Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[teoleo]

With the death of Incursion and the disappearance of Seriak killer rl, what future awaits the rogue game.
Cataclysm is the only real novelty in recent years, in addition to being a great game.
We expect only copies of copies of old ideas?

[DrPoo]

Cataclysm isnt a roguelike at all anymore. Great game but not an RL.

Roguelike has turned into some stupid term indie devs liberally slap on their titles so their stupid ugly 2d pixel "art" platformers/knytt ripoffs sounds cooler.

Likewise as survival horror has turned into "U GET HUNTD BY SCAREH ZHINGS IN FARESHT OMG PLY DIS PEDEPAI xDDDD"

[i2amroy]

Cataclysm isnt a roguelike at all anymore. Great game but not an RL.

As per the gameplay elements characterizing a rougelike as defined at the International Roguelike Development Conference 2008:
Randomly generated levels/dungeons - Check
Identity of magical items varies across games - Check (artifacts)
Combat system is turn based instead of real time - Check
Most are single player - Check
Permadeath unless savescummed - Check

I don't know what definition you are using, but Cataclysm is a rougelike according to the official definition, and I'm loath to go against them without a good reason.

[Anvilfolk]

I move that the opinions of any person who says rouge-like instead of rogue-like be ignored! Rouge-like means red-like, since rouge is red in french

In seriousness though, I definitely see Cataclysm as a roguelike. There might not be any major roguelikes, but the 7drl competition has been growing in popularity. I don't think the genre's dead at all. It just takes very dedicated people to make a major roguelike, and they only appear every so often.

[Max White]

Roguelikes are as old as the face of time, and they never really took off as anything more than a niche market. Only recently has the term reached popularity to describe a genera of games that are inspired by the genera, but are distinctly different. These include Spelunky, FTL and The Binding of Issac. Over time this new genera will develop and go off on its own tangent, as the FPS did.

Roguelikes will continue as they always have, as obscurities and oddities. Those that enjoy them will look for them.

[Frumple]

Yeah... there kinda' is a whole bucketload of in dev RLs of varying levels of innovation and/or polish (though there's more outside that list). Production has managed a fairly steady upward trend over the years, plus we're seeing penetration of the roguelike concept even more strongly into other genres (Like this, ferex).The future of roguelikes is basically "more, more varied, and better". We will continue to see an increase in raw number of projects, the innovation and experiments being done by those projects (especially specifically in relation to what roguelikes have done before; do not be surprised if you see even more of the RL ethos being applied partially or in full to other genres. The "roguelike-like" will continue to spread, too.), and an increase in the level of polish involved with those projects. Perhaps not all concentrated in a single project, but eh.

The future is bright.

[alexandertnt]

You would have to show that the release of roguelikes is on the decrease (number of released over time is going down), which is not necessarily implied by the death of the two games you mentioned. There seems to be plenty of future for roguelikes.

It is also important to remember that roguelikes have always been a niche, often programmed by people in their free time for free. To a company, the death of these games might discourage production of other roguelikes. But companies are already discouraged to produce roguelikes . So as there remains interest in the genre, people will probably continue to develop them.

Likewise as survival horror has turned into "U GET HUNTD BY SCAREH ZHINGS IN FARESHT OMG PLY DIS PEDEPAI xDDDD"

I have never understood how building a lolspeak-laden strawman is supposed to function as a credible argument. What are you implying, That the people who like/make these games are idiots? or that their take on what a survival horror game is is somehow wrong or immature/childish?

[getter77]

Trust me, all is well and getting ever moreso as Frumple suggests.

That said, there IS room for at least concern at the state of the "Mega-Project" portion of the whole given Incursion's seeming fate and whatnot.  Some are around, most are in stasis for one reason or another, but time will hopefully see good things ahead.   ADOM II should wind up particularly good once that can really get rolling again after Biskup and his team get ADOM duly resurrected in full as per the crowdfunding campaign.

[Nelia Hawk]

just look at the success of "modern roguelikes" like "Dungeons of Dreadmore", "FTL", "The Binding of Issac" and "SotS:The Pit" and tell me the genre is dead, no one likes roguelikes (the pit was kickstarted), no innovations and always the same copied old ideas.


and yeah, i am sad too that incursion is "dead"... as i liked the D&D setting of it a lot.
the same with the space rl "Prospector" that was pretty fun to play and a different "setting" too.

also a lot are still updated, like "tales of maj eyal (?)" or "dungeon crawl stone soup". or look at what the next "Dwarf Fortress" update will have for new mechanics/content...

and there are also roguelikes in dev that look pretty with ascii like "Ultima Ratio Regum".

yeah there are a bunch of games that seem on statis... like "Rogue Survivor 2". (RS1 was pretty neat)

i dont see a "problem" with the roguelike genre...

edit: "Dont Starve" probably fits into the "modern roguelike" category too.

[Levi]

There is also the beginnings of the FPS roguelike genre happening now. 

http://www.destructoid.com/paranautical-activity-your-new-roguelike-fps-246560.phtml
http://www.pcgamesn.com/indie/realistic-ballistic-roguelike-fps-receiver-steam-now

[miauw62]

This would also be an intresting place to discuss the DF-like (Towns, Stonehearth, etc). New genre, not new genre...?

[nenjin]

This would also be an intresting place to discuss the DF-like (Towns, Stonehearth, etc). New genre, not new genre...?

Too broad, IMO. DF et. al. inherit a lot from RTS games and sandbox 4x games. I'd have reservations about trying to put DF in its own genre, just like I'd have issues with trying to put Minecraft in its own genre. The terms "DF-like" and "Minecraft-like" are for convenience's sake, and I don't think any of these games created the qualities that would define a whole stand alone genre.

Plus, DF has really split into two games at this point. Adventure mode is definitely a rogue-like, just with an absurd amount of detail and systems. Fort mode is an RTS game with the same. Being absurdly detailed and feature rich doesn't necessarily mean either mode has reached its own genre. They're both stand on the shoulders of games that came before them.

[aristabulus]

(lots of good examples)

And then there's all of the things over at Rogue Basin.  Yeah, roguelikes are doin' just fine. 

[Shooer]

This would also be an intresting place to discuss the DF-like (Towns, Stonehearth, etc). New genre, not new genre...?

Too broad, IMO. DF et. al. inherit a lot from RTS games and sandbox 4x games. I'd have reservations about trying to put DF in its own genre, just like I'd have issues with trying to put Minecraft in its own genre. The terms "DF-like" and "Minecraft-like" are for convenience's sake, and I don't think any of these games created the qualities that would define a whole stand alone genre.

Plus, DF has really split into two games at this point. Adventure mode is definitely a rogue-like, just with an absurd amount of detail and systems. Fort mode is an RTS game with the same. Being absurdly detailed and feature rich doesn't necessarily mean either mode has reached its own genre. They're both stand on the shoulders of games that came before them.

I see DF fort mode and the other games like it as a modern take on economy sims.  Like the Settlers series.
A game where resources and their production chains are just as important as population, if not more so.
I see DF as having brought a more free-form construction to the genre that has been adapted by others.

On the idea of Rogue likes: the genre isn't dead and by the very method that the genre produces it's very games, it can't die.  Each time a rogue like stops being developed at least two others pop up to replace/surpass it.

[Moghjubar]

Rogues definitely aren't dead, and even new weird enjoyable things pop up now and then.  Sometimes projects fail.

Anyway... until next time on Rogue News! Where scandal is permanent, the news stories are randomized, and the empty husks of failed reporters leave bones files and come back to torment you later!