Is It A Roguelike Or A Roguelite? (And Why It Matters)

Issue 018 - 11 February 2025

Author

Gamer Matters
February 11, 2025

Henlo gamer,

Meck here and happy holiday/Tuesday! February has arrived, and as you know, it’s getting pretty busy with game releases. We’re back gaming.

Table of Contents

BUT FIRST!

Rogue Legacy 2

Is it a roguelike or a roguelite? Sometimes this two game genre names are used interchangeably, but there are two different flavours descended from Rogue, the ASCII art game where we now have credited every run-based game with randomly-generated maps.

The difference is roguelites softens the blow of a new run by having carry-over permanent upgrades. A progression system, if you will. Meanwhile, pure roguelikes have permadeath with no progression. Which, if we’re going for this strict definitions of a roguelike, these are far and few between. Most games have some sort of progression these days!

Still, I find having these definitions, terms and phrases important if gaming is to be treated not only as an artform, but a culture. And we’re severely lacking when it comes to coining new terms, words, and phrases to express specific aspects of gaming culture.

We Don’t Talk About Gaming The Same Way

And the disparity of how the media/journalists talk about games and the gamers talk about them in forums/Reddit/social spaces is also something worth pointing out. A lot of sites, Gamer Matters also being guilty on this at times, would rather compare new games to older games, rather than to try and box them into a genre.

It’s partly due to SEO, better use that term search engines like rather than try coining fancy terms that won’t catch on unless you’re a big influencer. Gaming sites don’t hold that much clout these days, for understandable reasons.

And there’s also just the disparity of how industry folks talk about games and how gaming communities talk about games. Rarely you see game sites or older folks in the game talk consoles in terms of generations, in the way Wikipedia does it.

Though the current crop of content creators that are covering old games for the today’s generation of gamers will use “7th-gen consoles” to refer to games made for the PS3 and Xbox 360, more often than not. Most sites just say current-gen, next-gen and last-gen, (again, SEO strikes again) but don’t really keep track of what generation it is, something I’m more conscious of when reporting on Gamer Matters.

We’re Not Making Enough Words And Terms In Our Hobby

Here’s another point to ponder: definition of an “Action-RPG” is so broad these days. You can describe Baldur’s Gate 3, Path Of Exile 2, Final Fantasy XVI, Dark Souls and Monster Hunter Wilds under the same banner, all completely different games. Again, so many games have progression these days! And that aspect is so common that it cannot be a defining factor of what qualify a game to be an RPG.

Which is why I love the fact that there are sub-genre terms in RPGs. The games with heavy mechanics and systems that may or may derive from tabletop RPGs are CRPGs. Games with active clicks/button presses with looting elements are ARPGs.

(Though the shorthand ARPG is short for action-RPGs, it’s more associated to game like Diablo than it is to, say, Kingdom Hearts.)

RPGs with a defined, linear story but allows expression of role-playing via game mechanics can be a JRPG, whether they are made in Japan or inspired by Japan-made RPGs.

But there’s not enough sub-genre labels being coined, picked up and popularised. For the longest time we’re stuck with calling an action-RPG with systems that heavily punish mistakes a soulslike, as in it’s like Dark Souls or Demons’s Souls.

Meanwhile, there’s no real competitor that can stand toe-to-toe with Monster Hunter to really call a game a Monster Hunter-like. Though promos for Wild Hearts referred the game as a “hunting game.” It’s fine for now, there won’t be a new Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts game for a long while.

How long was it until we adopted “first-person shooter” as a term replacing “Doom clones”? One day we’ll figure out a better name than soulslike. Team Ninja, of Nioh fame, likes to call them “masocore action-RPGs,” for instance.

Notable Examples

Excuse me for being the jargon guy, but there are aspects of gaming culture that has developed their parlance well when it comes defining the features of a game.

Shout out to Core-A Gaming, who did an etymology tree of the different fighting game sub-genres and how they came to be, from air-dashes to arena fighters. It’s not only cool we get to learn how to classify different fighting games, but also learn the history, the whys and hows, and see a genre and its surrounding community and culture evolve.

Hopefully there are more folks like the late TotalBiscuit (who I believe popularised terms like strategy tactics, to describe small-scale turn-based strategy games like XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and character action games, also shorthanded as CAG, to refer to deep action games where the gameplay revolves entirely on mastering a character’s specific moveset), and the late Alan Emrich, who coined the term 4X that defines strategy games where you explore, exploit, expand and exterminate.

And hopefully we, as community, not only can create more ways for us to nerd about our hobby, but also popularise it. Have it catch on. There’s Metroidvania (games like Metroid and Castlevania where exploring pre-defined worlds, back-tracking included, is the draw). But there are communities that have been referring this subgenre as search action games, which I feel is a better descriptive subgenre name.

Why? For The Culture

If you love music, you know how fans and critics like to define and classify music into so many different boxes. Check out this interactive map that charts the evolution of metal music, itself derived from rock which should have their own terms.

Foodies also has many ways to express their love of cuisine, and seeing how some fusion food makes sense and why others are just cheap viral sensations is an eye-opener for me. So is car culture, where they get to nerd out on many aspects of their hobby.

I want gaming culture discourse to be about nerdy things like this, not, whatever the hellscape of grifters looking to monetise engagement is trying to bait us into talking.

I believe in a future we argue what’s a roguelike and what’s not like how people argue whether a hot dog is a sandwich. That’s my utopian vision: a healthy, though ancillary, gaming culture where one can escape from the grim reality from time to time.

Untitled game by Wolfeye Studio

The NEWS From Last Week

Some interesting highlights that came out of last week, including some from our friends at other sites too.

And that’s it for this week’s issue. You’re getting a full feature writing this time, and I hope it was a meaningful read.

For more meaningful reads, check out Gamer Matters for more news and reviews!

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Play games and have fun,

—Meck and the Gamer Matters Team