Roguelikes and Roguelites General - Discussion, recommendations, and suggestions

[Livecorpse]

So I searched to see if we had a general Roguelike/Roguelite thread, and I couldn't find one. So here we go!

I live under a rock. What's a Roguelike?

Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike

With that out of the way, I'll start by talking about a few roguelikes/lites I've enjoyed recently.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
Get it here (it's free!): http://cddawiki.chezzo.com/cdda_wiki/index.php?title=Download

Want the most in-depth zombie apocalypse survival sim ever? No? Why are you even here. Cataclysm DDA takes place in New England shortly after society collapses and everyone but you turns into zombies. That's about the full extent of the story. What it lacks in story, though, it makes up for in gameplay depth. Forge a suit of plate armor and a huge sword, mutate into a slime monster (or a bird, or a lizard, or an elf), turn yourself into a cyborg, build a massive self-sufficient mobile base out of an old RV, or hell, abandon the cities to the zombies and the monsters and build a farm in the woods.

Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup
Get it here (it's also free!): https://crawl.develz.org/

Wanted to get into NetHack or ADOM, but find the huge learning curve and bullshit instakills offputting? Look no further! DCSS is a dungeon crawler roguelike that is basically designed to be much more skill based than luck based. The game is designed to have a fairly mild learning curve (by roguelike standards at least), but still packs a lot of challenges. I got a lot of mileage out of it, mostly just because between the different races, classes, and gods available, there's a huge amount of replay value.

FTL: Faster Than Light
Get it here (it's only cheap!): https://store.steampowered.com/app/212680/FTL_Faster_Than_Light/

You've probably heard of this one; it's a spaceship sim roguelite. Your mission is to cross the galaxy ahead of the evil Rebel Fleet and deliver vital information to the last Federation outpost, no matter who or what gets in your way. It's a difficult, punishing, but surprisingly addictive game. If you haven't played it yet, do it now!

Anyway, share your roguelike experiences here!

 

[ChucklesTheJester]

I enjoy Slash'em Exended.

Slash'EM Extended - NetHack Wiki

This section is a must read for new players. It tries to give advice on a number of topics. If you never played a NetHack variant before, especially check out the bolded parts.

nethackwiki.com

It's a fork of a fork of a fork of nethack.

It's name comes from the fork before it. Slash'em being Super Lotsa Added Stuff Hack - Extended Magic
As some poeple might know I enjoy mods that go for the Kitchen sink apporch.

This is the mother of all mods like that.

It has so much more stuff that AmyBSOD extended the game to 100 floors. 50 dungeon, and 50 Gehennom according to the wiki.

Personally I wouldn't know Because I can't make it pass floor 6-7, or the gnome Mines if I go down that branch first.

There is so much stuff that no one has made a tileset for the game because of how many monsters and items they would have to make tiles for.

According to Amy there like something around 20k+ new monsters at this point.

Also a ton of new roles, and races. Have a look.

Race/Slash'EM Extended - NetHack Wiki

nethackwiki.com

Role difficulty/Variants - NetHack Wiki

nethackwiki.com

I think my favorite death was when I stepped in to a poly trap turned into a farting anime girl, and then summoned a demon on accident sacrificing to the chaotic god, and being murdered by said demon.

 

[Win98SE]

IVAN - A Violent Road to Death is my all-time favorite. Limb-based damage, land mines, material system, multi-tile enemies, and actual graphics! One of the most unique roguelikes IMO. It's really old (2001), but I think it's getting updated.

Brogue is also good. I put a ton of time into it. Nice visuals and quick runs.

Would normally recommend Pixel Dungeon, but it was shit the last time I played it. The developer cranked up annoying RNG, added durability to everything, and made food harder to find, which turned a relatively nice mobile game into a frustrating slog.

 

[Takodachi]

If you want something a bit more degenerate, try MaidenSnow Eve (NSFW)
Its challenging enough to piss you off, but with enough degenerate elements to keep you hooked, if you are into those things.

 

[Book Thief]

Elona is my personal favorite. It's a sandbox roguelike heavily inspired by ADOM with RPG Maker graphics. I personally play the Elona Plus Custom branch, which itself is an English translation branch of Elona Plus, which is a fan-made expansion to the base game that adds two new areas to explore, a bunch of new skills, new abilities, and tons of new enemies to fight. It's also one of the most user-friendly roguelikes I've played, being able to bind commands in-game to a controller instead of hunting down specific keys for specific commands.

