What trait disqualifies a game from being a rogue-like.

[guest509]

And Mushroom, I very much think there is an objective criteria for what a Roguelike is. Just like FPS, MMORPG, Scrolling Shooter, Turn Base Strategy and Metroidvania have objective criteria. It's all very fluid but obviously ToME4 isn't an FPS.

The problem comes when people get snobby and insular. If it's not a roguelike then they dismiss it. That's just universally...hipsterish?

My favorite game right now is Starcraft II. I'm playing the shit out of it with my buddies. God I suck at it but I like multiplayer games for the social aspect.

For single player games I like turn based strategy and roguelikes, with the occasional arcade style game. For development I like Roguelikes because I can be surprised by my own game, actually have some fun with my own game. Which is cool as shit if you think about it, like laughing at your own jokes. 

[Eben]

The 7dRL is a challenge, not a competition.

[mushroom patch]

Yeah, I get the 7DRL concept, but it seems to me to be an inversion of what is/can be good about roguelikes, namely that minimal graphics and built-in content allows the developer to get a finished product in less time, rather than, say, develop game mechanics with depth and versatility across many sessions. I realize that 7DRL entrants often plan out their games fairly carefully in advance and heavily exploit libraries and other generic premade code (e.g. the engine from last year's 7DRL) to move things along faster -- this strikes me as reasonable, as long as the developer views the 7 day creation period as a bridge between having prototype material and having something reasonably playable to build on.

Roguelikeness is something a game should have to grow into. Again, I understand why you want to separate the concept from other factors in judging a competition, but I don't think they're cleanly separable.

I don't think this is a trivial or nitpicky point either. I don't think it's good to have a concept of roguelikeness that encourages a kind of been-there-done-that approach to development, where you work on something for a week and at the end you have something that at least plays like a roguelike for a little while and now you have another feather in your hat, like the one you got for writing a "novel" on your blog last November. I mean, sure, this is a marginal improvement over claiming to have worked on something for 20 years with little or nothing to show for it, but that's not a hard standard to beat.

[mushroom patch]

re: Participation in 7DRL and/or (writing?) reviews, unfortunately, I cannot commit a week's continuous effort to such a project, but I could probably review a game or two.

[Vanguard]

So mushroom, if I understand you correctly, you're saying that the word "roguelike" should describe a design philosophy rather than a genre?

I said earlier in the thread that we already a genre of grid-based, turn-based tactical adventure games with randomized content and no persistent saves.  "Roguelike" is the only word we have to describe that kind of game.  It's more or less what everyone understands the word to mean.

It would be useful to have a word to describe the kind of design philosophy you're talking about.  Deep, mechanics-focused games with no persistent saves and a strong focus on replayability.  But the word "roguelike" already means something else.

[Eben]

Through common use the word "roguelike" now means "contains some content which is at least partially randomized" and nothing more.

However this thread is not about what the word means, it's about what trait disqualifies a game from being a roguelike.

[Quendus]

I think it's possible, even likely, that all discussions of this type - what it means to be a roguelike, what makes something not a roguelike, whether a certain game is a roguelike - are just thinly disguised excuses to complain about games the discussants do/don't like, and to shame developers for not making games the way the discussants want them. Often with the root cause that some of them are shocked by the revelation that some games they don't like are called roguelikes by other people.

I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

[Vanguard]

I don't think I've seen anyone do that except for maybe ascii purists.

[mushroom patch]

So mushroom, if I understand you correctly, you're saying that the word "roguelike" should describe a design philosophy rather than a genre?

I said earlier in the thread that we already a genre of grid-based, turn-based tactical adventure games with randomized content and no persistent saves.  "Roguelike" is the only word we have to describe that kind of game.  It's more or less what everyone understands the word to mean.

It would be useful to have a word to describe the kind of design philosophy you're talking about.  Deep, mechanics-focused games with no persistent saves and a strong focus on replayability.  But the word "roguelike" already means something else.

No, I agree that grid-based (but not turn based) play, fantasy/adventure theme, and procedural and/or random content generation to create variability between sessions are important aspects of the genre. To me, the word roguelike means "fitting within the tradition of a progression of games, starting with rogue, hack, larn and moria and including various others up to the present day." In other words, there's more to it than a checklist of features. To me, it's open-ended and ready to be built on (i.e. the genre expands in scope with each generation), but at the same time sets a certain standard of excellence for newcomers. I don't think this is just about a design philosophy (although I would suggest that "the roguelike design philosophy" is a separate thing that has been written about elsewhere on the internets, e.g. by ESR before he went nuts, and others as well -- can't find links anymore, it's old timey stuff and my memory fails me).

[Quendus]

I don't think I've seen anyone do that except for maybe ascii purists.

I think most of the posts in this thread that accept the OP's premise and answer the question are doing that.

[chooseusername]

Through common use the word "roguelike" now means "contains some content which is at least partially randomized" and nothing more.

However this thread is not about what the word means, it's about what trait disqualifies a game from being a roguelike.

That's easy, it's not being like rogue.  If it's not like rogue, then it's not a roguelike.

[Trystan]

I think it's possible, even likely, that all discussions of this type ... are just thinly disguised excuses to complain about games the discussants do/don't like, and to shame developers for not making games the way the discussants want them.

That's a really good point that I think people often forget and some people never realize. I think that's a common problem with people who have a very strong back-and-white view of reality. But most of us can accept that what is good or bad has little to do with what we like or dislike. I may get bored with the narrative-heavy games but still see that a specific story-based roguelike is very well done and that I would recommend it to others even though it's not the style of game I like. Or I can dislike the "any item can be used for anything" and "every rule has a bunch of exceptions" and still say that Nethack is by far the best game for those who like that kind of thing.

It's only certain people who are too immature, or too dogmatic, or who derive pleasure from discouraging others, or... whatever... who mistake their feelings for objective truth. I've found it's often best to be weary of people who state their opinions as though they were objective reality: they usually have their head so far up their own ass that they can't see anything else.

I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

Hopefully you've seen some replies that are sensible discussions admitting that it's a wide community, there are different styles, different things that people want, and that there is room for subjectivity.

[guest509]

To answer the original question: None.

[Vanguard]

I think most of the posts in this thread that accept the OP's premise and answer the question are doing that.

That isn't necessarily true.  I don't consider Spelunky to be a real roguelike, but I do think it's one of the best games ever made.

[Vanguard]

To answer the original question: None.

The trait of having absolutely nothing in common with Rogue.