Is Your Game Appealing Enough to Start Over? [Game Essence]
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ก.ย. 2024
- Games that greatly penalize the player each time they're defeated are on the rise. Roguelikes are a prime example.
This is fine for games players are meant to play over and over again, but whether they'll actually want to play is another question.
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IMO something to consider as well is how easily the player can realize what they did wrong. Old school platformers like Donkey Kong Country or Crash Bandicoot have you starting over a lot without relying heavily on the storytelling, but what keeps you motivated is that you can clearly understand how to surpass an obstacle even when you don't quite accomplish it. When things start getting cryptic is when players lose interest as they keep failing.
I've experienced this a handful of times with Zelda titles when I was younger, if I got struck on a dungeon I'd sometimes go months without playing it again
Kinda like Rayman. The fast paced levels seem hard but after a but of memorization it's simple
I also see that with Celeste mapping. It’s probably slightly easier to make the route feel intentional (since most maps are hard enough to force a specific route), but sometimes mappers make cryptic and unintuitive routes (The Tower (XVI) from Strawberry Jam does this by design), which makes players frustrated. I just used a clear video on that one lol
meanwhile, Clockwork (also from Strawberry Jam) is so intuitive, I didn’t even have to use the watchtowers to read the room. It’s a bit like cheating since that’s more of an autoscroller, but the routing in that map is superb
When you miss a jump in DKC, it's YOUR fault. You know this and that motivates you to try again.
Too many "hard" games out there don't explain mechanics or fail to explain what you're supposed to do.
@@Chadius Unless the camera respawns the enemy after you defeat it (see the cristal cavern level)
I'm so glad he's covering this topic. Tough-as-nails isn't fun unless the game stays fun after punishing deaths, and not having a clue what went wrong or what to do different is a total pace killer and sometimes the end of the relationship between that game and the player.
Now I understand why Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is so intriguing to play; The story is interesting enough that it make you motivate to keep going! This applies to any Mystery Dungeon games, btw.
Except gate of infinity
explorers of sky.
@@1ばかぶた Actually, I'd say ESPECIALLY Gates to Infinity, due to its reliance on the characters being a central part of its storyline.
The problem in its case comes from cryptic game mechanics, like how Team Attack slowly makes your basic attacks weaker if you don't use it immediately, and a general lack of options (both indepth [such as text speed] and casual [like the playable roster]).
@@extremmefan7305 The basic attack always does 5 damage regardless of the Team Attack.
And it incorporates the main appeal of Pokemon, finding and catching new Pokemon. The more dungeons you unlock, the more Pokemon you can find and add to your team.
Always nice to get a gaming history lesson and a vocabulary lesson along with the video's topic of the day.
I like games that seem easy on the surface, but are secretly hard the entire time.
Subspace Emissary and Donkey Kong Country are great examples of this; they're so filled to the brim with fun that you never stop to think "dang, this stuff's hard".
not sure about Subspace, even on normal diffuctly shit gets WACKY.
Hades is amazing at replayability because of the insane amount of unique voiced dialogue the game has. You can play through the entire game right to the epilogue and never hear the same voice line, its amazing.
unless you're like me, when you manage to break the dialog system due to your sheer amount of failures and the game's conclusion is being left dangling just out of reach because you have to beat [redacted] another several times
I was somewhere near 100 runs when I had to put it down because my Steam Deck randomly shut itself off and killed a really good run. Come on, at least autosave?
@@fearingalma1550 I just got Hades on steam sale and I've been playing it for a while. There is auto save system in the game... I stopped playing mid run multiple times and could continue on when I went back.
Sakurai managed to condense the history of Roguelikes, the like/lite distinction, and their relationship to Mystery Dungeon style games into less than two minutes. Amazing!
As he pointed out, there are several definitions for the difference. The one I've seen most is "A roguelite lets you keep *some* progress from one run to subsequent one(s); in a roguelike you lose everything and you've made zero progress.".
@@Link-ho8yq That's the one that became the most well known after the release of Binding of Isaac, and is a genre that is essentially originated from Spelunky and FTL only. The genre that Sakurai mentioned was what roguelikes meant beforehand, when it was a very much alive but also very niche genre. With their own very diverse approaches to what makes a roguelike fun. Btw, that genre of roguelikes spawned not only the genre that is now known as roguelikes, but also Diablo!
