About a million years ago, I played (and maybe you did, too) the game from whence all current roguelikes and roguelites were born: Rogue. Apt title, right? Originally a DOS game, Rogue was a procedurally generated dungeon crawler where no two runs were ever alike. Each run began with a blank screen, a single character (a face or a literal keyboard character), and a line of text at the bottom displaying one’s progress: health, XP, gold, inventory, and so on. Using the arrow keys, players then moved their character around to make the walls and doorways appear. From the doorways, one could then travel to different rooms through corridors. Text also appeared at the top of the screen to indicate what was going on. Contents of newly discovered room varied. Sometimes, they were empty. Other times, there’d be anything from gold and food, to weapons, armor, and, of course, enemies. After clearing a stage, the screen would blackout again, and the search to uncover the next one began. Upon succumbing to any enemy, the game started over. According to the game’s story, the player’s goal was simply to descend into a multi-leveled dungeon to find the fabled Amulet of Yendor.
Well, I never found that amulet. But I played Rogue a lot, and I remember enjoying it. Admittedly, I didn’t have a vast library of games then vying for my attention, but still, Rogue stuck around, and I stuck with it. Its unpredictable nature was addictive, and I liked that each time I loaded up the game, I had no idea what I would face. There was no way to predict the size of any given level, how many rooms there might be, or what was in them until I had found and entered them. The only thing that remained intact was the gameplay knowledge I had garnered along the way, especially with relation to defeating enemies.
Fast forward a bunch of years, and today, I cannot seem to get into rougelikes/lites to save my life. Believe me, I have tried. Remember Spelunky? A great title from the indie game boom of the late 2000s. It’s a beautiful and challenging platformer at which I tried my hand, but I quickly got tired of having to start over. Dead Cells? Hades? Same thing. Same outward love of visual styles and inward loathing of starting over (and over and over). I bounced off more recent and also very good games with rougelike elements, such as Blue Prince and The Alters, too. Is it me? Yes, it totally is. It’s me having become too comfortable with games that have known quantities, ending I know I can reach, and more appealing, if less thought-provoking progression loops.
Only then…I played Balatro. Well, color me surprised when a switch suddenly flipped and I was into it. Like, honestly engaged and not disappointed with “losing.” On this very site, Hatm0nster praised the game back when it was all the rage, and he was right – it’s brilliant time, an experience that’ll suck you in before you know it. Or, at least it did me. The fact that it’s a card game that’s simply about making choices, rather than a challenging platformer or complex puzzle game or a mashup of four genres in one, may have something do to with my personal turn towards it. Balatro brought back the easy joy I had felt while playing Rogue all those years ago. No pressure, just play. And frankly, maybe I’ve been overthinking newer roguelike/lites way too much.
This brings me up to the game that started this train of thought: Saros. Due out next month, this title latest from Housemarque looks like it’s going to be a real stunner, and my brain likes its setting and story, but it pumps the brakes hard at the inclusion of “roguelike” among its qualifiers. (I avoided Returnal for the same reason.) It’s not a game I’m willing to jump on immediately, at least without seeing more actual gameplay first, and maybe I never will, but Saros does make me consider why I’ve been dismissing roguelikes/lites for their own sake. Part of it is because in them, I feel like I will never succeed. But…isn’t not trying failing from the start?
Lede image take from igdb.com presskit for Saros (© Housemarque).
VIRTUAL BASTION 
To me, it almost sounds like the Roguelike aspect of most of the games mentioned isn’t so much the issue as it might just be the secondary genres that each game pulls into the fold. There’s something to be said for thinking of games like Hades, Spelunky, and Balatro as being completely distinct from one another just down to how different their other gameplay facets actually are.
I dunno. It’s some food for thought? I wouldn’t foist any blame onto yourself regardless of it you do or don’t decide to try out Saros. It sounds like you could go either way with it.
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That is a really good point I hadn’t considered! If you take “roguelike/lite” out of the equations of any of those games, what you’re left with is an action game (Hades), a platformer (Spelunky) and a card game (Balatro). Blue Prince is just a puzzle game; The Alters is a base-building game. Thinking about Saros as just a sci-fi shooter certainly makes it feel less intimidating…and I do like sci-fi shooters. Honestly, thank you for the insight. 🙂
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Rogue is one of those games I’ve never made the effort to play despite really enjoying lots of games that borrow from it, so I think it’s really cool that you’ve actually played the original! My thinking is pretty similar to Frostilyte’s in that whether you’ll like a rogulike (or roguelite) depends heavily on the other genre(s) it’s borrowing from. I, for one, love Hades, Returnal (and Balatro of course), but I really don’t like Spelunky. I feel like it’s too much work for not very much reward at the end. Actually, I never “finished” Hades either for similar reasons. Like, I got to the end three or four times, but you have to clear it ten times to get the full and true ending. Ehhhh….no thanks, I’m good.
As for Saros, I’d recommend checking out some of the developer commentary they’ve released so far. See, the biggest piece of feedback from Returnal was that a huge chunk of its audience wound up bouncing off of it due to its learning curve and having to go all the way back to the start upon death. They’ve take a lot of steps to address this in Saros. Not only can you immediately go back to the last biome you unlocked (so no more starting from zero), but now there’s a lot more meta progression (like in Hades), a rally mechanic (you get two “deaths” instead of one) and difficulty modifiers that help you sand down the edges that are giving you the most grief.
Basically, you now (supposedly) have a much greater sense of progression and potentially fewer headaches due to difficulty. (But, make sure to check for yourself. I absolutely love Returnal so I’m kinda biased here). 🙂
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I’ll definitely have to watch those dev videos for Saros. Even if I don’t jump on it immediately, I don’t want to cast it off just because of a single qualifier I don’t think I can stomach anymore. And I get what you’re saying about the relationship between a game as a rougelike/lite and whatever may be its base genre. My personal separation from rouge games over the years make much more sense to me now, and that the issue probably never stemmed from this particular mechanic. Truly, I remember the original Rogue being so much fun, despite how simplistic it looked. Each new run really was like playing the game for the first time again, and that was weirdly inspiring at the time.
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I mean, the mechanic can itself become a problem if the game it’s being used to support isn’t inherently fun enough. That can be true too.
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