Elona is also probably the most "Japanese" roguelike you'll likely find, in all the ways that I personally adore. The best starter pet in the game is a "Little Girl," who you can put on a leash (to keep her from wandering). You can marry any NPC in your party and have children with them via the "gene" mechanic (New game+). Panties are an extremely viable throwing weapon. You can get random NPCs drunk and become a slut. Catgirls are an available race to play (via the debug menu). You can play as a snail and get salt thrown at you by city janitors.

The Trooth's review goes far more indepth than I could possibly get into:

 

[kūhaku]

Realm of the Mad God is an interesting one. It’s a multiplayer roguelike that runs on flash and has been acquired by multiple companies over the years and has changed quite a bit. Been playing it on and off for a few years and I don’t know why because I don’t even enjoy roguelikes usually. Realm of the Mad God is far more a roguelite though because of vaults that can carry items between characters and pay to win pets. It’s gotten really boring recently and the creation of discords to group run the hardest dungeons killed most of the fun for people, including myself, because it’s essentially a way to remove the need for guilds from the equation. You will never be able to do them with randoms in realm because all the good or even decent players for these dungeons are doing them in discords. Keys have completely ruined the game in that regard and I’m essentially burnt out on it. It’s a shame, I have a pretty good account too, nothing special but yellow star with 9 8/8s and a max legendary pet. Deca says that unity will fix everything but I can think imagine it fixing anything, so we’ll see. Oh well.

 

[Elric of Melnibone]

Delver: Minecraft style graphics and combat. Cheap and fun.

Die Hard Dungeon: Sprite based action roguelike that controls like an old school legend of zelda game. Fun and cheap.

Dungeons of Dredmor: Fun and satyrical game with web comic style graphics. Lots of content for a cheap price.

Eldritch: Minecraft style graphics with a Lovecraft lore and world. Just like Delver, fun and with a surprising amount of depth.

One Way Heroics: JRPG style graphics with the catch that you can only move left to right. Even though its turn based with every move and action being a single turn this is the most frantic Roguelike I have ever played, it really builds tension well and in an organic way through gameplay.

Rogue Shooter The RogueLike FPS: One of my favorite Roguelike games, its like Chex Quest for Doom but with a roguelike element. Really enjoyed this one, and it also seems similer to Void Bastard, which is a game I really want to play but have yet to be able to afford.

Strafe: If Quake, Doom, and Duke Nukem got artificially inceminated into a roguelike whore this would be the child bore as a result. Fast, frantic, and absolutly balls to the wall on fun factor. The be all end all (again have not played Void Bastard) of the Action FPS Roguelike genre..

Shattered Planet: Sci Fi turn based roguelike with a progression system and a very pleasurable slick art style. Has a similer mechanic to One Way Heroics where it is constantly pushing you forward which can lead to some very frantic runs on the edge of death.

DoomRL: A doom themed turn based Roguelike that is free and awesome.

Sword of the Stars: The Pit: A good sci fi themed roguelike with a great graphical art style and a lot of depth and if you get all the DLc plenty of classes for any playstyle you could think of.

WazHack: A great side scrolling Roguelike that is free on android and iphone and cheap on steam. This game is very addicting in the "one more run" sense and will rob you at knife point of your time if you let it.

Oh and I almost forgot one of my favorite games from last year. . .

Streets of Rogue: This game is amazing, it has alot of different classes to play as, tons of ways to interact with the randomly generated world, and even the ability to create your own class by mixing and matching other classes abilities and defects as you please. Want to play as a gorilla out to kill all the scientists that experiment on your monkey brothers? Got it. Want to be a bartender that gets everyone around you drunk? Got it. Want to play a zombie out to start a wu flu outbreak? Got it. There is multiple endings, including a few that involve your character running for and becoming mayor of the city. This game is around $20 but is the best money you will spend on a rogue like. It is also fully controller compatible and available on I believe every modern platform.

 

[REGENDarySumanai]

The end all, be all of wikis dedicated to roguelikes. IVAN is my favorite due to the fact that you can get iron limbs on yourself and beat people to death with them. Cogmind is pretty good as well. ADOM, Caves of Qud, Tales of Maj'Eyal, and Rogue Legacy are also good.

 

[Takodachi]

Elona is my personal favorite. It's a sandbox roguelike heavily inspired by ADOM with RPG Maker graphics. I personally play the Elona Plus Custom branch, which itself is an English translation branch of Elona Plus, which is a fan-made expansion to the base game that adds two new areas to explore, a bunch of new skills, new abilities, and tons of new enemies to fight. It's also one of the most user-friendly roguelikes I've played, being able to bind commands in-game to a controller instead of hunting down specific keys for specific commands.

