24 hour exclusive - Should Roguelikes Have Persistent Upgrades? | Game Maker's Toolkit

I would say that Dead Cells is more of a roguelike, that a roguelite. Sure, you have permanent upgrades, but winning in this game is about skill and learning enemy attack patterns. I can pick up the game, boot a new save file and beat it on a first try, without spending any cells. And if it starts feeling easy because of the growing familiarity, you have 5 difficulty levels to spike up the challenge.

Speaking of roguelike games, can you do an analysis on Dwarf Fortress? I love how different and emergent the gameplay can be in each playthrough you have. You breaking down the mechanics and system of the game is a longtime wish I have ever since playing the game and discovering your channel.

Guess most my issues with rougelikes without upgrades comes down to I'm skilled enough to play the first half of the game, but need to practice to improve my skill in the later stages. But these early stages never become trivial so I still might have to restart before I can get to the later stages to practice. This turns into a wall that I need to take a running start to get to before ramming my head against it, then having to go back to the start line before going again. Most rougelikes don't have a flat difficulty curve, they do get harder as you progress. Each new stage gives a difficulty spike and if it takes too long to get over that spike, a player's liable to give up.

Personally I don't like roguelikes. I like having a world to explore more. But one game that did roguelike right for me is darkest dungeon. It took the randomness of roguelikes and permadeath and made them into a core theme of the game, in always fighting an uphill battle, slowly making progress in order to take the final challenge. So even the even the grinding part of it was fun. In a way I liked roguelike mechanics re-purposed for a truly difficult combat intensive and a highly stressful experience.

Love this video! Have you thought about doing a video how to properly do a twist ending? Like how to properly lay the breadcrumbs so that the twist is surprising, but you go "how did I miss that?!"

This reminds me a lot of the debate that goes approximately "Souls being fun is predicated on a combination of players being slow, healing being limited, etc"--except that in that case, not even From is sure where that correct balance lies, as we have four modern Souls games that all do it quite differently. In that spirit, should roguelikes feature progress? Yes, absolutely. Some of them. Experiment more. I'm personally a huge fan of the way Necrodancer does it. It uses unlocks (including chunky permanent health upgrades!) and level-by-level progression to give you a way to learn the game, and when you feel ready you can play "All Zones", the true meat of the game--that starts with everything unlocked and a set (low) starting maximum health. (Incidentally an important point that is worthy of consideration: Progression systems can serve as prolonged tutorials.) Furthermore, taking inspiration from, say, the board game Risk Legacy: I can envision a game where successes or failures on runs can permanently change the entire nature of a run. Maybe you permanently "corrupted" a zone by failing to kill a particular boss on a particular run, changing the way it plays? I don't think we should insist that "statelessness" is an essential part of roguelikes. Unlike a Wild Western town, this genre is big enough for both of us. ;)

I was hoping that you of all people could finally explain to me why people like roguelikes, but I'm afraid it just isn't for me. I don't mind a game forcing me to get better. Many games with permanent progression do this and I like becoming more able to play a game instead of just my character becoming more powerful. The thing I really dislike about roguelikes is that I have to do the same segment of the game over and over and over again. Randomly generated or not, this just seems like a chore. And if I slip late in the game I will have to do all the same actions again. The same general layout and level assets, the same enemies. Ugh. I really do not see the appeal of that. Everything the genre has going for it can also be found in other genres. I agree with your thesis that permanent upgrades make it a grind and undermine the general concept and I like your graphs, but my main complaint with the genre is not addressed by this video. And maybe it just can not, because in fact... do suck :)

To me, persistent upgrades aren't really the issue. I dislike most roguelikes, but usually it's because of the level design, or lack thereof. The Binding of Isaac is good because the rooms get jumbled around but you still essentially play one room at a time. Many roguelike platformers, on the other hand, just offer generic areas that aren't actually fun to revisit time and time again, and some end up being a mess. Just my 2 cents.