Roguelike vs. Roguelite Games: The Differences, Explained

What Is a Roguelike?

The term “roguelike” came about as a way to describe games that played similarly toRogue, an ASCII dungeon crawler released way back in 1980.

Inspired by text-based games from the 1970s,Roguewas notable for its use of permadeath, procedural generation, and ASCII characters to represent in-world entities (as opposed to full-on text sentences a laZork) to ensure a different adventure experience with each playthrough.

But there are different interpretations as to what a roguelike entails, and even to this day there are debates as to which elements are essential for a game to be considered “like Rogue.”

The most widely accepted definition is theBerlin Interpretation, which is the definition that was settled on by at the 2008 International Roguelike Development Conference.

According to the Berlin Interpretation, aroguelikemust have:

Some enthusiasts also impose a few extra requirements, such as ASCII graphics, level-based dungeons, top-down RPG gameplay, only one player character to control, and hard numbers for attributes like health and damage.

However, according to the Berlin Interpretation, these are “low-value factors” that don’t disqualify a game from being a roguelike if they’re missing.

The games that were analyzed to arrive at this definition areRogue,Nethack,ADOM,Angband, andCrawl.

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What Is a Roguelike-Like?

The release ofSpelunkyin 2008 put the Berlin Interpretation, and other roguelike interpretations with it, to the test.

Here we had an indie game that played a lot like classic roguelikes: levels were randomly generated and required exploration, there was resource management on the part of the player, there were plenty of monsters to defeat, and the player had to start over from scratch upon death.

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The only thing missing was turn-based, grid-based gameplay—Spelunkywas a sidescrolling platformer.

Despite the borrowing of so many elements,Spelunkycertainly lacked the spirit of a roguelike, leading to the birth of a new term: theroguelike-like, or a game that applies one or more roguelike elements to a different genre.

In the case ofSpelunky, it was the “roguelikification” of a sidescrolling platformer. In 2012, the release ofFTL: Faster Than Lightshowed what it would be like to introduce roguelike elements to RTS gameplay—and the result was a smash hit.

But the most puzzling roguelike-like was 2011’sThe Binding of Isaac, which fulfilled even more of the Berlin Interpretation and arguably felt the most like a roguelike but was rejected by roguelike enthusiasts as decidedlynota roguelike.

The Binding of Isaachad pretty much everything: top-down view a laThe Legend of Zelda, procedurally generated levels, dungeon-based exploration, a tile-based environment, item collection and inventory management, plenty of monsters to hack-n-slash through, and permadeath.

So what was the problem?

Well,The Binding of Isaacwas a twin-stick shooter, and it was this aspect that didn’t sit well with roguelike fans. Combat in classic roguelikes was turn-based and tactical, andThe Binding of Isaacwas, at its core, an action-packed shooting game.

Since then, there have been dozens of successful roguelike-likes, includingDarkest Dungeon,Nuclear Throne, andEnter the Gungeon.

What Is a Roguelite?

In 2013, Cellar Door Games releasedRogue Legacyand intentionally avoided calling it a roguelike or even a roguelike-like, instead opting to forge a new term: theroguelite.

Much in the same vein as roguelike-likes,Rogue Legacyborrowed roguelike elements and applied them to its sidescrolling platformer gameplay, but introduced a new element that offset the permadeath mechanic that roguelikes and roguelike-likes were so famous for: carry-over progression.

While the current character truly dies upon death, the player continues on in the role of a descendant who retains the same equipment, upgrades, and stats that were unlocked by ancestors (the player’s previous runs), but with different characteristics and abilities. The castle, which is the game’s main dungeon, remains persistent across deaths.

Just as there’s disunity over the definition of roguelike, not everyone agrees on what it means to be a roguelite.

For some, the terms roguelike-like and roguelite are synonymous. For others, myself included, roguelites are defined by the one feature that truly makes them “lite” (or more palatable to players at large) compared to roguelike-likes, and that’s thecarry-over of progress across playthroughs, also known as meta-progression.

Whereas one of the main draws of roguelikes and roguelike-likes is permadeath—the complete and utter loss of everything upon death—it’s a bit too harsh for most gamers to stomach, which is why roguelites have boomed in popularity.

The threat of death is still there in the form of having to start over, but each loss still contributes to forward momentum. No run is ever wasted. This is the defining trait of roguelites that differentiates them from their less forgiving siblings.

Note that unlocking content isn’t necessarily the same as carry-over progress. For example,Nuclear Thronehas characters that can be unlocked through gameplay, but each character starts each new game as a blank slate.

The persistence in roguelites necessitates that you can start off from where you died, at least in terms of overall game state, on your subsequent runs.

Roguelike vs. Roguelite: Does It Really Matter?

For roguelike purists who prefer the hardcore, traditional gameplay that’s core torealroguelikes, the terms do matter.

Because if they’re looking for new roguelikes to play and stumble across a new game that claims to be a “roguelike” but is truly more of a “roguelite”… well, that can be pretty disappointing.

But for everyone else, the distinction doesn’t seem to matter much at all. Any game with procedural generation and harsh penalties upon death tends to get labelled as a “roguelike” these days—and this trend seems to be entrenched more and more with every passing year.

So while there are technical differences between the terms “roguelike” and “roguelite,” we might just have to throw in the towel and accept that the original definition of a “roguelike” no longer holds.

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