Author Topic: Immortal Redneck - Roguelike First Person Shooter  (Read 15395 times)

st0rmthegates

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Immortal Redneck - Roguelike First Person Shooter
« on: April 04, 2018, 01:10:22 PM »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JMtE-isXj4

It's a hoot and a holler on the show today, as we take a look at Immortal Redneck. We spend some time talking about game, particularly its weapon variety and excellent balance and pacing. I hope you enjoy.

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Skeletor

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Re: Immortal Redneck - Roguelike First Person Shooter
« Reply #1 on: August 03, 2018, 07:28:35 AM »
It showed up on steam when I searched for "roguelikes". What are the roguelike elements in it?
What I enjoy the most in roguelikes: Anti-Farming and Mac Givering my way out. Kind of what I also enjoy in life.

Oleano

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Re: Immortal Redneck - Roguelike First Person Shooter
« Reply #2 on: October 08, 2018, 10:23:36 AM »
Never heard of Immortal Redneck. That's a great title for sure though haha. Anyone here tried it out? Is it any good?

Krice

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Re: Immortal Redneck - Roguelike First Person Shooter
« Reply #3 on: November 22, 2018, 08:45:30 AM »
Let's remind again that if your game has random elements (this one seems to have randomly re-arranged rooms) it does not make the game a roguelike. This game is a first person shooter. It's not a roguelike or roguelite or rogue-anything. I think, and this is my theory, that developers use roguelike term to make the game more "visible" or appealing I guess. If it's just a FPS it sounds more boring. There has to be something like that when developers are trying to advertise the game, because you have to somehow stand out from the zillions of asset game projects trying desperately to generate money which is the only reason games like this are created.

Troubler

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Re: Immortal Redneck - Roguelike First Person Shooter
« Reply #4 on: February 11, 2019, 05:51:31 AM »
I would consider a FPS with randomly generated dungeons a roguelike. Rogue is a pretty basic game after all. The randomly generated dungeons are really the main defining feature.
Beyond that what defines it today comes primarily from it's technical limitations. Although the "roguelike elements" in this FPS may be chosen for marketability, they still define the thing as a roguelike.
Choosing to go with procedural generation over handcrafting the levels is not always a good thing, but it is still what rogue is all about. Rogue is not always a good game to take inspiration from.

That being said I don't know much about this game beyond a few videos and written descriptions, so I don't know how engaging it is to play.
Based on what I've seen it does seem to function pretty closely to what I would consider a rougelike though. It looks pretty interesting to me.

jofadda

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Re: Immortal Redneck - Roguelike First Person Shooter
« Reply #5 on: March 02, 2019, 03:16:59 PM »
Its really not a roguelike though. Roguelite, maybe.
The trouble with allowing games like immortal redneck to pass as roguelikes is that it bogs down the genre with things that dont really fit and places a choke-hold on things that do. Take a look at what the steam community regards as a "roguelike." most of the games just dont fit.
We've got "cultist simulator" under that tag, thats basically "solitaire with eggtimers and a lovecraftian storyline"
We've then got "Rogue Legacy" a procedural genned metroidvania that almost totally nixes the permadeath aspect
We've got "Organ trail" which is literally "oregon trail, but the zombie apocalypse"
We've got "dungeon of the endless" which has multiple characters and a party roster that expands as you progress so the permadeath really doesnt matter much, the only real roguelike elements there are that its turnbased and on a grid.
We've then got "Domina" a gladiator sim thats realtime and has the same multiple character and party roster issues as dungeon of the endless
Play rogue, then play any game I've just listed, would you really then say they're of the same genre?
Then play rogue, then nethack, IVAN, POWDER, Lost Labyrinth, DCSS or any other traditional roguelike (or "RoGuE-cLoNe" as most the steam community wants to label them)you'd definitely say they're of the same genre

Troubler

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Re: Immortal Redneck - Roguelike First Person Shooter
« Reply #6 on: March 04, 2019, 01:50:15 AM »
I don't follow Steam roguelikes much. Freeware roguelikes tend to be of a higher quality than those for sale, so why bother?
They don't seem like much of a authority on this then in my opinion. How they define things over there says more about them than the genre.
If they put the term "roguelike" on something to help it sell, that action or it's social consequences don't really matter as to which definition is appropriate.
I think of this game as a rougelike regardless of all that, and I'll try my best to put this to words.

When I think about what a roguelike really is, or if I should consider something a roguelike or not, I usually go back to the spirit in which the original Rogue was created.
From what I remember the story goes that the developers used to play a text adventure game on their college computers, but once they beat the game it was not so fun to replay.
Because of this they got the idea for Rogue, an adventure game that would have a different dungeon each time you go through it, so that it is not as repetitive.

