Roguelike vs. Roguelite: What's the Difference?

11.02.2024 - 16:27 / screenrant.com

The last decade of gaming on PC and other platforms has seen the increasing popularity of run-based games like , which offer looping gameplay cycles that make use of procedural generation and reward an overarching sense of progression and mastery. These games are sometimes interchangeably referred to as either «roguelikes» or «roguelites,» but the two terms actually have mechanically distinct definitions. Although both are usually capable of conveying the general meaning or idea of a genre in offhand descriptions, understanding the specific differences can help categorize games more accurately.

The genre of «rogue» games derives its name from a classic dungeon crawler called that helped popularize some interesting and unusual ideas. The 1980 release challenged players to retrieve an amulet from the end of a dungeon, but also featured permadeath. If a character died, the player had to start the game completely over, with none of the weapons or other upgrades they managed to collect along the way. What's more, the dungeons were procedurally generated, meaning that every run was different, forcing players to explore a new map and adapt to new circumstances.

Many games over the years have borrowed elements from, resulting in the roguelike genre of games. But although roguelike has become a bit of a catch-all term, a 2008 development conference created the Berlin Interpretation, available in full on RogueBasin, and defined roguelikes as having eight specific design tenets:

In order for a game to qualify as a roguelike based on the Berlin Interpretation, a game must meet all eight criteria.

Because of the stringent rules laid out by the Berlin Interpretation, most popular roguelike games are more properly referred to as roguelites. Roguelite games utilize some, but not all, of the design elements of as the foundation for their gameplay. Permadeath and procedurally generated maps are still crucial to a roguelite's design, but many games have added new spins to the genre. A number of roguelites have introduced a mechanic of carry-over progression to eventually make runs easier and allow players to go farther. For instance, contains certain resources that don't reset on death, which are used to buy permanent upgrades to the character.

Generally speaking, saying «roguelike» in a casual conversation is more likely to invoke the idea of popular modern roguelites, as the Berlin Interpretation isn't necessarily widely known, nor is it the be-all and end-all of the distinction. It's consequently not worth being pedantic about in most situations, but that doesn't mean that it isn't helpful to be able to properly distinguish between the terms. True roguelikes do offer a different and less common experience than the