Rougelikes: Finding the Fun in Starting Over

Games can utilize difficulty in a variety of ways. I wrote about difficulty in the Spider-Man games, but other genres of games interact with the concept in a completely different way. Rougelikes generate difficulty though resetting the player’s progress back to the start of the game when a failure state is reached. The consequences for losing are brutal and only through intense mastery of the game’s core mechanics will the player reach victory.

The genre is named from a 1980 computer game called ‘Rouge’. In this game a dungeon would be randomly created for the player and each time an attempt was started, the dungeon would be different. The player never knows what to expect and was expected to navigate the dungeon with the limited information they have and adapt to any obstacles they face on the fly. Losing a round of Rouge would send the player back to the beginning of the dungeon, where the floorplan would once again be shifted around in its entirety and all previous progress lost.

I find the experience similar to learning a new song or arrangement for a musical instrument. I am a violinist and was good enough at one point in my life to get paid for my skill (though I exercise that muscle much less frequently these days). A skill that I honed in the later years of my musical career was called ‘sight-reading’. This skill focused on quickly understanding music sheets that I had never seen before and being able to play them with little preparation or practice. The musician relies on their skill with their instrument and music theory knowledge to quickly acclimate to the new piece in front of them. A Rougelike is akin to sight-reading a whole song from beginning to start without error and having to restart with a different song should a mistake be made.

There exists a wide swath of games in this genre, but they are typically categorized as Rougelikes and Rougelites. Rougelikes abide more strictly to the principles that I have listed above (random level generation, permadeath, no persistent upgrades). Rougelites on the other hand allow you to retain something from your failed attempts at beating the game (random level generation, permadeath, persistent upgrades). Typically, collectible currency that is acquired in a run can be spent on boons that improve the player’s chances of making it to the finish line during their next attempt. Mark Brown of Game Maker’s Toolkit explains these concepts in a stellar way so please do check out his video before continuing on as I elaborate on my experiences with a few games in this genre.

I played the following games for this piece. Enter the Gungeon, Sifu, and PokéRouge. All three of these titles offer a unique take on the genre and difficulty.

Enter the Gungeon is one of my personal favorite games. It is currently ranked at my #2 slot on my Top 5 Videogames list (scroll down on the Videogame nonsense homepage to see the rest of my list). In this game, everything is guns. The goofy humor and bullet hell style gameplay make this an incredibly fun experience. This game does not pull any punches either. It is brutally hard at the beginning but then something curious happens, the player begins to learn. I have put an intense number of hours into this game on both the Switch and PC. After all this time, I have an innate muscle memory that I can utilize anytime I come back to the game, even if long amounts of time have passed.

Enter the Gungeon is a true Rougelike experience. Each run is just as difficult as the first. The only caveat is that you earn Hegemony credits as you progress throughout the game. This currency can be used between runs to unlock new weapons and items. These weapons are then sent to the random pool of items that the player may stumble across in the Gungeon. This does not give the player an inherent advantage, but spices things up. I still have yet to encounter every weapon in the Gungeon and I consider myself a veteran player at this point. There are plenty of mysteries that the Gungeon still holds which is why I am always delighted to return. The sequel, Exit the Gungeon is also a joy to play and I wholeheartedly recommend both games.

Sifu is a martial arts beat-em-up game that does not have randomly generated levels. It also saves your progress in-between levels and does not send you back to the beginning of the game. You may be asking, well if it does not have the staples of the rougelike/lite genre, why is it featured here? Well, in the words of Ryan George (Pitch Meeting), “I’m gonna need you to get allll the way off my back about that”. I would classify Sifu as containing rougelite elements. The progression system of acquiring new skills and increased stats makes the prospect of victory more attainable on future attempts. This game may not be a rougelike or a rougelite, but the pattern of being pummeled into the ground again and again while learning tips and tricks to make future runs more successful is definitely here. In any case, I am featuring this game to showcase its Rougelite elements and how they are used to bolster this game and its replayability.

                When I first started Sifu, I was not very good. I struggled to understand what I was supposed to be doing, and was constantly punished. I thought the game was doing a poor job of signposting the enemy attacks. As I progressed, I began to understand that the enemy tells were there, just more subtle than I was expecting. The game has a system of death where when you run out of health, you can revive but slightly older. As your character ages, you lose maximum health but your damage output increases. In my playthrough I usually found a snowballing effect where I would reach a point where I lost all of my lives nearly at once and would find myself just restarting instead of progressing. My first successful attempt of Level 1 had me gain 14 years on my character. My latest run of that level had me only gain 1 year which is considerably better. While I am still pushing through levels 4 and 5 of the game, I am enjoying every minute.