This is why I like the design of Super Meat Boy; the levels are all short and when you die, you almost instantly respawn back at the beginning, so it creates this snappy flow to gameplay. I have a distinct memory of going into a zen-like trance towards the end of the game, where I didn't even react to dying or how hard the game was getting because I was just so focused on getting through it. It was one of the most memorable gaming experiences I ever had, oddly enough.
Edit: While Sakurai has a point that "Seeing what's next" is a good way to motivate players into repeating themselves through constant deaths, it's also possible that the game itself is fun enough that players will want to keep playing just to for its own sake. I've found that with Pizza Tower in particular, I didn't mind having to repeat some levels when going for P-Rank because the core gameplay is so fun, so much so that I liked having excuses to play it more.
Exactly. Honestly, if Pizza tower was a rouguelike, I would still play it over and over. The core gameplay is so fun.
What also helps with the snappy gameplay point is that in super meat boy the music doesn't loop over once you die but continues as long as your one the same stage.
I’ve experienced your zen-like trance, but for Celeste.
I really like your definition of roguelike and roguelite. It makes the most sense to me that roguelikes are games that play like rogue (not exactly, just like it), while roguelites are games that don't play like rogue, but take elements from it.
Looking at 4:10 specifically, that's killed at least one challenging experience for me. At some point, getting past all the obstacles wasn't fun, it was tedious, and I spent the whole time thinking there should've been a save point nearby.
If you have challenging content, you also need to apply the principle of Fail Faster so players can try and learn the challenge without the excess dragging it down.
Yeah. If a game is designed with the idea that players will fail many times while learning, then how the player proceeds after they respawn shouldn’t be a major hassle that hinders enjoyment. Fromsoft games before Elden Ring (and I believe possibly Sekiro) would spawn you at the last bonfire when dying, which were a significant hike away from a boss fight. This just made learning take longer and be less enjoyable.
@@JGuy97 tbh in souls games each boss hike was to be shortened most of the time (im looking at you bed of chaos) via shortcuts the player unlocks during progression through the level ; and this system also makes it so even if you fail against normal enemies you can return faster. at least that's how i felt for DS1, DS3 and bloodborne lol
and for elden ring the stakes of marika were a very welcomed addition since the game's scale was so large, i hope they keep a similar system in their next "souls" game
Sakurai talking about the difference between roguelike vs roguelite really shows he looks into smaller gaming niches and draws inspiration from them, instead of just copying the most successful triple A titles.
For any aspiring game devs looking for examples of appeal, at least in my experience, here's my list:
- Feedback. Everything you do should feel punchy and provide some nice audio feedback. Swing a sword? Give it some weight. Hit an enemy? Make it feel and sound like I really hit.
- Achievements/scoring. Do you know why we pumped so many quarters into arcade machines back in the day? Because we wanted to outdo ourselves and see progress with each attempt. Just incrementing a stage counter won't always do it. For example, you might skip all the content but have a really low score. The bigger achievement in my opinion is a big score AND high level count, not just the latter. Or adding special achievements to give you goals to do for trying different gameplay that you might not normally do will add replayability.
- SMART procedural level generation. Random levels can be fun at all, but if there's no method to its madness then it becomes chaotic. Games like Binding of Isaac and Spelunky do this very well.
- Really interesting items. Add some items that make you feel stronger, and maybe even change the way you play.
- Game should have a nice flow. Not many people enjoy spending 10 minutes managing their inventory and/or skills. It's okay to add minor RPG elements to your game (and encouraged), but don't over do it. As a roguelite/like you're just going to start over when you die anyway, so keep things moving along as fast as possible, yet also try to introduce modularity with different skills you can swap out and in. This ensures the player can try a different playstyle builds with each attempt, increasing replayability.
I'm sure there's a lot more, and if anyone has suggestions of their own please do comment. As a game dev myself I'm always interested to see what keeps people playing games.
"But don't expect players to play a title that mimic this game system if it doesn't create the desire to see what comes next". I believe Lords of the Fallen is a good example and to this day I still don't know how it fared better than some games.
The opposite effect can happen with rougelikes, you end up feeling the game is unfair due to the high amount of randomness involved. The strategy at that point is to reset over and over until you get a powerful item in the first 5 minutes of gameplay.