So when I think of a roguelike, I think of a game where the developers are trying to increase replayability in the same way the developers of Rogue did, intentionally or not.
From what I've seen, the developer was attempting to create a more replayable FPS in the same way the developers of Rogue wanted to create a more replayable adventure game.
That would be primarily through randomized dungeon layouts in order to produce a challenge you can not very easily circumvent with prior knowledge from another playthrough.

As for exclusivity, that would still exclude games where the randomization is not applicable to a kind of dungeon, which would mean no puzzle, survival, or simulation games.
If there is a randomized "dungeon" in the game, but it is not the central aspect of the game, I think of that as a roguelike minigame. Like a shooting minigame, a driving minigame, a platforming minigame, etc.
So if one of those games you mentioned is mostly static, but for a few randomized dungeons, that is what I think is the best way to define what is going on. Like I think Cataclysm is primarily a survival game with roguelike minigames throughout.
But in this game, the dungeon is what the entire thing is designed around, so it seems incorrect to pass it off as being just a shooter with a "roguelike element" to it. It is as much a roguelike as a shooter in my opinion.

>traditional roguelike

Actually I've always used this definition when thinking about the kind of "by the books" development of a roguelike you usually see around here.
This is the kind of roguelike which tends to become popular here, while nontraditional roguelikes are what is popular on steam and places with a similar audience.
There are some games spiritually closer to Rogue and some farther, but I don't think that it is a matter of what is marketable or what a community is interested in seeing more of.
I think it is more about what the developer was trying to do, rather than what their audience wants to be true.

jofadda

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Re: Immortal Redneck - Roguelike First Person Shooter
« Reply #7 on: March 04, 2019, 05:25:30 AM »
I'll agree that they dont hold authority, however due to how large of a commercial platform steam is they hold influence as far as the uninformed general populous is concerned. The issue with allowing roguelites such as Immortal Redneck, Isaac and other games that are not quite roguelikes to be called roguelikes is that they're straying too far from the source material whilst also being more prevalent than said source material.

This causes issues as when you search roguelike in a lot of areas outside of forums dedicated to roguelikes you no longer find games with gameplay and mechanics that are similar to Rogue. Instead the genre is bogged down with a myriad of twin-stick shooters, metroid-vanias, side-scrollers and several other game genres. It is prevalent enough to the point that many people who like the "modern usage" of the term "roguelike" are actively calling for actual roguelikes to be renamed "rogue clones." This is an ill fitting term for quite obvious reasons.

I personally call this the "bastardization era" of roguelikes simply because it is a trial to actively find roguelikes that are actually "like rogue" due to the sheer number of games that just arent "like rogue" being crammed into the category by every unwitting dev and their rabid fanbase. In my honest opinion the general "modern" use of roguelike will collapse in on itself because a genre that encompasses everything, encompasses nothing. I simply hope the original genre meaning survives the collapse of the modern term.

The original term stood for 20+ years, why should it change to suit an uninformed public when the change itself will collapse when the fad of labeling things incorrectly for a quick buck will die out?

Troubler

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Re: Immortal Redneck - Roguelike First Person Shooter
« Reply #8 on: March 11, 2019, 04:24:05 AM »
The thing is, when you are talking about "allowing" this or that, it implies you have a say in what people will do.
It looks to me like the popular definition is one of the more liberal. There is not really a lot that we can do about that.
So when we talk about what a roguelike actually is, how convenient that is for us or how it influences people doesn't make a difference.
You can talk about what is a consistent and accurate definition, but that's just academic. You can't force people to have your taste.

Now, the defintion I've thought up is pretty accurate and consistent. But then that doesn't effect popular opinion.
People will group Dwarf Fortress with roguelikes if I like it or not. (I really don't mind)
What's convenient for the many outweighs what's convenient for the few.

Though personally I've never had the problems people describe regarding finding games due to a too liberal definition.
You can find a lot of traditionally made roguelikes on Roguebasin, more than you can get through in a lifetime.
And because traditional roguelike design is such a niche thing, virtually every westerner involved in it seems to know about this place.
Still, you probably wont find a lot of traditional roguelikes on Steam because as a rule, "good" traditional design is not very marketable.
Then the real issue isn't finding games, but that the games being made are not very appealing to this community in general.

I mean if this were not the "bastardization era" of the genre, it would be the "twilight era" of it.
That is usually what I think, that the genre is dying, until I remember that roguelites are still very popular on Steam.