PokéRouge is an addictive Pokémon battling gauntlet where the prize is simply getting to play again. The goal is to complete 200 waves of Pokémon battles ranging from wild Pokémon encounters, to battles against special trainers from the mainline games. This is one of those games that I am constantly struggling to put down in my free time. Unlike other Rougelikes I have played, breaks can be taken at any point without losing progress. This makes playing in short spurts extremely easy. This game is a web-browser based fan-game that can be played by visiting www.pokerouge.net. I have installed this game on my desktop computer, my laptop, and my phone. My account is linked so I can take a break on my computer, and pick up right where I left off later in the day on my phone without hassle. This level of accessibility has undoubtedly been why I have grown so attached to this game in recent months. The concept of the game is super simple, devise a team of Pokémon to tackle the 200 stages of the game and defeat the final boss. Along the way, Pokémon captured can join your team and after each stage you will be taken to a store where you can purchase items and select one of a randomly selected lot of freebies. This game is unforgiving at the beginning, surprising the player with tough trainer battles without any warning. However, as I progressed in my runs, I began to see the patterns in which these more important battles would appear. I certainly still find myself being outmatched due to my own carelessness and bullishness. The variety of the team-building and wanting to collect them all (a refreshing change from our current Dexit reality in the official Pokémon games) keeps me coming back for more.

A critique I have with another game I play too much, Call of Duty, is that some weapons feel like they do no damage at all. You would think that being on the receiving end of a firearm would be detrimental regardless, however due to the way the game is balanced, some weapons are simply not worth using. It would be understandable to think that PokéRouge would have a similar problem, some Pokémon simply do not have the stats or the movepool to take on the challenge of this game. Luckily, the developers have gone to great lengths to ensure that all play styles are viable. The player can hatch eggs along their journeys that give access to egg moves for a Pokémon. These moves range from moves that the Pokémon could reasonably learn, to ridiculously overpowered moves that give Gamefreak and Nintendo nightmares. Special passive abilities can also be earned which usually have synergy with the egg moves. In addition, having shiny Pokémon on the team can increase the probability of finding good items in the store. Using these Pokémon can definitely make the game easier. The great thing about PokéRouge is that it lets the player dictate how much of a Rougelike/lite will be experienced. When I started playing the game, I wanted to play with a true Rougelike ruleset. To me, this meant that the retry feature was turned off. I would incorporate egg moves into my runs, but at the beginning, I did not have many. Eventually, I was able to beat Level 200. Though, something in me was not satiated. Nothing fundamentally changes once you beat the game. The game just beckons back to the player, ‘I bet you cannot do it again’.

I have been finding the fun in beating the game again and again, each time with a unique team of Pokémon. Each playthrough is different, each team is more ridiculous than the last. Now, with my knowledge of the games systems, I can get myself out of sticky situations that would have previously ended a run. I have found fun in turning on the retry system. When I lose a stage, the game will now prompt me to try again at infinitum. This gives an opportunity for me to explore those options I decided against previously. Those moments of ‘if only I had done this instead’ are now obliterated as I can try them. The RNG (random number generation) of the level is predetermined. This means that if I use a move with 50% accuracy on turn 1 and it misses, it will always miss on that turn in my future attempts. With this in mind, an almost premonition-based gameplay can arise where the player can learn from their previous misfortune and choose a more successful path through a level. In my playthrough, I was stuck on Gym Leader Clay for quite some time as I developed my ritual through getting through the fight with my limited resources, sometimes doing zany, non-sensical maneuvers in order to manipulate the outcome.

This game clearly was made by a passionate team at Pagefault games who have a love for Pokémon and the Rougelike genre. I love the PokéRouge community, as many of its members are just as addicted to this game as I am. I apologize in advance if you give this free game a try and subsequently suffer from PokéRouge withdrawal when you are not playing.

                After playing this variety of Rougelikes for this piece, plus a few I have played in the past (Balatro, TMNT: Splintered Fate, Cursed to Golf) have reminded me what I enjoy about this genre. I appreciate improving at something. Whether personal or professional, I enjoy mastering a task to the point where it becomes second nature. While there are elements of frustration, they are necessary for that ‘aha’ moment where it just clicks. Sometimes these moments are so well hidden, that I would just wake up one day and notice that I was now proficient. I may not even have noticed the change occurring. While other games may have bombastic stories or charming art styles, the Rougelike genre lets the player look back at their progress and say, ‘I did that’. These games did not indulge my failure; it did not pull its punches because it saw I was struggling. These games kick you when you are down and laugh about it. This furthers the catharsis when everything comes together and I would realize that I have learned the lessons the game was teaching me. I was able to beat the game because I was finally worthy enough to do so. My dedication and investment paid dividends and I was then rewarded with victory. I think we are all looking for that feeling in one form or another. I just learned about a Rougelike called Going Under which is supposed to be very tongue-in-cheek satire for Corporate America. It should be right up my alley. As always, thank you for reading!