ROGUELIKE IS NOT A GENRE. FIGHT ME.

If you're following my texts, you might sense a certain set of repetitions. First, my slightly jaded grumbling about how everything is a roguelike nowadays. And then my follow-up on how I do not believe that roguelike is even a genre anymore. Now that's a point I feel lots of folks might disagree with, simply because of the classic definition of what a game genre even is. Which rolls as follows:

A video game genre is an informal classification of a video game based on how it is played rather than visual or narrative elements. - Video game genre - Wikipedia

So, uh... I kind of dug myself a deep hole here, because by this standard definition, Roguelike very much IS a genre. It is a framework of how the game is played and doesn't care for the visuals or the narrative, so, spot on, right?

Well. Yes. But also, no. Let me tackle a different example. The cursed and ever-present "RPG Elements". If you flinched a little by hearing those words, you know what I am talking about, but I can elaborate in hope that this will lay a bit of groundwork for my thoughts here. As you know, we are living in a timeline where every goddamn game in creation, especially cooked by AAA studios, needs to have "RPG Elements". This code wording usually means a completely useless and shoddily designed Skill Tree upgrading system. You have a linear RPG like, oh let's say LAST OF US 2, and cram in a pointless skill system simply because you found out that players like to see numbers going up and need to give them a little reward for it. By now this is a plague, a thing in nigh every game. And what is the point of a skill system if, by the end of the game or even earlier, a player can accrue all the skills altogether? What if they do not even change the playstyle much... if at all? Worse yet, what if the skills in question are just tiny numerical adjustments to your already existing kit? You know the ones - +10% extra damage at night when holding a shovel. +5% Crit Chance after eating a sandwich. Complete nonsense.

But it exists and persists exactly because it lets the marketing team tout the game as being an RPG. Or, at least, have those "RPG elements". Gosh golly how nice. But is it? Is it really? Is BORDERLANDS an RPG because it has a skill tree system? I think not.

Now, back to the topic at hand. Roguelike is a genre, right? Well, okay - let's compare two Roguelikes and see how much they fit into the same basket: SLAY THE SPIRE and AGAINST THE STORM. In SLAY THE SPIRE, you craft a streamlined deck, gather relics, and scrounge up powerful interactions in round-by-round combat against devilish foes. In AGAINST THE STORM you raise up your functional township, secure resources, explore the land... Both games are, in essence, Roguelikes. Both couldn't be more different from each other.

The OG, the grandfather. The Rogue. Not many Roguelikes share its DNA nowadays, and yet...

Wait, you say. But that's because a game can be MORE than one genre, dum-dum! Gosh, you got me there. Yes, true, there is not a holy law prescribing that a game must be just one thing. In fact, mashups of genres are where innovation thrives! But that sort of, gently, feeds a drop into the goblet of my rationale here. Roguelike isn't a genre; it's a framework of gameplay loop. A systematic approach to how the genre is presented. If anything, I would argue that the secondary genre IS the core genre of the game in question. When talking about the examples above, you could easily say that SLAY THE SPIRE is a deck-builder and AGAINST THE STORM is a city-builder and completely omit the very mention of both games having strong roguelike roots.

This is the core of my argument - we define roguelikes not really by being roguelikes, but by their other bit. What makes them click and tick under the hood, what engines propel them. Sure, they might have randomised encounters. Procedural generation of stages. Permadeath built in with meta-progression. They can share a run-based structure. That, however, does not really describe the game in question. Otherwise, we would be able to say that CAVES OF QUD is the same as BINDING OF ISAAC, because they are both roguelikes. Would you make such a comparison? I wouldn't.

And that is how a GENRE should work, right? If I compare deck-builders, I expect both games to be about curating a deck of cards. This is a comparison that makes sense. I can compare even BALATRO to SLAY THE SPIRE, despite both games being wildly different, because at the core of what the player is doing is working on their deck to shine and blast through the challenges. When I compare turn-based tactics, I know what to expect by naming the genre alone. You don't get that by simply saying "This game is a roguelike." At best, all you get is some frame of what kind of experience you can expect when it comes to loops and progression, but you have literally no clue without extra information about what the game is going to be.

Will it be a deck builder? Turn-based strategy? Beat 'em up? Oh yeah, ABSOLUM just came out, a beat 'em up roguelike. Gosh, maybe it's a first-person shooter, like GUNFIRE REBORN? Saying "I am playing a roguelike" doesn't really tell anything anymore. This "genre" has expanded over so many other genres that the humble beginning of being a dungeon-crawling procedural adventure is merely a tiny percentage of what it covers nowadays.

Why does it matter?

Well. Damn. It doesn't, okay, you've got me again.

But what if it does...? Names have power, or so the fantasy books would like me to believe. Labels perform a function. Someone might go through their life with a definitive "I do not like roguelikes" attitude simply without realising that being a roguelike doesn't really mean that much. There is such a massive variety of experiences built around that mechanical framework that it is impossible now to simply say "rogues ain't for me" without sounding a little silly. And it's nobody's fault! It just... happened. But this is why I would strongly suggest for devs and marketing teams, especially, not to place so much emphasis on it. Sure, it's still good to mention here and there, but being a Roguelike in this day and age is an almost meaningless tag - it tells us so little about what your game actually is.

Now just whisper "roguelike" and then bellow at the top of your lungs "beat 'em up shmup with RTS elements!" and this is the part that hooks me in. Be proud of what you made into a roguelike, not of the fact that it is one in the first place.