Roguelikes, Persistency, and Progression | Game Maker's Toolkit

One of the most fascinating genres in gaming,
is the roguelike.

The term was originally used to describe games
that closely mimicked the design of the 1980

dungeon crawler Rogue - but in more recent
times, it’s been commandeered to describe

a whole fleet of indie titles that share two
very important characteristics:

The levels must be randomly generated each
time you play.

And the game must have permadeath, which means
all progress is reset to zero whenever you die.

But that second characteristic isn’t always
what it seems.

In some games, like Spelunky, permadeath means
permadeath. When you die, all progress through

the game is reset - and you start your next
run with exactly the same starting criteria

as your very first. So that means you always
begin with the same amount of health, bombs,

and money.

But in others, like Rogue Legacy, dying isn’t
quite so harsh. When you mess up in this game,

you can use any money you’ve found to unlock
upgrades that will improve your health, magic,

attack power, and so on. And those upgrades
persist from run to run, and will be applied

to all characters going forward.

Some have taken to calling games with no persistent
upgrades, “roguelikes” And games that

do carry persistent upgrades, “roguelites”.
And in this video, I’m going to look at

both the advantages and disadvantages of these
two approaches - and also look at how clever

designers have tried to find ways to design
around those drawbacks.

Let’s start with roguelikes - the games
that don’t have persistent upgrades. I’m

talking about games like Spelunky and Enter
the Gungeon.

The key advantage of this design, is that
the games almost exclusively reward player skill.

Because the game never changes from run to
run, the overall difficulty level of the game

- across multiple attempts, that is - is completely
flat. That means the only way to smash through

that barrier and win is to improve your own
skill: by learning the ropes, practicing the

controls, and becoming more familiar with
the game’s world.

Nothing is standing between you and the final
boss, except for your own ability and knowledge

of the game’s systems. Other than a particularly
lucky, or unlucky random roll, of course.

And this means that a highly skilled player
has no barrier to simply finishing the game.

But the disadvantage is that a low skilled
player may never finish the game. Roguelikes

ask you to play through a really difficult
game in one go, and offer no real way to reduce

the difficulty. And so if you can’t do that,
you’ll just never succeed. Ouch.

Another drawback is that because your progress
through the game must be wiped clean every

time you kick the bucket, every failed run
can feel like a waste of time. Sure, you’re

improving your skills - but with nothing tangible
to show for it, you don’t get that unique

dopamine rush that comes from numbers ticking
up.

Okay, now let’s look at roguelites- the
games that do have permanent upgrades that

carry over from run to run. I’m talking
about games like Rogue Legacy and Dead Cells.

The key advantage of this design is that almost
every run is given meaning. When you die in

Rogue Legacy you don’t feel like you’ve
wasted your time, because you know that you’ve

earned enough money to unlock a new upgrade
- and improve your chances at succeeding in

future runs. Ultimately, every attempt at
the game helps bring the difficulty of the

game down.

And this also allows pretty much all players,
regardless of skill, to finish the game eventually

- they’ve just got to keep upgrading their
character until they’re super powerful and

the game becomes a bit of a pushover.

The disadvantage is that this is actually
a really weird difficulty curve - where the

game is at its most challenging when you begin,
and slowly gets easier and easier over time.

That’s the opposite of pretty much every
other type of game, where the difficulty should

ramp up in sync with player skill.

And one of the most pernicious outcomes is
that your success with these games is much

less about your own skill - and much more
dependent on the level of your character.

In a game like Dead Cells, it’s easy to
feel like you have no real chance of winning

until you’ve purchased a few more health
potions from the shop - creating this artificial

barrier you’ve got to grind through until
you can really start focusing on winning.

But once you finally do win one of these games
- it’s ambiguous whether it was because

of your improving skill level, or just the
ever-decreasing difficulty of the game. Did

you get better, or did the game just get easier?

So both types of game have their advantages
and disadvantages. But luckily for us, clever

designers have found ways to alleviate the
worst drawbacks of the two design archetypes.

So roguelikes can be accused of offering no
sense of progression. However, lots of these

games have found ways to give you a feeling
of advancement - without changing the difficulty

level of the game. By letting players unlock
stuff that’s fun, but has no meaningful

impact on their chances at finishing the game.

Take Enter the Gungeon. In this game, killing
bosses nets you a special currency that you’ll

hold onto - even after you die. And you can
use this money in a shop in the game’s hub

world: but it’s not to unlock new powers
for your character like extra health or bigger

ammo crates. Instead, it simply adds more
weapons to the game’s already bursting selection

of randomly dropped guns. Meaning next time
you go to a treasure chest, there’s now

a few more firearms that could pop out.

