Roguelike

Lore & Background

The term 'roguelike' came from Usenet newsgroups around 1993, as this was the principal channel the players of roguelike games of that period were using to discuss these games, as well as what the developers used to announce new releases and even distribute the game's source code in some cases. With several individual groups for each game, it was suggested that with rising popularity of Rogue, Hack, Moria, and Angband, all of which shared common elements, that the groups be consolidated under an umbrella term to facilitate cross-game discussion. Debate among users of these groups ensued to try to find an encapsulating term that described the common elements, starting with rec.games.dungeon.*, but after three weeks of discussion, rec.games.roguelike.*, based on Rogue, which was at the time considered to be the oldest of these types of games, was picked as 'the least of all available evils'.

Drawing from the concepts of tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, nearly all roguelikes give the player control of a character, which they may customize by selecting a class, or adjusting attributes points and skills. At the start of the game, the character is placed at the top-most level of a dungeon, with basic equipment such as a simple weapon, armor, torches, and food. The player moves the character through the dungeon, collecting treasure while having to fight monsters that roam the dungeon. Most combat is performed simply by attempting to move the character into the same space as the monster. Defeating monsters earns the character experience points, and after earning enough points, the character will gain an experience level. The character dies if they lose all their hit points, and as most roguelikes feature the concept of permadeath, this represents the end of the game.

Reader's Guide

The exact definition of a roguelike game remains a point of debate in the video game community. A 'Berlin Interpretation' drafted in 2008 defined a number of high- and low-value factors of 'canon' roguelike games Rogue, NetHack and Angband, which have since been used to distinguish these roguelike games from edge cases like Diablo. The Berlin Interpretation set out a set of high-value and low-value factors, basing these lists on five canon roguelike games: ADOM, Angband, Linley's Dungeon Crawl, NetHack, and Rogue. The Interpretation was designed to determine 'how roguelike a game is', noting that missing a factor does not eliminate a game from being a roguelike, nor does possessing the features make a game roguelike. Since then, with more powerful home computers and gaming systems and the rapid growth of indie video game development, several new 'roguelikes' have appeared, with some but not all of these high-value factors, nominally the use of procedural generation and permadeath, while often incorporating other gameplay genres, thematic elements, and graphical styles. Common examples of these include Spelunky, FTL: Faster Than Light, The Binding of Isaac, Slay the Spire, Crypt of the NecroDancer, and Hades. To distinguish these from traditional roguelikes, such games may be referred to as roguelite or roguelike-like. Despite this alternative naming suggestion, these games are often referred to as roguelike and use the roguelike tag on various marketplaces such as Steam.

Did You Know?

• The term 'roguelike' originated from Usenet newsgroups around 1993, chosen as 'the least of all available evils' after three weeks of debate.
• The Berlin Interpretation, drafted in 2008, defined high- and low-value factors based on five canon roguelike games: ADOM, Angband, Linley's Dungeon Crawl, NetHack, and Rogue.
• Though Beneath Apple Manor predates it, the 1980 game Rogue is considered the forerunner and namesake of the genre.
• The Japanese series of Mystery Dungeon games by Chunsoft, inspired by Rogue, also fall within the concept of roguelike games.

Core Gameplay & Strategic Depth

The central tension in roguelike deck-builders is that players must construct their strategy in real time, without knowing which cards will be offered as rewards. Most titles begin with a fixed starting deck and rely on turn-based combat, where a limited resource such as mana or action points governs how many cards you can play each turn. As you progress, random reward cards or in-game shop purchases let you expand your collection, and some games also provide tools to remove or upgrade existing cards. The real challenge lies in building synergies while avoiding a bloated deck stuffed with underperforming entries. In Slay the Spire, for example, defeating powerful enemies yields relics with permanent effects, and your deck strategy must mesh with those relics. This mirrors the character-development feel of a tabletop role-playing game. Permadeath remains a staple: lose all health and you restart with your original deck. Metagame layers let players unlock new cards or small bonus perks across runs, rewarding repeated play and experimentation.

Beyond the Card Metaphor

While the card metaphor dominates the genre, several titles prove the underlying design principle—randomized collection-building paired with roguelike structure—can be expressed through entirely different mechanics. In Dicey Dungeons, players fight through dungeon monsters by acquiring randomized weapons and equipment as prizes from combat, then power those items by matching dice-roll results to values on the gear. Luck Be a Landlord replaces cards with symbols placed on a slot machine, where scoring depends on how those symbols randomly land and interact with one another to produce larger point values. Hand of Fate and its sequel take yet another approach: the card deck randomizes dungeon layout, equipment, enemies, and rewards, but the actual combat unfolds as a real-time action sequence rather than a turn-based exchange. Together, these examples show the genre is defined less by a specific component type and more by the interplay between procedurally generated randomness and player-driven collection strategy.

Origins & Lineage

The roguelike deck-builder did not emerge from a vacuum. Richard Garfield, creator of Magic: The Gathering, traced the genre's DNA to two predecessors. The 1997 Magic: The Gathering video game had players traverse a world and win combat rounds to collect cards that strengthened their deck. Dominion, introduced in 2008, is widely regarded as the first tabletop deck-building game and itself drew inspiration from Magic. Dominion spawned a wave of follow-up tabletop titles, some of which were later digitized for PC and mobile while staying faithful to their physical roots. The first true roguelike deck-building video game is generally considered to be Dream Quest, a mobile title developed by Peter Whalen and released in 2014, with a PC port arriving roughly a year later. Despite its simple graphics, Dream Quest incorporated the genre's core elements and caught Garfield's attention, bridging the gap between traditional deck-building and roguelike randomness.

The Round-Based Scoring Subgenre

A distinctive subgenre within roguelike deck-builders, exemplified by Luck Be a Landlord and Balatro, replaces traditional combat with a round-based scoring challenge. In each round, the player must earn a target number of points that increases with every subsequent round, drawing on the collection they have assembled in earlier rounds. The core loop is tuning that collection to maximize synergy and meet the ever-rising score demand. In Luck Be a Landlord, players collect symbols that randomly populate a slot machine; some symbols score points directly while others amplify the value of neighboring symbols on the board. Balatro uses a standard playing-card deck, challenging players to construct the highest-scoring poker hands against escalating antes. Specialized joker cards let players modify scoring rules and reshape their deck to create synergies with those jokers. This structure shifts the strategic focus from surviving enemies to optimizing a mathematical combination under mounting pressure.

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