Sometimes I think I'd rather gouge out my own eyes than read another letter about a new bagel or bagel. This confuses me because many of my favorite games are roguelikes or roguelikes, including Dead cells, Balatro, Superluminal Speed: Faster than Lightand recent piecesa stinking procedural dump that speaks to the overproduction of fraudulent/fraudulent derivatives in general.
This is a scam game everywhere right now. According to SteamDBin 2024, 1,602 of 18,567 games were published, compared to 312 of 9,655 in 2020. Add in roguelikes and the countless games that advertise themselves as having “roguelike mechanics” and I'm genuinely concerned that you're describing most PC releases over the last couple of years.
Again, how many of these games are “truly” scams? Roguelike and roguelike have become such broad terms that they have become functionally useless, describing everything from joinery To casino slot machines. This was the case back in 2011, when Adam Smith (RPS in the world) amazed on a quirky new “roguelike arcade game” called The Binding of Isaac; this was the case in 2016, when Alice O (RPS in the world) watched that the term “roguelike” is “so flexible and too confusing to be used without explanation.”
My personal definition of these games is that they are “roguelike” closer to the original 1980 Rogue and feature permadeath, gear or character progression, procedurally generated environments, and semi-randomized challenges. A roguelike is a less torturous option that may not have an explicitly defined roguelike character or dungeon—in particular, it may include a comprehensive unlock system that persists between runs, eliminating the effects of restarts. However, perhaps a more useful way to think about roguelikes and roguelikes is not to celebrate correspondences or take them back to their roots, but to look at the shapes they take in the greasy currents of platform economies and player habits.
Companies that have had great success in developing roguelikes and roguelikes include tinyBuild, publishers The king is watching and streets of robbers. Company executives believe the genre is in line with “modern” work life and leisure habits, marketing and publishing director Arnaud Richard told me by email. “Roguelikes allow for short, self-contained play sessions that always feel fresh thanks to procedural generation and randomized elements,” he explained. “This format is consistent with the way gamers now consume games: shorter periods of time in a game, often limited by busy schedules or decreased free time as they get older.”
In an expected but interesting symmetry, Richard added that roguelikes and roguelikes appeal to game developers for similar efficiency reasons. After all, the beauty of procedurally generated worlds is that you can get more variety from the “same” resources—this is useful to keep in mind as we try to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable uses of various generative AI tools that make the same promise of doing more with less.
“Instead of designing and polishing dozens of hand-crafted levels, cutscenes, and voice acting, studios can focus on a smaller set of locations, enriched by systemic gameplay, modifiers, and enemy variations that refresh each play,” Richard continued. “This design philosophy allows us to significantly reduce production costs while still providing deep replayability and a long-lasting player experience. Given the current production climate, where budgets are tight and risks are high, the roguelike structure offers a financially sustainable model that doesn't sacrifice engagement.”
“Engagement” and “retention” are important when you're creating games for a subscription service like Game Pass, where advance purchases aren't the deciding factor and the publisher's goal is to increase the profitability of the service as a whole. But Rogue's more loopy template also bodes well for selling games directly through Steam, whose recommendation systems reward developers who attract a loyal audience.
“As accessibility and transparency of algorithms become increasingly linked to player retention, these games naturally fit the logic of the platform,” Richard explained. “They generate consistent gameplay data, facilitate community sharing through ‘running stories’, and maintain relevance even after launch.”
In short, bagels are valuable because they easily become habits available for live service. The roguelike loop is a way to discipline the audience, making it more measurable and predictable, easier to regulate and implement into businesses like Game Pass. Richard argues that “roguelikes sit at the intersection of design efficiency, player accessibility, and platform performance—a rare coincidence that explains why so many developers and publishers continue to explore the genre today.”
All this is quite business with a capital B. To learn more about the developer's perspective, I reached out to Miko Charbonneau, creative director and lead designer (among other roles) at Prettysmart Games. Charbonneau echoed the point about “modern” gaming habits, adding that roguelike and roguelite formats guarantee a certain longevity. “If you can only afford to buy one game, the replayability is attractive,” she told me. “They're also comforting because once you know the rules, you can tune out the game while watching a movie or listening to a podcast and get a little confidence boost from a great run.”
