Rogue-likes! (not a discussion of the correct use of the term)

[Kaptin Keen]

I was looking through my steam library, and I stumbled upon Sword of the Stars: The Pit - which I never quite managed to complete. And to my surprise, I found I now have two separate DLC's for it, that apparently found their way to me free! Yay =)

Having been keyed onto rogue-likes, it got me thinking. Different stuff, just scattered. Like, should I buy the ADOM graphics thing on Steam, should I maybe finish the expansion for Darkest Dungeon I bought but never really played, and so on.

It also occurred to me that ... there isn't a thread here for this genre. Not to my knowledge at least.

So what are your favourite rogue likes, what have you played, what would you recommened?

Personally, I find ADOM to be the greatest I've found. I've played others and liked them less - Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, for instance.

There are newer games out there I never dared try. Duskers, for instance. And I keep waiting for Caves of Cud to complete, because I never do early access. Also, Super Giant have Hades in EA, which might also be cool - their other games are.

[Rynjin]

Been playing a lot of Slay the Spire lately. It's a deck builder card game rogue-like that has a lot of variety in play among the three classes. It's also technically in Early Access I think, but it's feature complete; I'm not sure why it hasn't gone to full release yet.

[Kaptin Keen]

I've watched OddOne play it. It looks like a lot of fun - but it also looks like a deck building game, which requires a dedication to fiddling with building decks, obviously. I played Hearthstone for a good long while, and the thing I never liked about it was the deckbuilding. But maybe that was because it was either grind, or buy packs.

[Anteros]

It is a deck building game, but you get new cards every play through. There's no grind or pack buying.

[NRSASD]

FTL is a thoroughly awesome roguelike, for many, many reasons. But there's one I like even better: Renowned Explorers. It's got a lot of heart and humor, but more impressive is it's combat system. You can spec out your team to be pacifists and pacifist so hard you can befriend rampaging gorillas, mummies, and cultists. Very fun game, definitely worth a look if you like roguelikes.

[Rynjin]

I've watched OddOne play it. It looks like a lot of fun - but it also looks like a deck building game, which requires a dedication to fiddling with building decks, obviously. I played Hearthstone for a good long while, and the thing I never liked about it was the deckbuilding. But maybe that was because it was either grind, or buy packs.

You misunderstand a bit the difference between a T/CCG like Hearthstone or Magic and a deck builder. Deck builders are "build as you go" games where all the cards are in the game and you gradually add cards to your deck as the game goes on. More Dominion than Hearthstone

[Kaptin Keen]

It is a deck building game, but you get new cards every play through. There's no grind or pack buying.

But there's still deck building. I dislike deckbuilding for it's own sake. Grinding and pack buying, where present, just adds to it.

You misunderstand a bit the difference between a T/CCG like Hearthstone or Magic and a deck builder.

I do not.

[OutOfThyme]

Mmmm,love me some Slay the Spire. Great game overall, and I like how trying to force an archetype on higher Ascensions will basically get you slaughtered. Having to pick and choose your cards and come up with something that'll beat the big encounters in each Act is super rewarding.

I've also been playing some Dead Cells on my Switch, and it's a lot of fun. Combat is incredibly smooth and rewarding, but I'm kind of bad at the game. I tend to go for faster weapons because that means I can dodge roll out of the way of things easier.

[Kaptin Keen]

Mmmm,love me some Slay the Spire. Great game overall, and I like how trying to force an archetype on higher Ascensions will basically get you slaughtered. Having to pick and choose your cards and come up with something that'll beat the big encounters in each Act is super rewarding.

I've also been playing some Dead Cells on my Switch, and it's a lot of fun. Combat is incredibly smooth and rewarding, but I'm kind of bad at the game. I tend to go for faster weapons because that means I can dodge roll out of the way of things easier.

I've been waiting for animations to be introduced in Slay the Spire. Don't know if that's even on the drawing board, I just feel they should be there - like they are in Darkest Dungeon.

Dodging in games - even with generous cues like in Stories or Omensight - simply doesn't work for me. It's not that I'm too slow, I just can't make out the cues with everything else that's going on on-screen.

[Corlindale]

Dungeons of Dredmor got me into the genre and I still have fond memories of it, but my undisputed favourite has to be Tales of Maj'Eyal (aka TOME). It's honestly a candidate for my Game of All Time in any genre - it's just brilliantly designed in so many ways.

One of my favourite things about it is the sheer diversity of classes. Some are your standard fantasy fare - Archer, Berserker, Rogue, etc. Even those can be very fun, but some of the classes you get to unlock later are just really creative both conceptually and mechanically.

It also streamlines many of the things that can get annoying in some other rogue-likes. Like inventory management - in TOME you get a 'Transmutation Chest' very early on which automatically collects every piece of loot you touch. Every time you leave an area, you get a pop-up showing all the stuff you've collected there, and you can pick what you want to keep/equip. Everything else is automatically turned into gold. That's sooo much better than the pain of inventory management in Dredmor.

