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"Roguelike" has become overused to the point that it's basically meaningless. Nobody's even played Rogue so it just means "a game that's like other games that are described as roguelike," which is like, any game. There's a set of games where the term originated where it actually made sense, games like Angband, ADOM, Castle of the Winds, etc, that are all closely related where the term makes sense. Cogmind and Pixel Dungeon are more recent examples.
Some of it gets resolved by describing those as "traditional roguelikes," and using other descriptors like "action rougelike" for Hades or "rougelike deckbuilder" for Slay the Spire, but like at that point why not just use "Hadeslike" or "Spirelike" instead of constantly harking back to this 40 year old game?
Rogue was the first, and thus the trend was named after it. There would need to be something extremely significant to override that. Someone would need to invent a catchier name and popularize it to the point that it starts competing with the old one and eventually overtake it.
It would need to be like what happened to the term "Doom clone".
I wonder if the same will happen with the term "soulslike".
Yeah, a subgenre emerged with a set of identifiable attributes. Some of those attributes have been dropped from the definition, but there still isn't a better term for a game where you start the run in a generally weak state and quickly power up with only one life (with maybe extras from items) Sure, we could come up with a snappy name for the genre/mechanic, but why when we already have a perfectly serviceable one?
That's how language works. You could say that a similar thing happened to the suffix -core. Where originally it was ment to be used with one word – a certain musical genre. Now, however, I can append it to anything and it means just a general esthetic.
As for rougelike, it no longer means a game that's like Rouge. It means a game where you losing means starting over, where playing more doesn't necessarily mean the game gets easier due to accumulated XP, wealth, gear or whatevet other mechanic.
Alright screw it we're full sending this, Outer Wilds is a roguelike now
No other roguelike has topped Tetris to this day.
To me if it isn't a fucking top down dungeon hack it ISN'T a roguelike
I mean I love me some FTL but it is NOT a rogeulike.
Now that's a game name I haven't heard or thought of in probably 30 years. Damn. I may have to spend my weekend on that now.
When I was a kid I played a ton of Rogue and Larn before Hack 1.0 came out (the predecessor to Nethack)
I remember thinking Nethack was way too fancy.
ANSI graphics, what is this a 33.6k BBS? Just lurid.
And then they made GUIs for Nethack! I was scandalized.
Ooh ooh, I hate it when people get really technical about "rogue like" versus "rogue lite".