Sumez wrote:Does the roguelike/roguelite term apply at all when you take out every single remnant of the dungeon crawling experience?
Are all arcade games roguelikes? Is roguelike the new hip term to sell "arcade style" to young video game enjoyers?
Are my hot takes old and worn out?
Roguelites are games with permadeath, randomized stage layouts, and the accumulation of perks and/or equipment with intent to form specific "builds" to survive the later stages/end boss.
It's more of a genre adjective than its own separate form. So a game like Dead Cells is an "Action-roguelite," Darkest Dungeon is a "Roguelite-RPG," and Bad North is a "Tactics-roguelite."
As someone with limited time, I appreciate the roguelite descriptor because it lets me know that I can get the experience of what's often a time-consuming genre in a short period of time along with copious replayability.
I do not consider them equivalent to Arcade games because the skill you need to learn to master a roguelite has more to do with learning how to create a better build than the action twitch mechanics.
I don't consider unlock cancer to be a necessary part of the genre, games like Spelunky or Infinite Space III: Sea of Stars are roguelites but either have none, or zero-gameplay-impact unlocking.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.
An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.
Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"