This doesn't happen too often, but there are time in Dead Cell's 5 Boss Cell difficulty (the hardest one) where enemies that don't work well together can spawn at the worst times.
Enemies like Librarians are a nightmare to deal with when there's 2 enemies onscreen, since they require precise dodging, but the problem is that other enemies might force you to dodge at inopportune times and get hit nontheless. This specific example only happens in the last area before the final boss, but it is something you can run into.
See, I just remind myself I'm playing the equivalent of AI art when I could be playing leves that I know were created by a human and shut em off
That is only true if the game is poorly made, the GOOD roguelikes reward you for playing good and allow you to modify your future, like how Enter the gungeon gives you rewards when not taking damage or Binding of isaac that lets you get more powerful items when not taking red heart damage
@@bigduke5902 I mean...developers have to create levelgen systems themselves. These things are very hard to make, and are often tested over and over to make sure that while a level's exact layout is different, to force adaptability from the player, its general structure and 'feel' is the same. Many rougelikes follow specific generation rules for specific levels, or are made up of hand-made rooms strung together in some shape or form.
I suppose you could say it's splitting hairs but I've never really gotten the impression from any (good) roguelike that the levels feel artificial because of that.
This is an issue of balance. Some people think balance doesn't matter in a single player or pve game but it plays a part in everything, even story
Chaotic Evil: Tetris is a roguelike.
I didn’t realize there was a difference between roguelikes and roguelites and thought they were the same thing this entire time!
The clarification helps a lot wow
Thank you, Sakurai,for explaining the difference between Roguelikes and Roguelites. It really is hard to decipher the two, especially since I have never played either until say, 3 to 5 years ago
Worth noting that different people use these terms differently, and the definition Sakurai is using is one that I think is somewhat less popular with the general public. Many people use "roguelike" to mean any game with randomly-generated levels, items, and permadeath, regardless of whether its combat is similar to Rogue. Then "roguelite" is used for games that fit this description but also have some form of permanent progression which makes you stronger from run to run. By this definition Binding of Isaac is a roguelike, but Hades is a roguelite.
My current project is a roguelite, and there are two primary ways I plan on trying to keep players interested in continuing to play.
The first is that, as they play the main game and encounter new content (Items, NPCs, events, etc.) they will then unlock challenge maps based on those discoveries. These challenge maps will be special scenarios designed around a specific set of game elements, providing a unique challenge and teaching players how better to handle those elements in the main game. I don't want to just fill the game with tutorials or big text documents explaining how everything works, so my thinking is that this will be a more fun way to help players get better at the game.
The other way is going to be trying to find the right balance between common and rare elements appearing in the game. If there are say, 100 total rooms in the game, and they all have an equal chance of appearing in a level, then players will discover them all pretty quickly and levels will start feeling kind of samey pretty quickly. If however, I make 25 of those rooms common, and the remaining 75 very rare and more interesting than the common ones, players are more likely to continue getting surprised by new rooms they haven't seen before for a much longer time, hopefully keeping the game interesting to play for longer. I plan on using this mentality in a lot of the randomly generated elements of the game. My hope is that when it's finished, people who have played for hundreds of hours still have a chance of not seeing everything in the game!
Reminds me of Binding of Isaac, a roguelike where beating some part of the game unlocks another part, but you have to play through it again to experience the new content. I'm currently at a point in the game where I need to beat Hush one more time to unlock alternate routes and a new final boss, Mother. Beating her will unlock a new "level" called The Ascent and more final bosses, but more importantly to me, a new gameplay style via an unlockable character. Playing through The Ascent as various characters will also let me unlock more playable characters with unique mechanics, the Tainted versions of those characters. The game is constantly giving the player more and more to look forward to.
The feeling of progression is definitely a big factor. In a game like Dark Souls, everything is difficult at first. However, each death allows you to figure out the threats and how to beat them! Eventually, you can go down your route in a few minutes very easily. (That sewer area hurt me physically and mentally though and Blight Town made me drop the game)
I think another key element of "roguelites" is that you're not starting over from zero every time you die; each run, you can gain items or abilities or levels or currency that influences future attempts, usually making it easier to progress further next tie.
Yeah, that's how I always understood it, too.