Also no need to manage consumables, thanks to the cooldown-based inscription system, and no need to remember re-casting buffs that get dispelled, since you can easily set things to autocast under certain conditions.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Been playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup lately. Been a lot of fun.

[Cespenar]

Maybe kinder people than me would care to elucidate these, but I'll just dump some must-play titles that haven't been mentioned and scoot.

Into the Breach
Crypt of the Necrodancer
Nuclear Throne
Binding of Isaac
Spelunky
DoomRL
Nethack

And a few more recent-ish, shooty, good but not great ones:

Synthetik
Wizard of Legend
Enter the Gungeon

But honestly, ADOM is my immovable favorite as well, even if I don't play it anymore.

[Cikomyr]

I always loved me some Angband. I wished there was a mobile version; id waste so much time on that.

Best games are those where you become so powerful you play on automatic mode for 10 levels, and then get 1-shotted by a Boss Darkness Dragon that struct out of nowhere.

Man, was i pissed.

[TaRix]

I still can't beat the last guy in Dead Cells, and that's on the lowest difficulty setting.

[Man_Over_Game]

FTL is a thoroughly awesome roguelike, for many, many reasons. But there's one I like even better: Renowned Explorers. It's got a lot of heart and humor, but more impressive is it's combat system. You can spec out your team to be pacifists and pacifist so hard you can befriend rampaging gorillas, mummies, and cultists. Very fun game, definitely worth a look if you like roguelikes.

I played the hell out of Faster Than Light. Almost got all the expansion ships.

I'll have to check out your recommendation, though.

[Hunter Noventa]

I'm a fan of FTL, even if I never was good enough to unlock most of the ships. The mods for it are quite good as well.

[Kaptin Keen]

I'm a fan of FTL, even if I never was good enough to unlock most of the ships. The mods for it are quite good as well.

FTL is utterly brilliant. Which mods did you enjoy ... actually, strike that: If you had to chose on mod (to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them), which one would it be?

[Anteros]

Dungeons of Dredmor got me into the genre and I still have fond memories of it, but my undisputed favourite has to be Tales of Maj'Eyal (aka TOME). It's honestly a candidate for my Game of All Time in any genre - it's just brilliantly designed in so many ways.

One of my favourite things about it is the sheer diversity of classes. Some are your standard fantasy fare - Archer, Berserker, Rogue, etc. Even those can be very fun, but some of the classes you get to unlock later are just really creative both conceptually and mechanically.

It also streamlines many of the things that can get annoying in some other rogue-likes. Like inventory management - in TOME you get a 'Transmutation Chest' very early on which automatically collects every piece of loot you touch. Every time you leave an area, you get a pop-up showing all the stuff you've collected there, and you can pick what you want to keep/equip. Everything else is automatically turned into gold. That's sooo much better than the pain of inventory management in Dredmor.

Also no need to manage consumables, thanks to the cooldown-based inscription system, and no need to remember re-casting buffs that get dispelled, since you can easily set things to autocast under certain conditions.

ToMe is amazing, but I lost my original save with everything unlocked, and I'm not willing to grind all those unlocks again.

[Caelestion]

I always loved me some Angband. I wished there was a mobile version; id waste so much time on that.

Me too! I first encountered it at school, over 20 years ago.

[OutOfThyme]

I've been waiting for animations to be introduced in Slay the Spire. Don't know if that's even on the drawing board, I just feel they should be there - like they are in Darkest Dungeon.

I know they've put animations in for a lot of the enemies. I'm not sure if they're planning to animate every card effect, but that's a bigger undertaking than animating every enemy.

I still can't beat the last guy in Dead Cells, and that's on the lowest difficulty setting.

It's a hard fight for sure. I cheesed it with a Tactics trap build and Ice Bow. Honestly, Ice Bow/Ice Blast(?) are game changers because of how much of the game is reliant on mobility. Being able to freeze or slow enemies down changes everything.

I'm personally stuck on Hard, since I can't make it to the first boss without getting obliterated in either Ramparts or Toxic Sewers. Took me about 25 hours of playing to get good enough at the game to beat the first boss, according to my Switch, and I've spent the rest hitting my head against a wall.

[Anteros]

Most of the cards in STS do have animations. I think it's in a good place right now where it feels good to play. The animations give playing your cards some weight but don't slow down the game.

[Maethirion]

Slay the Spire and Renowned Explorers are two of my go to games when I've got less than an hour for gaming time. Both are easily digestible and just a heap of fun.

STS I'm playing on about asc. 10 on all three characters and it's a good challenge without feeling ridiculous. I'm just really impressed with their game balance in general.

[OutOfThyme]

Slay the Spire and Renowned Explorers are two of my go to games when I've got less than an hour for gaming time. Both are easily digestible and just a heap of fun.

STS I'm playing on about asc. 10 on all three characters and it's a good challenge without feeling ridiculous. I'm just really impressed with their game balance in general.