This doesn’t massively affect the balance
of the game, because these items are no more

powerful than the guns you could find at the
beginning. It just adds extra variety to future

attempts at the game.

Another idea can be found in Nuclear Throne.
In this roguelike shooter, you can unlock

new characters - giving you more options to
choose from when starting your next game.

Just like before, these character aren’t
any more powerful than the default ones because

they have their own advantages and disadvantages
to balance them out. They just provide different

ways to play. It’s like the character classes
in the older roguelike games, but if the devs

held most of them back to be unlockable after
a certain amount of play.

Another option is to simply offer players
cosmetic upgrades that have zero impact on

the way the game plays. The new colour options
in Downwell, for example, are given out as

rewards for collecting a certain number of
gems across multiple runs. That gives you

a small reward for continuing to play, but
they have no impact on the balance of the

game whatsoever.

Then, go look at Hades. This one does actually
have persistent upgrades, but I want to focus

on something else: the way it incorporates
lore and character backstories. So in this

game you unlock more about each character
every time you respawn, and you can find items

in the game world that can be given to characters
in the hub to butter them up and unlock more

story content. Unlocking new narrative stuff
gives you something to hold onto, even while

you’re failing over and over again at the
actual game.

Roguelikes can also seem impenetrable, because
there’s no way to reduce the difficulty

of the game. But some of these titles do have
stuff to give players a helping hand - but

without permanently changing the balance of
the game.

One of which is shortcuts, as seen in Spelunky.
Here, if you do some chores for the tunnel

man you can create a new door in the hub world
and start your adventure in, say, the jungle,

skipping the first four rooms in the mines
entirely. This arguably does makes the game

easier, and definitely allows new players
to practice at the the harder areas in the game.

However, Spelunky makes it clear that you’ll
eventually want to play through the game from

the beginning to finish it properly. For one,
your time won’t show up on the leaderboard

if you use shortcuts. And for another, the
game’s true ending - where you descend into

hell - requires you to find a series of items
that are hidden in every area. Meaning that

if you use a shortcut to skip an early part
of the game, you won’t be able to get all

the stuff you need to unlock the secret entrance
to the underworld.

And then there are boosts that will carry
over into the next run - but don’t stick

around permanently. In the tiny tactics game
Into the Breach, you can keep one levelled

up soldier after death, who can then be used
during your next attempt. But because these

characters don’t stick around forever, it’s
not making a persistent change to the game’s

difficulty. It just gives you a bit of a leg-up,
and also an excuse for “just one more go”.

And then there’s roguelites. Here, there’s
a real ambiguity over whether your successes

and failures are due to the game’s difficulty
level - or your own skill. But the designers

of these games are often careful to introduce
elements that still require a certain level

of skill - and stop you from just grinding
through the game forever until you eventually win.

Take Rogue Legacy’s creepy doorkeeper, Charon.
This dude hangs out at the front door of the

castle and stops you from entering - and thus
starting your next run - until you give up

all of your unspent money. The idea is, you
can’t save up small amounts of money over

the course of multiple runs, and then spend
it all at once on an expensive upgrade. You

have to earn a lot of money in a single run
- thus, proving your ability to stay alive

long enough to fatten up your wallet.

And then in Dead Cells, you don’t actually
keep your money when you die. You have to

make sure that you spend your cash at one
of these upgrade stations, or it will be gone

for good. The idea here is that you need to
actually be good enough to get through to

the end of an area and bank your money - or
else it will vanish into the ether.

Another downfall of roguelites is this feeling
that player skill isn’t as valuable as time

invested. But pretty much every roguelite
is made with the intention that the player

can actually finish the game without buying
a single upgrade - check YouTube and you’ll

find players who can finish Rogue Legacy with
a level zero character.

In fact, this could be turned into a meta
level challenge within the game -

how few levels do you need to ascend before you can finish Rogue Legacy?

So, there we have it. But, as I’ve found
out, everyone’s got a different viewpoint

on this.

Personally, I love the purity of roguelikes.
Random generation and permadeath mean you

can’t memorise the level layouts, or rely
on the slow accumulation of power. It’s

all about your skill. Roguelites, however,
do allow for that slow accumulation of power

- and, if you ask me, that creates a weirdo
backwards difficulty curve that brings in

an unpleasant ambiguity over whether you success
is down to your increasing skill, or the game’s

falling difficulty level.

But what about you? Do you prefer roguelikes
or roguelites - and why? Please let me know

your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks for watching.

ZAGREUS: Well, time to go get killed again.