Rogue-like: You're literally being put back to zero and don't have any kind of "meta progression"
Rogue-lite: You can always get something out of your runs that will help you on your future ones
Lites have becoming waayy more common in the past few years, to the point where that's the standard design.
I thought this video was gonna be about whether or not a game is appealing enough for a 2nd playthrough. Like New Game +
Same here
Same
There's something about some games that offer new game plus though....
To me, if by chance, players can unlock an extra bit of lore or story because they have all the items acquired from the get-go, it'll make it more appealing.
@@vcdgamer You might be interested in Bravely Second then. It uses new game + as a fixed story feature in an incredibly innovative way.
It's one of the reasons that people play through Cuphead. That game is very difficult and you'll go through each stage many times, but it's so charming that you feel motivated to keep going to see what else they come up with
Never would I have thought I'd see Sakurai talking about Roguelite vs Roguelike lol
Motivation is a good thing. Motivation such as being inches away from figuring out who this mystery character is (Flame Emperor), or saving a character you deeply love (like Cynder in tEN or Mipha in AoC), or just learning how this new and brutal enemy type works and getting used to fighting them in crowds (Batman Arkham series), or getting revenge on a villain that mocked you for losing (again, Batman Arkham), or just because that one lovable character keeps popping up and you can't wait to see them again (How did Batman Arkham get three examples here?).
I have a feeling that the more official industry people who watch and listen to your channel, the better their games will become. And that fills me with hope.
That was my main issue with Dead Cells. After my third death only to do the same area all over again i just hopped off. There's only so much i can repeat the same area over and over again before it gets interesting.
Fun fact, you don't have to kill all the enemies in Dead Cells, sometimes it's just as expedient to dodge right through them and press on
There are optional routes you can take from the start, even more once you get certain items and have the DLC.
Dead cells has new features that really help in catering to fun factor.
You can practically be a demi god or anything in between now.
A good thing to make the same map interesting is put some thing that require better experience in the game.
Like, if you crouch and jump you make the jump higher so i can catch that treasure high up, or when you returning that map when you get a better weapon and discover a secret path by remember how to use it. Like you have a bomb that destroy fragile walls, and if you hit an sword making a different sound in that wall and wondering "hmm, what if i explode this?" And discover a shortcut or a secret boss, it will keep the player exploring.
I've been hearing the term Roguelike as a buzzword a lot over the last couple of years, but Sakurai is the first person to actually explain to me what it actually means. Thank you, Sakurai-san.
You couldn't Google it?
How I've seen the difference between Roguelike and Roguelite explained is that Roguelikes are purist with their permadeath mechanic, you always lose all progress. In Roguelike games there is some sort of permanent progress across runs in terms of unlocks or story.
wasn't expecting the tangent to explain the genre terms but it's neat that you did, even if i knew them already.
I just realized how much sense it makes that he canceled subspace emisarry for smash 4 now after brawl’s cutscenes got leaked
1:43 - a good way to summarize: "all rogues are likes"
"or because *you* can scrape by in the game you created, dont assume players will want to stick with it."
while im not a dev, i do understand this sentiment.
having made a lot of Mario Maker stuff, somewhere in the middle of making a set of worlds in
Mario Maker 2 i had the sudden realization "...i need to rebalance EVERY level." as i was trying to make them interesting
and challenging. only to realize i was doing that for ME. i kept tweaking the layouts as i got better at my own stages
and wasnt considering how obtusely frustrating it would be for normal players who dont know the whole level in advance.
the end result feels far more fair IMO. some stages are harder than others, but at least in those cases its very intentional
because games usually get harder to further you get.
which is far better than every level being an incidental enemy spam fest or having "scripted" things break because i didnt fully test
the behaviors enough. it was oddly fun trying to get everything much more balanced!
I just realized that Sakurai like?? Has a TH-cam channel??? For both English and Japanese audiences????? And he just vibes helping teach people how to play games?????? My respect for him has gone up even more.
One of my first game gear games was a roguelike, dragon crystal. I only beat it when the 3ds VC version was released, using save states. As a kid i think the highest level i would get to was like 10.
sadly, you needed save states as some of the floor layouts could cause you to hit a dead end. I hit a few myself.
@@suroguner yeah. I HATED when the floor had the "hidden" door thing and you literally had to click on every barrier to find the exit, and not even the real floor exit. I always tried to have some map spells handy to find the barrier quickly or die from starvation.
