Video games

Roguelike

A Roguelike can generally be described as a computer game that is free, that is played in turns and that has a strong focus on intricate play and replay ability. It is a representation of the abstract world that uses ASCII-based visualization as opposed to 3D graphics. Of course, as with any genre, there are deviations from the norm. Roguelikes allow the player an undefined time in which they can make a move, making the game more comparable to chess than reflex-based games such as first-person shooters. Since the graphics are limited, the player's imagination must come into play to win the games, which is why the game is more like reading a book than watching a movie.

Roguelike

Related topics

Beat 'em up, hack and slash, Metroidvania, RPG

What is the Roguelike?

These are exploration games aimed at the player using chips and dice, but which have been adapted to the computer. It is played in turns, but this can also vary and be quite the opposite.

History of Roguelike

The creation of Roguelike games comes from amateur programmers and computer hackers, who tried to create games for the nascent field of computing in the early 1980s, mainly influenced by the 1975 text adventure game Colossal Cave Adventure, as it was popularly called, and from the high fantasy scenarios of the board game Dungeons & Dragons.

Some elements of the Roguelike genre were present in the dungeon games written for the PLATO system. This includes pedit5 (1975), which is believed to be the first dungeon tracking game, and which featured random monster encounters, although it only used a single fixed dungeon level.

The pedit5 inspired similar dungeon trackers based on PLATO such as Orthanc (1978), Moria (1978) and avatar (1979). It is unclear whether these PLATO games inspired the Roguelike genre as there is no evidence that early Roguelike creators had access to these games.

The Roguelike core games were developed independently of each other, many of the developers did not learn about their respective projects until several years after the genre took off.

Roguelike characteristics

The main features of this type of game are as follows:

Origin of the name

The Roguelike genre takes its name from Rogue, which was a role-playing video game based on Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games and included concepts such as statistics and experience points.

Outstanding games of the Roguelike genre

Among the most outstanding games of this branch we find the following:

Written by Gabriela Briceño V.
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How to cite this article?

Briceño V., Gabriela. (2019). Roguelike. Recovered on 23 February, 2024, de Euston96: https://www.euston96.com/en/roguelike-en/

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