Roguelites and gambling - iwhalen.com

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Roguelites and gambling

I've been show and tell heavy lately. So, here's a lighter blog post about my gaming habits and an examination of the roguelite genre. It comes very close to saying something... almost.

Apologies in advance for my self-reflection on my own history of gaming and current habits.

A gamer's journey

My earliest memories are of video games. The N64 in the family basement. Mario Kart, Mario Party, Super Smash, etc. Growing up I alternated between friend groups playing PC games like Runescape, League of Legends, and World of Warcraft with some, and XBox 360 classics like Call of Duty or Bad Company 2 with others. I started undergrad thinking I wanted to go into game development. I dropped that dream quite quickly after learning the realities of game dev and the industry1.

Once I got into college, I had to prioritize my time a little more. Party games stayed in the rotation of course. But I moved more toward games that were easy to hop in and out of. I valued Old School Runescape2 for the community, RPG elements, measured progress toward goals, and continuity across long periods of time. I have fond memories of sitting for hours while watching a show grinding various skills and doing quests. However, I feel I've reached a point in the game where getting to the "end game" would require 10s to 100s of hours of investment. Similarly with WoW, once leveling is done3, it becomes a second job where you have to organize 20+ internet people to meet at after work.

I also spend a lot of my time at a computer anyway, so I've gravitated toward controller games.

Anything PvP is basically off the table for me at this point. I don't particularly like the stress for some reason. Getting "good" at games like these feels painful rather than fun. MOBAs are out. I did my time in the DOTA 2 and LoL mines. The shooters that I do play usually look like "extraction" PvE games like Deep Rock Galactic, Helldivers 2, and recently Far Far West. These games have light RPG elements and a "jump in, jump out" aspect. But, still require sustained playtime for 25-45 minutes when a game starts.

Where does that leave me? I want a clear, saved progression, an (optional) multiplayer PvE experience, the ability to easily pause / stop playing with no penalty, and controller support. There's a list of other finer details, but those are the broad strokes.

Survival or exploration games seem to fit into these categories. Games like V Rising, Palworld4, Grounded, Valheim, and Enshrouded seem like they'll scratch the itch. However they suffer from two issues. First, progression isn't actually shared. Servers retain progression and going from single player to multiplayer means starting over. Second, for some reason, they all have the same bad UI. There's a lot of mechanics to give to a player in games like this. So, designing UI is not easy. Games like No Man's Sky sort of get it right. But it can be unwieldy at times.

Though very unfinished, Veloren has a lot of the elements I'm interested in. It fills the hole that the Cube World Alpha left in my heart.

Recently, rougelites have been checking some of those boxes. Specifically, Slay the Spire 2, Heroes of Hammerwatch II, Mortal Sin, and Loop Hero. These are great little arcade-y games that have lots of hours in them if the gameplay loop hooks you. There's metaprogression and all of them are easily enjoyed on the couch.

Recently, I did a project getting LLMs to play Rogue as a game-playing benchmark. I made a side comment on wanting to dive a little deeper on the rise of roguelites. Specifically in relation to gambling. So, here it is.

The roguelite

A very articulate history and analysis by youtuber DoshDoshington of rogue(lite|like) games can be found here. One of many reviews of the original game, Rogue, can be found here. The general themes of this kind of game are:

Permadeath: you try to get as high a score or get as far in the game as possible in one life.

Randomness: each "run" has some randomly generated elements. Gear, dungeon layouts, enemies, power ups, in-game currency, etc.

Metaprogression: (optional) you accumulate some amount of power / currency between runs that let you go farther the more you play.

Let's take a modern example that exemplifies these three elements.

Mortal Sin is a gory action roguelike dungeon crawler. The goal is to battle through hordes of monsters Doom style. There are lots of class types and combos that you can master. It has the laundry list as well.

Permadeath in Mortal Sin of course means you only have one life to get as far as you can.

Randomness comes in the form of items picked up in the dungeons. A certain weapon or helmet will have stats that improve on a particular play style. This interplay is one of the key draws of Roguelites. Yes, a really good sword will mean you get further. But a full set of gear that supports the play style you like is the holy...