Wow... This one you have to REALLY like the gameplay to go to the end (story is a bullshit).
There's definitely some overlap between Roguelikes/Roguelites and randomizers for ordinary games, but in randomized games, you can usually die and continue on. I think the most important thing is that the game feels like a fresh experience even if you do start over.
Stubbornness can help carry people though, too. Then again, I've been surprised by when I've seen people give up on Cuphead, even when I was convinced they had the skills to win, so maybe this isn't all that common.
Theres been some posts about the definition of roguelite here, most saying they are more familiar with the "progression" definition and not the "run format" definition that Sakurai uses here. And then they use games like Hades as example, which is weird because both definitions would place Hades as a roguelite.
A more contentious example would be Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. In the dungeon, it plays like rogue with pokemon. Alternating turns, grid format, hunger and items. But also moves and type effectiveness and capturing (or recruiting in this case).
But when you die in the dungeon, you dont level down or forget moves. The pokemon you recruited stay recruited. You drop items you were carrying, but any you are able to bring out of the dungeon are free to be brought back in on future runs.
So, is that a roguelike or roguelite?
It's a roguelite for sure. I haven't seen Hades mentioned as a non roguelite either, but maybe I should check more closely.
Defining things on whether it's turn based or not isn't really reflecting of a genre, and simply a gameplay system. It's more prevalent with older games due to limited processing as well.
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon has level reset dungeons with no carry in items and no extra party members in the postgame.
@@Blue587EE I mean, it definitely does, but is that a roguelike mode in a roguelite, or is it just another way to play a roguelike?
A clearer example from a lesser known game is the indie game One Way Heroics, which, once you remove the twist of outrunning the end of the world to save the world, is pretty much rogue. Except when you win or lose, you get scored, and you gain points, and can do things like unlock new classes and perks, expand the starting castle with new options for your runs, unlock the transdimensional storage to carry items from an ended run to future ones, all to the story of this one guy endlessly reincarnating into variations of the same doomed world.
While personally, I like my game genres to describe the moment-to-moment gameplay so I call both PMD and OWH Roguelikes.
The real issue,honestly, is that with either description, Roguelite is just too vague and too wide to be of any use on its own. Perhaps PMD can be called a Rogue-Roguelite, haha.
i love that sakurai-san covered the roguelike topic, i personally refer to them all as "roguelike".
i'm also VERY addicted to the genre as a whole. :D
Kyle Bosman somewhere pointed out that "roguelite" is really a condescending way of saying "not roguelike enough," so I've stopped using the "lite" term. Even the "lighter" games are "like Rogue" in some ways.
There's certainly a lot of Roguelites in the Indie department, but a couple of favorites are Crypt of the Necrodancer and One Step From Eden. Both of them unique gameplay to keep me going no matter how many times I died.
Crypt of the Necrodancer was a rhythm-based dungeon-crawler that also had mod support and even let you change the music to whatever MP3 files you had.
One Step From Eden plays akin to Mega Man Battle Network but as a roguelite. It also had 3 different endings depending on whether you spare or kill the bosses you beat.
I thought it went:
Rougelike - Lose everything upon death and begin from the start.
Rougelite - When you die, spend resources you gathered to make the next run easier. (Level ups, bring items etc)
That's how I usually think of it too. With Action-Roguelike/Action-Roguelite being their own variations on the gameplay style.
I think of the definition of rougelike, rougelites the same way.
Rougelike being a permanent death/restart
Rougelite temporary death/restart keeping the map, resources etc intact for the next run.
I wonder if that makes NetHack a roguelite, since there's a random chance of creating a bones file when you die that contains your corpse for you (or in networked play, potentially someone else) to stumble upon.
i wonder if this is a regional diffrence thing because yeah thats how its always been
spending resources to makes the next run easier is a souls mechanic, not a rogue mechanic.
I want to once again say thank you Sakurai for making all these videos, they’re great
With games like dark souls and elden ring, I think part of the motivation to keep going isn't just to see enemy variety and locales (even though those are usually very impressive), it's the allure that you'll find something to make you stronger. A bigger sword. A ring that boosts your strength. A massive hammer. Armor made out of rocks. Finding something that'll turn the tide on the next boss you fight is very exciting and drives the player onward.
