After too many deaths and frustrated attempts to get further in Returnal, I started to ponder whether the concept of a roguelike P&C game was ever explored. To my knowledge, no game has ever built this cycle of try-die-repeat fully into the gameplay cycle.
The closest thing would be Sierra's style of game design with permadeath due to a wrong decision. This would then lead to a more frustrating experience where you had to save frequently to prevent too much backtracking.
Elements I'm thinking of in particular are:
- Death being a core part of the game process, automatically reverting you to the start.
- Random level design (screens linking in a new fashion after death or dialogues mixing around.)
- Something that does "carry over" from one run to the next, eg some statistics or items that you can unlock.
It's just a random question I'm pondering at this stage. Does anyone know if there was ever a point-and-click that incorporated rogue-like elements? The genre lends itself more to linear storytelling (with some branching paths), but it could be a fun thought exercise for future game design...
While not a rogue-like game, Kill Yourself (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2413-kill-yourself/) does meet two of those criteria, but not the random design.
If by point and click you mean mouse driven then you may want to check out "The Dungeon Revealed" for the Macintosh.
http://web.archive.org/web/20160314065341/http://www.sidhia.com/
McPixel (https://store.steampowered.com/app/220860/McPixel/) and Reventure (https://store.steampowered.com/app/900270/Reventure/) come to mind
Must... not... go... on... rant... about... the... difference... between... roguelike... and... roguelite... ARGH! I can't take it anymore!
A roguelike is a game that's "like" Rogue, which is a top-down grid-based turn-based RPG, where you must descend randomly generated floors. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Dungeons of Dredmor, and Dungeon Hack all qualify as roguelikes, while Rogue Legacy and FTL Faster Than Light, don't.
A roguelite is game which shares one or more elements that have been made popular by roguelikes, most notably perma-death and randomly generated levels, although they usually also involve death being a part of the gameplay loop for some reason (I'm not sure why, since that was never an element in roguelikes).
Ah, that feels so much better.
As to answer your question. Nothing particularly comes to mind. I did make a kind of adventure game which has randomly generated levels, but there's no perma-death and death isn't a part of the gameplay loop either. So it doesn't qualify as a roguelite in the slightest way. I've always wanted to play an adventure game with roguelike elements though.
Considering Danvzare's description, Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures (https://www.mobygames.com/game/indiana-jones-and-his-desktop-adventures) comes to mind.
It is top-down, grid-based with generated levels. However, instead of RPG it leans towards P&C and it is not turn based but real time.
Interestingly enough, I don’t know how I never heard about Twelve Minutes before today. It’s suddenly on every game site and whilst not fully roguelike, it has a supposedly cool time-loop thing that might be very much what I was looking for. :)
Quote from: Hobbes on Wed 12/05/2021 12:33:42a supposedly cool time-loop thing that might be very much what I was looking for. :)
I've always thought that most computer and video games
are time loops of a sort. In adventure games, everyone keep replying the same line if you talk to them, and in action games, the enemies frequently come in the same pattern.