Charbonneau also agreed with Richard's point that roguelikes and roguelikes are a way to get the most out of minimal development resources. “[O]With a small team like ours (only six people), we don't have the resources to create elaborate, fully custom levels at the level of a AAA studio,” she told me. “But with a knack for flooring and content creation, we can create something that will delight players for a long period of time.”
However, this is not only a matter of efficiency. Charbonneau believes that roguelike and roguelite concepts such as permadeath loops “work well with most gameplay styles and are fun to design.” She added that the abundance of games using these ideas has created space for bolder combinations of formats and aesthetics. Games like Prettysmart's The Spirit Lift, a roguelike set in a 1990s haunted house. will be released on Steam on January 27th.. In this creepier take on Scooby-Doo, eight high school kids must take the elevator to a penthouse, battle a horde of monsters while exploring 3D floor plans from a first-person perspective.
It's not the strangest game I've ever encountered, but it certainly speaks to the breadth of projects coming together under the roguelike banner. “Games like Balatro and Blue Prince have brought in new types of players, which is great,” Charbonneau noted. “This means there are more people willing to give unexpected game mashups a chance.”
Charbonneau, however, shares concerns that fraudulent derivatives have lost all consistency. “[W]Now, with so many games using roguelike mechanics, there's a danger that the word won't have any meaning at all,” she said. “We're already in a situation where the differences between roguelike and bagel are not entirely clear. Our game is more like a roguelike, but I don't always know if players understand the difference. Or perhaps they have their own definitions for each word that are different from mine!” (At the risk of sounding snide, it's worth noting that players have labeled The Spirit Lift as “roguelike” and “roguelite” on Steam.)
“I really love this genre,” Charbonneau told me in conclusion. “It would be a shame to see this rich history reduced to nothing, so it's important for those of us who make roguelikes to know what features we've included and why they're important to our game.”
This brings us back to the process of isolating the parts we expect from a roguelike or roguelike game. I think it's easy for these conversations to devolve into fruitless arguments about whether a haunted hotel is really the same as a dungeon. However, I want to conclude my talk by reconsidering the image of the fraudster.
We tend to associate con artists with stealth, dual-wielding, backstabbing, and pickpocketing, but I would argue that nothing about the word “con artist” implies such associations. In modern English, “going rogue” simply means defying expectations, and the origins of the word are correspondingly unclear. The OED entry offers several possible etymologies. Firstly, the word “rogue” is a derivative of the word “roger”, which, I'm glad to learn, once meant “a wandering beggar who pretends to be a poor scholar from Oxford or Cambridge.” Is Rogers in the audience? You were scolded.
I love this faux scientist production because, as legendary “bro” creator Michael Bro suggests in recent presentation on D&D literary influences for annual Bagel Festival – The classic rogue's plot in D&D involves transforming into or impersonating a wizard while collecting magical artifacts. But I also like this etymology because the OED adds that the word “roger” comes from the Latin rogō, “I ask” – and what does it mean to play a roguelike if not to ask the terrain-generating algorithm: what world have you prepared for me today?
In saying this, I again link roguelike procgen and generative AI “hint”. But I would argue for the philosophical difference that today's generative AIs are often portrayed as sycophantic and sycophantic. alarmingly malleableeven when they're depicted as characters in hostile game worlds, the roguelike algorithm isn't just about pleasing. He also wants to deceive, filling the world with random blows and moments of betrayal that border on “bad design”: an inflatable poison frog stuck in a narrow passage a few meters from the exit. Perhaps the lesson we should learn about roguelikes is that the world itself is the fraud.
This dishonesty, this mischief, is what I love about games that call themselves roguelikes or roguelikes, more than the way they soothe with the promise of a certain internal variety or fit neatly into my lunch hour. I'll try to keep that in mind the next time I see something like this in an email.