I find that Ascension works mostly all the way up to A20. Having to fight an extra boss means you can get screwed pretty heavily. I usually play A19 or A15 for that reason. I've never even gone for an A20 Act 4 playthrough because of how certifiably insane two Act 3 bosses is.

[Maethirion]

I find that Ascension works mostly all the way up to A20. Having to fight an extra boss means you can get screwed pretty heavily. I usually play A19 or A15 for that reason. I've never even gone for an A20 Act 4 playthrough because of how certifiably insane two Act 3 bosses is.

I've actually not reached A20 yet on any of them - highest is sitting at 15. that sounds absolutely brutal and I wouldn't have a clue where to even start.

[OutOfThyme]

I've actually not reached A20 yet on any of them - highest is sitting at 15. that sounds absolutely brutal and I wouldn't have a clue where to even start.

It is. The big problem is that you generally build decks around one type of Act 3 boss - a Power-heavy deck will falter against Awakened One without serious scaling, for example. Having two bosses means you now have to prepare for the next fight without knowing what it is. One option is to go with something utterly cheesy like a Corruption+Dead Branch deck on the Ironclad, or to have a very solid deck.

I have had some success with the Defect using a Frost/Dark build with some focus generators - if such options even come up. It's really easy to turtle down with a solid frost deck and to let your Dark orb gather a ton of damage (or you can use Recursion to send it to the back of your orb stack). Glacier's one of the best cards in the game because of how awesome of a defense it provides.

[factotum]

I'm not actually a big fan of this genre as a whole, because the mechanics are generally based too much on random chance and forcing you to play the game multiple times to get through. Doesn't matter how much skill and knowledge of the game you have, it's possible for sheer bad luck to kill you or render it unlikely you can defeat the game. I have played NetHack, ADOM, Dungeons of Dredmor and FTL, and enjoyed them for a little while, but the frustration usually overwhelms the fun after a time.

[Rodin]

I still can't beat the last guy in Dead Cells, and that's on the lowest difficulty setting.

I would keep an eye out for the patch. A big reason the final boss of Dead Cells is so difficult is that he scales linearly with the player's stats. This wouldn't be a huge deal, except for one problem; the players stats don't scale linearly. HP gain decreases with each level up, and after a certain point the enemies are gaining more damage than you are gaining HP. This means that taking scrolls that don't increase your damage can be actively bad for you, a mechanic that is not described anywhere in game. For regular enemies, you can keep up by just focusing on your damage. They can't hurt you if you're one-shotting them, after all. In comes the final boss: he is immune to high damage. Any hit that does more than 4% of his HP is reduced to that amount. In other words, increasing your damage doesn't help, and increasing your HP makes him hit harder. This is why current advice is to stop leveling up after hitting a certain ratio of scrolls (I believe it's 8 Brutality, 7 Tactics, 13 Survival), as that's the most efficient stat ratio, and also to pick up multi-hitting weapons to bypass the 4% damage resist.

At least, until the patch. Because the developers are awesome and have a huge level of involvement with the community, they've heard our pain and are rolling out a massive balance patch soon. It removes the daft level scaling mechanic entirely and re-balances the entire game around its absence. They've also eased the damage resist of bosses, making it more feasible for heavy-hitting weapons to get in some good blows on them. This means it's finally possible to gain an advantage by outleveling the content and picking up stronger weapons. From what I hear it's also made 3 and 4 cell difficulty a lot harder, but that's at a level I never expect to play anyway.

The patch is also adding a load of new content like a custom game mode, new abilities for elites, re-balancing a bunch of the crappier weapons, etc. It just entered beta a few days ago, so it should be released some time in the next few weeks.

[Anteros]

I find that Ascension works mostly all the way up to A20. Having to fight an extra boss means you can get screwed pretty heavily. I usually play A19 or A15 for that reason. I've never even gone for an A20 Act 4 playthrough because of how certifiably insane two Act 3 bosses is.

Really? I find that by this point my deck is either able to handle anything or doomed to failure. I usually either die to the first boss or breeze through everything. Sure some decks get hard countered by certain bosses, but plenty of others don't.

My problem is usually making it to this point since I tend to play greedy...which may explain the difference in our experiences now that I think about it.

[Eldan]

Speaking of on your phone, ages ago when I was in high school, where was a minimalist hack of Rogue available on Ti-92 calculators. I spent so many boring lessons on that.

[OutOfThyme]

Really? I find that by this point my deck is either able to handle anything or doomed to failure. I usually either die to the first boss or breeze through everything. Sure some decks get hard countered by certain bosses, but plenty of others don't.

My problem is usually making it to this point since I tend to play greedy...which may explain the difference in our experiences now that I think about it.

I like playing a lot of cards, so Time Eater tends to screw me over fairly readily. If I can beat Time Eater as the first boss on A20, then the others are usually fairly trivial. If I get D&D or Awakened One, then I have to hope to not get Time Eater.