That's why I preferred the Demon's stage selector (if your current location doesn't let you progress, try another one).
Thank you, Sakurai and team! ^^
Question: Is Tetris a Roguelike
For Sakurai to have a 2-in-1 deal, Dark Souls and Demon's Souls are a very interesting aspect of gaming history that's rarely explored, as Rogue kicked off this genre and Demon's Souls eventually took a different route later down the lnie.
So a repetitive game is held up by its appeal outside its raw gameplay? That's something to really consider. If the player isn't completely invested in completing hard games, a game really needs something else to garner interest. I guess all that visual design, music, dialogue and other fluff is important if you're not catering to a very specific niche.
Another awesome video from Sakurai! I loved the clear explanation as to what roguelikes and roguelites are from him as well as the discussion on the appeal of intense difficulty games and starting over. I do not enjoy those types of games, so I would not play them. I think something more in line with Mystery Dungeon would be more appealing.
the issue with calling them all roguelike is that games that are actually *like rogue* then get buried under the oversaturation of games that could otherwise be called 'roguelite'.
The actual ideal would be to stop calling games that aren't like rogue either of these things and instead call them something that more accurately describes them.
Like, both Hades and Faster Than Light could be called roguelike, but they differ so much in genre that they word becomes useless. On the other hand, both Nethack and Dungeon Crawl are both clearly similar in style and experience to Rogue, so calling them both roguelike has purpose.
I personally like The Binging of Isaac Rebirth (plus its DLCs) (a Zelda-inspired roguelike) because what makes me want to keep going on, is the sheer desire to unlock things. AKA; the thrill for me is the 100% itself LOL
I mean, this game can be unfair sometimes, but that's part of the appeal; "Next time, I will have better luck". So for me TBoI also keeps me playing because I want to see what the randomness can bring.
Fun factor is why I don't mind endlessly dying in Shmups and in Ninja Gaiden
I wanna improve every time I lose
I appreciate that you explained the difference between roguelikes and "lites". I'm not too picky about genre tags but I like seeing the distinction!
An early wall is fine for me as long as there's an understanding of what I need to do, I just need to perform. If it feels like I have to get lucky to really have a chance I'm gone. If it seems like I COULD have won if I didn't make that mistake there or I didn't waste my heals over here I'm GOING BACK IN.
The game I’m working on is a rougelite, with realtime action. There’s the standard appeal of reaching a high score, but there’s also going to be a Challenge System, where as you complete more challenges during runs, you progress a meter that unlocks more backstory around the place you’re exploring, as well as more items, weapon abilities, and locales appearing in runs. These challenges incentivize you to learn the mechanics of the game and play in ways you might not have tried.
@3:54 This quote here sum up value of time for most of us.
Didn’t know roguelike and roguelite were two different things
Ninja Gaiden Black is the example of an action game where no matter how tough it gets, you still wanna fight through until the end because it’s rewarding. And then when you complete it, you wanna try again to challenge yourself.
Uncharted 3 was such a letdown from 2 because the difficulty spikes killed the game for me so much that once I completed it, I tossed it in a box of games I never play that much and never touched it again.
If only Chibi-Robo: Zip Lash can learn from this video!
".. so I'd say there's no harm in calling all of these titles "roguelikes." "
Mr Sakurai perhaps hasn't considered the prospect of sorting through new releases on Steam and having to go through slews of action games to get to the roguelikes
I get that a challenge can make a game fun and will push you to persevere harder.
Once you complete it, there is a moment of relief that it's over.
The problem is, if it's too hard you'll likely groan at the thought of doing it again in another replay.
If you dread replaying again, it brings the question if the game was actually good.
You'll only play a bad game once. A good game you'll play a few times. Legendary games will be replayed for decades.
Mystery Dungeon: Shiren The Wanderer (Super Famicom / DS) is a classic.
Many modern roguelikes/roguelites did not learn its most important lessons and are weaker games as a result.
thanks for the discussion on the topic, sakurai!
Sakurai has such passion about games, I’d be open if he took a break from spending so much time on a single AAA game and do some indie work
The first and main reason players replay a game (for whatever reason) is game's engagement. That's why great games always start with easy levels and enemies which give player learning space or tutorial if you will to engage players. These games gradually increase difficulty as game progresses. Even though player hits a wall, they won't give up cause they are already engaged and they know they can surpass it by doing better.
