Topic: Idea: Ranking of Roguelikes

Rogue was the first game I ever played. It hold a special place in my heart, and its descendants and variants remain one of my all time favorite genres. The switch has a wealth of rogue-likes, rogue-lites, and rogue-inspired games. I've purchased or wishlisted a frankly embarrassing number of them.

Would anyone be interested in a regular series of posts where I discuss my time with each of them and rank them? The goal is to highlight what I think makes a good rogue-ish game, and maybe introduce people to some lesser-known but great games in the genre. And, of course, to make a list that will spark discussion and debate. Respectfully.

I started doing this on the giant bomb forums a while ago, but stopped visiting that site regularly once the OG crew left. I've been looking for a place to stretch my writing and review muscles, and people here seem quite chill and friendly. Is this something that would be welcome on the forums?

@Harleq By all means, I can't imagine users here having any issue with this.

The Rogue-lite/like genre has certainly been 'on the up' in recent years, and your posts may highlight additions to this genre that others are not familiar with etc

Hades got me into the genre big-time, alongside Dead Cells / Isaac etc.

My all-time favorite though would still be the almighty Returnal

First we need to clarify the difference between a roguelike and a roguelite. Both have procedurally generated dungeons and loot. Roguelike = permadeath, start from zero again. Roguelite = passive progression for easier subsequent runs.

@Harleq I'd be all in favour of this, sounds like a wonderful idea!

I've only gotten into roguelikes/lites fairly recently all things considered (only playing my first one back at the start of 2020) but ever since I first laid my hands on them, I've become obsessed with the genre ever since. Dead Cells was my very first in the genre and it's still one of my favourite games of all time, Slay the Spire is a brilliant mixture of roguelike mechanics and traditional card/RPG gameplay (and is probably the one that's cemented my love for roguelikes as a whole) and I've got a whole host of others on the backlog for next year such as Crypt of the Necrodancer, Dicey Dungeons and Hades. It's certainly not a style of game I ever expected to enjoy but I'm glad I gave it a go because the ones I've played so far have been excellent 🥰

@Harleq I don't see why not.

Also, what rougelikes have you played? I can recommend and would love to discuss Void Terrarium 1/2 and Metallic Child, these two come to mind instantly when I think about rougelikes

Hades is the ultimate 'gateway drug' into this genre, and also Spire I guess!

Risk of Rain 2 would probably be my favorite.

I like the genre, but I haven't yet found the game that'll make me hang in there when the going gets tough. I like the basic gameplay in Dead Cells and Crypt of the Necrodancer, but due to my lack of raw skill, each run tends to play out pretty similarly to the last, so after a few deaths my immediate interest wanes and I end up jumping to another game.

I bought Hades ages ago but have been afraid to try it in fear of it not living up to the hype.

But in response to the OP, I'm down for this thread 😁

Thanks for all your responses! I'll revise the first few entries and post them once they're ready.

@Magician I'm not really too concerned with slicing the genre too fine into sub-genres, because that gets messy quickly. I take a pretty permissive view of what I consider "like Rogue" for this project. Is it a randomized, run-based game with permadeath? It counts.

@Fizza I'm glad to hear that you enjoy them so much. I'll try to highlight some that aren't as popular or well known. Dicey Dungeons is early on in this series, and my opinions on it are...controversial.

@Princess_Lilly A better question might be "what have you not played?" Void Terrarium is one I've missed, so I'll put that on the list.

@gcunit I hear and sympathize with your frustration. It's inherent in the genre, and if it doesn't work for you it's hard to get excited for it. Hades does a lot of things differently, particularly around how it reveals story beats through your failures. It also has some great accessibility features. Don't be afraid of it! It deserves the hype.

@gcunit Honestly gives Hades a shot, I slept on it for faaaar too long - assuming also that the hype was unwarranted.
IMO, Hades is much more forgiving than Dead Cells - with an engaging narrative and tighter gameplay with more variety. I think Hades does a wonderful job of easing you in, and genuinely each failed run provides better tools for the next (this is less prevalent in DC)

In the interest of not having too many similar threads, perhaps a general rogue-like and rogue-lite thread? I'm all for Harleq's reviews, but it would be interesting to hear other people's rankings and reviews as well.

@Harleq could always have the first article link to the pages with the later reviews so it's easy to find amidst other comments.

I would also advocate it includes lites even though Harleq specified likes above so games without permadeath like Hades can be included (I realize Hades has it's own thread, I just meant it would be nice to be able to rank it and others amongst all the 'rogues')

Anyways, just a suggestion to try to make the thread useful enough to be permanent rather than getting lost like most threads do.

@FishyS Thanks for the suggestions. This is going to be pretty inclusive (lites and likes), since I'm not too concerned with fine-grained genre divisions. If it's run-based and randomly generated, it counts for my purposes.

I'll be sure to put links to previous rankings in each new one, so that they're easy to find and comment on if people are so inclined. Maybe another thread with links to all of them, updated as I add new ones, would be useful? I don't want to clutter up the forums unnecessarily.