers ticking up. 00:03:10.340 --> 00:03:16.810 Okay, now let’s look at roguelites- the games that do have permanent upgrades that 00:03:16.810 --> 00:03:22.730 carry over from run to run. I’m talking about games like Rogue Legacy and Dead Cells. 00:03:22.730 --> 00:03:28.170 The key advantage of this design is that almost every run is given meaning. When you die in 00:03:28.170 --> 00:03:32.530 Rogue Legacy you don’t feel like you’ve wasted your time, because you know that you’ve 00:03:32.530 --> 00:03:36.989 earned enough money to unlock a new upgrade - and improve your chances at succeeding in 00:03:36.989 --> 00:03:42.310 future runs. Ultimately, every attempt at the game helps bring the difficulty of the 00:03:42.310 --> 00:03:43.540 game down. 00:03:43.540 --> 00:03:48.480 And this also allows pretty much all players, regardless of skill, to finish the game eventually 00:03:48.480 --> 00:03:52.519 - they’ve just got to keep upgrading their character until they’re super powerful and 00:03:52.519 --> 00:03:54.810 the game becomes a bit of a pushover. 00:03:54.810 --> 00:04:00.150 The disadvantage is that this is actually a really weird difficulty curve - where the 00:04:00.150 --> 00:04:06.209 game is at its most challenging when you begin, and slowly gets easier and easier over time. 00:04:06.209 --> 00:04:10.939 That’s the opposite of pretty much every other type of game, where the difficulty should 00:04:10.939 --> 00:04:13.640 ramp up in sync with player skill. 00:04:13.640 --> 00:04:18.430 And one of the most pernicious outcomes is that your success with these games is much 00:04:18.430 --> 00:04:23.350 less about your own skill - and much more dependent on the level of your character. 00:04:23.350 --> 00:04:28.500 In a game like Dead Cells, it’s easy to feel like you have no real chance of winning 00:04:28.500 --> 00:04:33.030 until you’ve purchased a few more health potions from the shop - creating this artificial 00:04:33.030 --> 00:04:37.440 barrier you’ve got to grind through until you can really start focusing on winning. 00:04:37.440 --> 00:04:41.920 But once you finally do win one of these games - it’s ambiguous whether it was because 00:04:41.920 --> 00:04:47.001 of your improving skill level, or just the ever-decreasing difficulty of the game. Did 00:04:47.001 --> 00:04:52.380 you get better, or did the game just get easier? 00:04:52.380 --> 00:04:58.840 So both types of game have their advantages and disadvantages. But luckily for us, clever 00:04:58.850 --> 00:05:04.970 designers have found ways to alleviate the worst drawbacks of the two design archetypes. 00:05:04.970 --> 00:05:10.070 So roguelikes can be accused of offering no sense of progression. However, lots of these 00:05:10.070 --> 00:05:14.790 games have found ways to give you a feeling of advancement - without changing the difficulty 00:05:14.790 --> 00:05:19.450 level of the game. By letting players unlock stuff that’s fun, but has no meaningful 00:05:19.450 --> 00:05:22.200 impact on their chances at finishing the game. 00:05:22.200 --> 00:05:26.700 Take Enter the Gungeon. In this game, killing bosses nets you a special currency that you’ll 00:05:26.700 --> 00:05:31.310 hold onto - even after you die. And you can use this money in a shop in the game’s hub 00:05:31.310 --> 00:05:35.820 world: but it’s not to unlock new powers for your character like extra health or bigger 00:05:35.820 --> 00:05:41.130 ammo crates. Instead, it simply adds more weapons to the game’s already bursting selection 00:05:41.130 --> 00:05:45.740 of randomly dropped guns. Meaning next time you go to a treasure chest, there’s now 00:05:45.740 --> 00:05:48.440 a few more firearms that could pop out. 00:05:48.440 --> 00:05:53.070 This doesn’t massively affect the balance of the game, because these items are no more 00:05:53.070 --> 00:05:58.370 powerful than the guns you could find at the beginning. It just adds extra variety to future 00:05:58.370 --> 00:06:00.130 attempts at the game. 00:06:00.130 --> 00:06:05.090 Another idea can be found in Nuclear Throne. In this roguelike shooter, you can unlock 00:06:05.090 --> 00:06:10.050 new characters - giving you more options to choose from when starting your next game. 00:06:10.050 --> 00:06:14.380 Just like before, these character aren’t any more powerful than the default ones because 00:06:14.380 --> 00:06:19.780 they have their own advantages and disadvantages to balance them out. They just provide different 00:06:19.780 --> 00:06:25.040 ways to play. It’s like the character classes in the older roguelike games, but if the devs 00:06:25.040 --> 00:06:29.380 held most of them back to be unlockable after a certain amount of play. 00:06:29.380 --> 00:06:33.620 Another option is to simply offer players cosmetic upgrades that have zero impact on 00:06:33.620 --> 00:06:38.370 the way the game plays. The new colour options in Downwell, for example, are given out as 00:06:38.370 --> 00:06:42.930 rewards for collecting a certain number of gems across multiple runs. That gives you 00:06:42.930 --> 00:06:47.780 a small reward for continuing to play, but they have no impact on the balance of the 00:06:47.780 --> 00:06:48.780 game whatsoever. 