As a lover of shmups, I do think they suffer more from the difficulty wall than rougelites since they are the same layout each time.
You will see the same levels each time and your reward for climbing a wall is another wall.
This is why I normally prefer "caravan" style shmups or shmups with branching paths rather than "quarter eaters".
While not being hard, Bravely Default for the DS has a very repetitive cycle mid to endgame content, I basically only pressed on because I wanted to see the ending, but the story itself and the repeated boss fights would probably make someone quit cause they aren't strong and good enough on those game arcs, only the early and engame content.
*3DS
I appreciate Sakurai saying its generally okay to refer to them all as roguelikes. Most people are still going to knlw what you're talking about, and those who get genuinely upset about "mis-labeling" them are just being snobs
Arigato for sharing your knowledge as a game designer 🔥
Doing "iron man" runs or "no death runs" can be fun in Demons Souls and Dark Souls. It's fun to challenge yourself to see how far you can progress in a game without dying.
interesting, the most common difference I saw to say if it's roguelike or lite if it actually keeps some progress like upgrades or stuff like that when you die, not the rpg element itself. All in all I agree that calling all of them just roguelikes is better
Our princess is in another castle.
Great Video, it's very inspirational seeing you teach us some insider tricks about game design!
Yeah, this was definitely me during Demons' Souls. I think it might've been a couple days before I finally reached the first checkpoint.
Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter is the 5th game in the series and it was extremely controversial for turning a standard JRPG into a Roguelike. We didn't have the term "Rougelike" back then- just a feeling the game was very hard and encouraged you to start over, carrying bonuses into your next playthrough. This was before Demon's Souls, so the game was panned for being too hard and diverging too much from BoF4.
The dev team stuck to their guns and decided to move the Roguelite mechanics into their next game - Dead Rising, where it was an explicit core mechanic and found success.
One of my favorite rougelikes has always been the binding of Isaac, that game ricks
Regarding "no harm in calling all of these titles roguelikes": the harm is with associating roguelikes with the permadeath aspect, while it is by far not the coolest thing about roguelikes!
- Roguelikes have unique and amazing gameplay. Turn-based and fast-paced at the same time. One of the best genres if you want to make lots of interesting decisions per minute!
- Roguelikes promote innovation! You only need some basic programming and game design skills, and you can create a roguelike, you can enjoy playing it yourself, and other people in the roguelke community will play it, even if your "graphics" is just characters.
- Community-driven development! The best roguelikes are created so the developer can enjoy them themselves, and improved by the community. This creates really great games!
- Roguelikes inspire other games! Other than the "roguelite" genre, Dwarf Forttress, Diablo and Minecraft take substantial inspiration from roguelikes.
- Roguelikes are NOT about permadeath. In fact, in most roguelikes, permadeath is actually optional! Just like in other strategy subgenres, e.g. Civilization or XCOM, serious players play permadeath, but that is not the only way to enjoy them.
Roguelikes were always a genre which was relatively unknown to the mainstream, but, at the same time, very interesting to people into game design, and extremely influential. But now, when the word "roguelike" is used for something totally different, we get even less people identifying roguelikes as a separate genre that is worth to try. And that means less innovation than if different words were used for the two kinds of games.
I remember when Rogue-lite was first being used. I remember people complaining about the term being unnecessary, and others complained about rogue-likes being used too vaguely.
Nothing wrong with more sub-genres~
Sometimes the challenge is enough to keep players engaged too
I appreciate that modern FromSoft titles have actually added checkpoints closer to boss encounters. I bounced off of Dark Souls 1 because I couldn’t beat the Capra Demon and got sick of the 5-minute run up to fight it each time.
Excellent information.😄👍
Hades is the perfect example to me, it's definitely hard but even death is rewarding thanks to the strong cast and story, and then you dive back into fantastic gameplay.
I'm glad Sakurai's definition of "roguelike" vs. "roguelite" aligns with mine as that's what I've been using the describe my current project Baldi's Basics Plus. It's a stealth rogue"lite" as it only has a handful of Rogue elements in it (Randomly generated levels and permadeath after losing a single level too many times). However I'm seeing a lot of comments here that state their understanding is that rogue"lites" are games where some progress carries over between runs, which isn't (And won't be) the case in BB+, and now I'm wondering how many people are confused or feel misled when they grab the game using that definition. Perhaps it would be a good idea to further explain the game's rogue-related mechanics on the store page.
