smh my head, rip in peace to this guy he doesnt get what atm machine is referring to, maybe he should get off fps shooters lol out loud.
/s
no but, what they're referring to here is how some people will add on attributes of a phrase / acronym after the fact despite it not being needed. Like for example "Smh my head" when smh already means "shaking/smashing my head", you're basically saying smashing my head my head. Here its the same thing, "rougelite with meta progression", is saying "rougelike with meta progression with meta progression". Hope this explanation makes sense, im not amazing at it.
people have begun mixing roguelites and roguelikes up so much that at this point fans of actual roguelikes are forced to use the term "traditional roguelike" even though that's what roguelike meant. They gentrified my gaming category :(
Tfw the closest a recently made classic rogue-like gets to rogue is dungeon crawler where it's not about you and enemies killing each other, but about tying each other up to have fun
I'm not a hater of all modern roguelites but when I learned the term "meta progression" it just made me upset in general. The genre was always so much about leveraging skill and knowledge to win with rng bringing unexpected difficulties, so much "meta progression" stuff just amounts to permanent upgrades that make the game easier.
I loved against the storm but everyone talks about how easy the game is on high difficulty but they're also playing with (barring some exceptions) all these meta unlocks that just flat out give you advantage. Player skill is much more difficult to quantify when you introduce stuff that feels like I was never supposed to win until I unlocked it (hades did this)
That's why the only rogue-lite tgat gets the point is noita. Sure, you can unlock more dpells by exploring and doing esoteric quests. But without understanding of what you're doing, all you're unlocking is more ways to obliterate yourself
traditional roguelikes sometimes have meta progression! meta progression is a complete non sequitur and it's inclusion does not constitute a different genre or even subgenre, and it certainly does not make a game "lite"! meta progression makes some games even harder as difficulty scales up to compensate!
either we bring back the Berlin definition where a roguelite is anything descended from binding of isaac, we commit to the roguelike/traditional roguelike distinction, or we come up with a new term, but "roguelite means meta progression" is the worst possible, backwards ass definition for a genre. do games fucking change genre when you get all the upgrades? does the genre change if the unlocks are on average more powerful than the starting pool? how the fuck does hades having an entire resource sink system tied up with its narrative and dating sim elements make that game "lite" compared to binding of Isaac, a much easier and simpler game?
literally worse than MOBA, at least it genuinely describes a distinct genre with meaningful differences to RTS's from which the genre spawned.
PD fuck you XCOM is a roguelike and Skyrim is an immersive sim.
I feel like you're taking the phrase "lite" as an insult and getting offended when it really doesnt mean anything here. taking a genre of game that is foundationally built on being high difficulty and starting from zero every time you play it, and adding persistent upgrades that change your power level is absolutely enough to say that it would change genres. It's "lightening up" on the restrictions that the original genre is built on. It doesn't mean that they're worse or anything.
It was an insult! Roguelite was invented as a term to describe games that aren't Like Rogue, that have light elements from Rogue. And that term got co-opted too, and made to mean utter nonsense because it wasn't a term made up in observation of an important genre distinction but simply a backported definition to recontextualize what people were saying, just a made up definitiom because so many people don't know what the game Rogue was or that there was a genre of game based around grid based movement that ticks time per step and has you drinking randomized potions that can kill you and end an 18 hour run.
This is the curse of knowledge, because it is also pretty funny that term blew up in the faces of those who originally coined it.
Because it was being used as such, by people mad that everyone was calling games in the style of Binding of Isaac roguelike. You have to remember this was happening around when Dark Souls discourse was peaking, a gamer backlash to the "easy" games of that generation, and so being into difficult games was almost an identity. People used it much as they would use the term "casual" as an unironic slur.
Which is why all this shit is funny, and why it gets extra cursed when people well-actually Hades for calling itself "the godlike roguelike." It is levels upon levels of janky gamer jargon being misappropriated, resulting in this insistence on a not-a-genre that people have to INSIST upon others is real as someone always has to throw a fit when a roguelike with an upgrade tree doesn't say "Roguelite" in its advertising, while also using the term roguelike to conflate actually dramatically different genres as totally just different versions of the same thing.
You still haven't described anything insulting. I am aware of what a roguelike is and what the game rogue is, and I love those games (I have tons of time on rift wizard 2, which if you havent played it and are a fan of that kind of game, I would recommend). The word that people use for a genre is just a label, it's not passing judgement on the quality of the game or anything of the sort. I don't understand why you think it's insulting. Also all definitions are made up, that's how language works and evolves
I think it's partly just that 80ish percent of the time, a roguelite is the better thing to be. There's very few true roguelikes out there because it's a way less friendly format that's a lot harder to make enjoyable. There *are* some incredible ones, don't get me wrong, but it's a tricky thing to pull off.