00:06:48.780 --> 00:06:54.070 Then, go look at Hades. This one does actually have persistent upgrades, but I want to focus 00:06:54.070 --> 00:06:59.310 on something else: the way it incorporates lore and character backstories. So in this 00:06:59.310 --> 00:07:04.770 game you unlock more about each character every time you respawn, and you can find items 00:07:04.770 --> 00:07:09.810 in the game world that can be given to characters in the hub to butter them up and unlock more 00:07:09.810 --> 00:07:15.460 story content. Unlocking new narrative stuff gives you something to hold onto, even while 00:07:15.460 --> 00:07:22.360 you’re failing over and over again at the actual game. 00:07:22.360 --> 00:07:26.400 Roguelikes can also seem impenetrable, because there’s no way to reduce the difficulty 00:07:26.410 --> 00:07:31.420 of the game. But some of these titles do have stuff to give players a helping hand - but 00:07:31.420 --> 00:07:34.130 without permanently changing the balance of the game. 00:07:34.130 --> 00:07:39.900 One of which is shortcuts, as seen in Spelunky. Here, if you do some chores for the tunnel 00:07:39.900 --> 00:07:45.930 man you can create a new door in the hub world and start your adventure in, say, the jungle, 00:07:45.930 --> 00:07:50.681 skipping the first four rooms in the mines entirely. This arguably does makes the game 00:07:50.681 --> 00:07:56.260 easier, and definitely allows new players to practice at the the harder areas in the game. 00:07:56.260 --> 00:08:00.080 However, Spelunky makes it clear that you’ll eventually want to play through the game from 00:08:00.080 --> 00:08:05.750 the beginning to finish it properly. For one, your time won’t show up on the leaderboard 00:08:05.750 --> 00:08:11.250 if you use shortcuts. And for another, the game’s true ending - where you descend into 00:08:11.250 --> 00:08:16.610 hell - requires you to find a series of items that are hidden in every area. Meaning that 00:08:16.610 --> 00:08:21.030 if you use a shortcut to skip an early part of the game, you won’t be able to get all 00:08:21.030 --> 00:08:25.060 the stuff you need to unlock the secret entrance to the underworld. 00:08:25.060 --> 00:08:29.200 And then there are boosts that will carry over into the next run - but don’t stick 00:08:29.200 --> 00:08:35.660 around permanently. In the tiny tactics game Into the Breach, you can keep one levelled 00:08:35.660 --> 00:08:40.590 up soldier after death, who can then be used during your next attempt. But because these 00:08:40.590 --> 00:08:45.980 characters don’t stick around forever, it’s not making a persistent change to the game’s 00:08:45.980 --> 00:08:52.500 difficulty. It just gives you a bit of a leg-up, and also an excuse for “just one more go”. 00:08:52.500 --> 00:08:57.720 And then there’s roguelites. Here, there’s a real ambiguity over whether your successes 00:08:57.720 --> 00:09:02.550 and failures are due to the game’s difficulty level - or your own skill. But the designers 00:09:02.550 --> 00:09:07.370 of these games are often careful to introduce elements that still require a certain level 00:09:07.370 --> 00:09:12.820 of skill - and stop you from just grinding through the game forever until you eventually win. 00:09:12.820 --> 00:09:18.460 Take Rogue Legacy’s creepy doorkeeper, Charon. This dude hangs out at the front door of the 00:09:18.470 --> 00:09:23.650 castle and stops you from entering - and thus starting your next run - until you give up 00:09:23.650 --> 00:09:29.150 all of your unspent money. The idea is, you can’t save up small amounts of money over 00:09:29.150 --> 00:09:34.311 the course of multiple runs, and then spend it all at once on an expensive upgrade. You 00:09:34.311 --> 00:09:39.450 have to earn a lot of money in a single run - thus, proving your ability to stay alive 00:09:39.450 --> 00:09:42.030 long enough to fatten up your wallet. 00:09:42.030 --> 00:09:46.830 And then in Dead Cells, you don’t actually keep your money when you die. You have to 00:09:46.830 --> 00:09:50.990 make sure that you spend your cash at one of these upgrade stations, or it will be gone 00:09:50.990 --> 00:09:55.800 for good. The idea here is that you need to actually be good enough to get through to 00:09:55.800 --> 00:10:01.050 the end of an area and bank your money - or else it will vanish into the ether. 00:10:01.050 --> 00:10:06.450 Another downfall of roguelites is this feeling that player skill isn’t as valuable as time 00:10:06.450 --> 00:10:10.250 invested. But pretty much every roguelite is made with the intention that the player 00:10:10.250 --> 00:10:15.580 can actually finish the game without buying a single upgrade - check YouTube and you’ll 00:10:15.580 --> 00:10:18.950 find players who can finish Rogue Legacy with a level zero character. 00:10:18.950 --> 00:10:23.198 In fact, this could be turned into a meta level challenge within the game - 00:10:23.200 --> 00:10:28.100 how few levels do you need to ascend before you can finish Rogue Legacy? 00:10:28.240 --> 00:10:33.700 So, there we have it. But, as I’ve found out, everyone’s got a different viewpoint 00:10:33.700 --> 00:10:34.700 on this. 00:10:34.700 --> 00:10:40.780 Personally, I love the purity of roguelikes. Random generation and permadeath mean you 00:10:40.780 --> 00:10:46.000 can’t memorise the level layouts, or rely on the slow accumulation of power. It’s 00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:51.840 all about your skill. Roguelites, however, do allow for that slow accumulation of power 00:10:51.840 --> 00:10:56.740 - and, if you ask me, that creates a weirdo backwards difficulty curve that brings in 00:10:56.740 --> 00:11:01.850 an unpleasant ambiguity over whether you success is down to your increasing skill, or the game’s 00:11:01.850 --> 00:11:03.430 falling difficulty level. 00:11:03.430 --> 00:11:09.980 But what about you? Do you prefer roguelikes or roguelites - and why? Please let me know 00:11:09.980 --> 00:11:13.360 your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks for watching. 00:11:13.360 --> 00:11:15.360 ZAGREUS: Well, time to go get killed again.