Elona is also probably the most "Japanese" roguelike you'll likely find, in all the ways that I personally adore. The best starter pet in the game is a "Little Girl," who you can put on a leash (to keep her from wandering). You can marry any NPC in your party and have children with them via the "gene" mechanic (New game+). Panties are an extremely viable throwing weapon. You can get random NPCs drunk and become a slut. Catgirls are an available race to play (via the debug menu). You can play as a snail and get salt thrown at you by city janitors.

The Trooth's review goes far more indepth than I could possibly get into:

Im surprised you didnt link sseth's video.

 

[fag0t]

I like angband and unreal world

 

[AnOminous]

Nethack Vanilla. It's the only ASCII-based roguelike I ever played. I played it from 1987 on and off and it wasn't until 2001 that I actually won it the first time. It's more or less the definitive roguelike. I also played the original rogue some but it isn't terribly interesting. Other than the concepts it introduced it has little to recommend it other than sheer difficulty.

I never really got into Angband or ADOM or the others.

I second FTL: Faster Than Light, one of the best games of all time.

Darkest Dungeon, although it is barely roguelike-lite.

 

[An Ghost]

I like angband and unreal world

Mangband is the most autistic game I’ve ever played, the real time but also turn based free to play MMORPG version of angband. It opens like 20 windows when it runs and everything is done through macros.

You guys also forgot adventure mode in dwarf fortress, which just got a big update for villains and mounts which applies to adventurer mode. Become a vampire, cut people’s guts out and lash them to death with them and gouge their eyeballs out with your bare hands. Collect their fingers. Or get your head kicked in by a horse. Either or.

 

[Urist Steelthrone]

Cataclysm DDA and Dwarf Fortress's Adventure Mode

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

DoomRL has already been mentioned but I like that one because it's simple and fast to play. The simplicity hurts it in the long run but up until then it's fun. Never played Jupiter Hell, the commercial spin-off but that one seems pretty decent.

Honorable mention to AlphaMan and while Rockstar.exe isn't a roguelike it's text based and have plenty of random bullshit that fucks you over. It's Rockstar Ate My Hamster without graphics.

 

[Polyboros2]

Dead Cells is a roguelite, 2d metroidvania, going for dark souls combat. Very tight little game, a much more polished and deep version of Rogue Legacy. On a lot of platforms at this point, I've played a lot off it and really enjoy it.

 

[Ebonic Tutor]

Pathos: Nethack Codex is probably the best thing resembling Nethack on the phone. It's a fork and has quite a few things that are different than traditional Nethack (slightly simpler, but more races, classes, pets, and ability to play two characters at once.) but it simplifies the interface in a way that makes it fun to play. Also apparently you can play it multiplayer, I assume it would be realtime then since it has a mode to do that which I think would be awkward but I do wanna try it out at some point.

I've made it as far as the Fort a couple times which is a helluva lot farther than I ever made it in Nethack, dunno if it's easier or if I've just gotten better at Nethack clones.

 

[Jean Lafitte 1812]

Slay the Spire, a deck-building rogue-lite where combat is all based on cards. There are 4 characters with completely different mechanics to work with. It's on sale on GOG right now, but Steam has workshop support for character mods, so pick your poison.

Some gameplay from the streams that sold me on it.

 

[Intelligent Calcium]

I tried T.O.M.E. and Dungeons of Dredmor but couldn't really get into them. Maybe I'm just a faggot.

Slay the Spire, a deck-building rogue-lite where combat is all based on cards. There are 4 characters with completely different mechanics to work with. It's on sale on GOG right now, but Steam has workshop support for character mods, so pick your poison.

Some gameplay from the streams that sold me on it.

The Yu-Gi-Oh mod for StS is fucking absurd.

 

[Autumnal Equinox]

Dungeons of Dredmor is great. Good wacky/meta sense of humor and a decent stepping stone for newbies to roguelikes to try out.

Slash'Em is my favorite roguelike however. It's like NetHack, but not as brutally unforgiving.

 

[Livecorpse]

If you want something a bit more degenerate, try MaidenSnow Eve (NSFW)
Its challenging enough to piss you off, but with enough degenerate elements to keep you hooked, if you are into those things.

The constant risk of sexual assault brings a whole new layer of danger to the game that’s nonexistent in other roguelikes.

I've been trying to come up with something witty to say to this sentence for ten minutes and I'm coming up empty. As degenerate as this looks I might have to check it out.