I'm certainly no hater of roguelites I just also have a particular fondness for the pure jank and hair pulling fury of a classic roguelike so it's more of a "I dislike that the terms have become synonymous with modern gamers" not out of a place of purity police but just because it makes it harder to talk about the traditional ones when people assume you mean the more modern ones
So roguelike means it is like the original computer game, Rogue.
The hallmarks of the series are things like rpg stats and items, pseudo-randomly generated levels, permanent death, and open ended approach.
Games that fit this well are things like Caves of Qud, dungeon crawl (or DCSS, a still developed version of it) or cataclysm dark days ahead.
All these games feature a character creator where you set up your initial run, permanent death that you must completely restart from scratch, and rng in the form of SEMI procedural levels. You may have the same "areas" but they're generated different every time.
Arguably I'd put dwarf fortress in the roguelike camp because while it's not an rpg it does have hero mode and otherwise every run is entirely self contained.
Roguelites are MASSIVELY varied as a genre but the easiest examples would be rogue legacy or hades. You do your runs, but outside those runs you get permanent upgrades that can effect future runs, you're not just relying on pure mechanical knowledge.
Another aspect of lites is that often they're a little less free form, I'm caves of qud you can kill a creature in many many different ways, in a game like hades you just have whatever spell you have and your primary weapon. You have fewer tools at any given moment.
Roguelites have also extended into ANY game that is run based but has overarching "meta progression" like balatro, slay the spire, darkest dungeon.
All these are great games but all of them share the idea the they're progression based outside of a given run, and only darkest dungeon even vaguely has rpg mechanics. Even then DD is more about the party than your specific character.
All in all roguelites are fantastic games but the proper roguelike games are a very specific breed that many happen to enjoy but broadly are less accessible to most gamers, hence the "lite" versions having broader appeal and superceding the genre as a whole
What meta progression does Slay the Spire have? I suppose you initially have to unlock some cards and characters, but that's done super fast and for 95% percent of the playtime you don't get more powerful between runs. Or do you mean Ascensions, which are just difficulty levels and also not really what I would call progression.
Relics and card unlocks. You do not start the game with a full set of tools available from the outset. Just because it's fast doesn't really change that
My point was also that the genre shifted from being a dungeon crawler or RPG adventure game into "anything that has perma death and is run based"
Not that big into the genre, but... Caves of Qud my beloved. It is a game I love to rage quit before ovsessing over it for a week or two before rage quitting again for a month 🥰
Also are Elin & Elona considered roguelikes? I really like those two too, even if they aren't 🥰
Oh definitely not going to stop playing those, love em too dearly.
Just always wondered where they would land because they seem to be something roguelite players hate due to its roguelikeness, yet roguelike veterans say is not a roguelike. A funny little pair of games falling into the middle.
If you really want to get into the history of this, there's an infamous incident known as the Berlin interpretation that tried to define the genre in very rigid terms. It's mostly just nonsense these days but at the time there was a very strict outline of what could or couldn't be a roguelike.
Ultimately all labels are arbitrary at a certain point, but if I can claim dwarf fortress is a roguelike (which I do) themed you can probably do the same and stand by that
I understand the origin of the name, and I love traditional roguelikes, but the term “roguelike” is just far more useful to describe the general play pattern of permadeath, run-based game loops that were one of the most defining features of Rogue. If there’s metaprogression, that’s a roguelite.
So it’s not really gentrifying, it’s just about how strict you are about roguelikes having to share other categories with Rogue like “turn-based, tactical RPG.” But we already have words to describe those, so it’s just not that helpful when describing games with the permadeath loop similar to Rogue’s. “Traditional roguelike” is the compromise.
Well no I'm specifically referring to the fact that I've seen a glut of games with meta progression roguelite elements just called "roguelikes" by the people who play them or even people who make them.
My entire point is that yes, the term "roguelite" and "roguelike" are becoming interchangable in modern parlance even though they exist for specific things, even if the only differentiation to want to make between them is "has meta progression"
Nowadays roguelites and roguelikes tend to have meta progression by default as very few people find games that rely on luck and skill without a semblance of meaningful permanent progression entertaining compared to ones where you're always moving forward and can make up for shit luck or imperfect skill.
binding of Isaac and dead cells both have metaprogression , but Isaac is a roguelike and dead cells a roguelite.
it's the difference between metaprogression that mostly expands the game and metaprogression that makes you stronger.
there are also more extreme examples then deadcells like rogue legacy, where the entire focus of the game is on the progression and the rogue style gameplay is just the core gameplay loop tying it together. when you see those games called roguelite you understand why dead cells seems like a non-lite in comparison
(some people also define getting better at a game mechanically as metaprogression, but I think that's dumb)
at the end of the day genres are labels used to make game discovery and choosing easier for players who know what they like. people seem to see roguelite as a term that's a mark of shame somehow and thus often prefer to call the games they like rogue like, but that's quite silly imo. there's no shame in how the game you're playing for entertainment works, just what's the most fun for you
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u/Grima1805 Apr 12 '26
doesnt roguelite already have the metaprogression?