I always see people saying that rogue likes aren't about playing like the original Rogue but instead is about permadeath with no progression between failures, while roguelikes have progression between failures.
I think that it's like this here in the west because we don't have true rogue clones being made, while in Japan they have Shinrer the wanderer, Pokemon Mistery Dungeon and others that really follow the Rogue formula
I'm with you there, I use and see others use rogue-light specifically for games with progression across multiple runs. Though I could understand where Sakurai is coming from; to people who were around at the time Rogue or very similar games were released, Rogue-like used to be a more strictly defined genre. I guess a modern gamer would call those Rogue clones :)
I remember back when I first got Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, I was surprised that this was a whole genre.
Ended up calling roguelikes with some form of cross-run progression the uncreative "progression roguelikes", since I ended up playing a bunch of them in a sequence.
So roguelite being a descriptor of the in-run mechanics was a natural fit for me.
@@DominoPivot Yeah, I feel like the separation is more important than it's estimated, because a roguelike(permadeath) and a roguelite(constant progression) play very differently, and shouldn't really be bundled together.
@@l3rvn0that's a great point. To me it seemed arbitrary to attribute it to dungeon based games cause we already have the genre term "dungeon crawler" which is similar enough. But now I see why others defined it this way.
Sakurai is the ELDEN LORD
Shoutout to a great roguelite called Moonlighter.
reminds me of how I trained and trained in Dragon quest monsters 2. but it's a cool game with many monsters to create. the postgame dies a little fast tho because some of the more special fusions are hard to figure out without a gide.
Thank you Sakurio, And hello to the early chat.
Risk of Rain 2 is one of the best rougelikes I've ever played... it's perfected the genre in my opinion. I've 100%'d it on Steam and I still enjoy coming back to play it again and again
I'd love to hear Miyazaki's perspective.
Sakurai has spoken! Every time you get into a debate about the difference between like and lite, send them this video.
TotalBiscuit would be proud
Playing E ring having a full fight against a knight taking multiple blows, bit later, some random wolves 2 shot me, i immediately uninstalled...
I knew it was a matter of time for Sakurai to talk about Dark Souls (and the so called "souls-like" games) and it's mechanics.
While i agree with most of Sakurai's points here, I don't think that the primary motivation in a Soulslike is to see what comes next. The main drive for beating a difficult boss in a Soulslike is the victory itself. Winning against a (good) Soulslike boss is not just a test of determination, it is a process of learning their moves and mastering the dodge timings. For example, some of the hardest Souls bosses have little or no new content locked behind beating them. Malenia, Orphan of Kos, and to an extent Friede give you very little new content when you beat them (Friede technically gets you access to the Ringed City, but you can get there without fighting her as well). If the primary reward for beating these bosses was what was after them, why would so many people beat them?
I always wondered what the difference was
Good to know the only game I can think of that matches what you're talking about is Kirby Superstar Ultra well not in terms of starting over if you fail (unless you count the True Arena) but in terms of replayability just when you think your done more stuff pops up and when you actually get to the and realized it's so hard that you just what to quit you just can't help but think 'man this is hard but if I don't a least try again I might not see what happens next' or 'Just one more try I know I can beat this thing this time I just Know It!'
Stuff like this will always be a good times (even when it feels like at times you just want to rage for almost no reason at all)🙃
Fire is limited. Your soul is immortal
Sakurai reveals he has no patience
I believe it's more a lack of dedication, as he likes testing games more than completing them.
Some game devs don't know that Replay Value isn't the same as Collectibles. So many huge games discourage replaying from the very beginning due to things like hefty amounts of collectibles in combination with one save file per system/cart. The best example of this is ANY Pokemon game that isn't on the GameCube.
Then again, some game devs have never played arcade games, which pushed the idea of making a great 30-minute experience while intentionally gut-punching five bucks out of a player.
That game at 1:15 is nova drift! I love that game
I never get too deep into roguelikes and roguelites because of the skill ceiling and I would rather have fun in different types of games. I do enjoy a challenge though like Jump King or Getting Over It.