Even though they can be fun, it can be difficult to build an entire game upon rogue-lite mechanics. Make failure too punishing and many players likely won’t make it very far. Make it too easy and the rogue-lite aspects just become annoying. Certainly there are more than a few excellent games that do have just the right balance:Hades,Enter the GungeonandDead Cellsbeing among the best, but it may be that rogue-lite mechanics are best used in optional modes. It can be very much be a win for everyone this way; most players can enjoy the full game without feeling gated by difficulty, those who want push farther can do so, and developers can take their game to the limit without risk of alienating potential fans.
Consider Prey: Mooncrash; when it was released as a standalone expansion to Arkane Studios’Prey (2017),it was highly lauded as masterwork of rogue-lite gameplay. With multiple unique playable characters, interconnecting stories, a looping mechanic with real consequences and the same immersive-sim gameplay that fans' attention in the main game, Prey: Mooncrash fully explores everything that the original release introduced. Even so, it likely only got such a positive reception because that base game was there first to introduce it all. As will be discussed a little later, straight-up throwing players into the fire can have some serious downsides to it.
With both Prey and Prey: Mooncrash out, one could look at the base game as something like a practice run for Mooncrash. As they find their way through Talos I and discover exactly what kind of hubris led to its downfall, they’re also learning generally what the game does and does not allow. Can the GLOO Cannon create climbable paths almost anywhere? Yup. Is the telekinesis viable in combat? Not so much. Will the Mimic ability allow Morgan to hide from the Nightmare? Surprisingly, yes!
There’s something of a drawback in that using Typhon abilities can lock out certain endings, but the leash is loose enough that one can still get a basic feel for how things work and what they like. Prey’s Talos I is essentially a big playground to learn, mess around in and establish foundations of skill and knowledge. This is what allows Prey: Mooncrash to be what it is. Where Prey is low-stakes, Mooncrash is not. Players are on a timer; not just for individual runs but also in terms of the number of runs it takes them to complete their mission. Take too long or take too many attempts and things get very difficult very fast. Players have to take the knowledge and ability they built up in the main game and use it to find the best, most efficient escapes for each playable character.
Pushing oneself and what each character can do is basically the entire point, and the more players lean into this, the more enjoyment they get out of it.It’s a blast for those who like the gameplayenough to opt-into it, and that’s the key here. Prey: Mooncrash saw the success that it did because it was optional. Had its rogue-lite mechanics defined the base it’s doubtful that Prey would have amounted to more than a small blip on most gamers' radar. This is exactly what the problem was/is with Housemarque’s Returnal.Absolutely fantastic though it is,it’s nonetheless hamstrung by its nature as a tough-as-nails rogue-lite shooter. Starting as one of only a handful of PS5 launch titles, Returnal should have had a clear enough field to sell well. Instead, it got a little bit of attention around launch before almost immediately falling down the memory hole.
Part of the problem could be a confusing premise and a lead character that doesn’t immediately jump out as “cool,” but other games have had similar problems and still done well. For example, One could say any Elder Scrolls game fits that bill thanks to their crazy lore and blank slate player characters. Yet that’s now a mega-blockbuster series. No, one glance at Reddit or a similar site is all it takes to determine Returnal’s biggest problem: its unforgiving rogue-lite core.
It might not sit among the toughest games out there, but Returnal is a difficult game nonetheless.Its combat mechanics are deceptively simplein that they appear to just be a matter of shooting enemies from the hip and dodging when necessary. Players quickly discover, however, that dodging enemy attacks isn’t always a simple matter thanks to most encounters involving several types of enemies that all follow different behavior patterns and will often attack simultaneously. Learning how to predict them, dodge their attacks, exploit the environment and even their own behaviors is key to progression in Returnal, and that likely would have been fine had it rewarded players with some immediate sense of progression. Returnal doesn’t do that, though. Rather, it does the opposite.
Dying in Returnal, as so many who’ve attempted it know, means starting again from almost nothing. Like Selene (our astronaut), players retain their experience, but all weapons, upgrades and normal currency are lost. Perhaps most players have the patience to start again a few times, but it takes more than just a few attempts to get good enough to beat the first boss, and then there are stillfive morezones to go. For those who did stick with it and reach the skill level Returnal requires, the game feels incredible to play.
Encounters go from utter slogs to heart-pounding blasts of close-calls, clutch moments and adrenaline, but it takes hours to get to that point and many of those are spent in the first two zones. It’s a case of the reward coming way too late and basically no structures in place to encourage players to push for it. Had Returnal’s rogue-lite mechanics been limited toits Ascension DLC(an excellent piece of content by the way), perhaps it’d be enjoying a much more lofty position in the PS5 library right now.
The most recent example of this kind of mode, Ghostwire: Tokyo’s “The Spider’s Thread,” is a decent example of what this kind of addition can do for a game that doesn’t obviously need it. See, while it’s an essential part of the main game’s loop, combat rarely pushes players to use everything at their disposal. Encounters typically don’t last long enough, and enemies usually number too few to pose a real threat. It also doesn’t help that most Visitors aren’t interested in rushing the player’s position, preferring instead to shoot at them from a distance or hide in the environment.
Akito and KK also happen to have a lot of tools to work with at any given time, some of which are quickly capable of clearing out several Visitors. There’s clunkiness to it of course, particularly with dodging, but overall there’s a lot of potential depth here that just isn’t being taken advantage of inthe main game.In the Spider’s Thread though, things are a bit different.
At first, combat in the Spider’s Thread works very much like it does in the main mode: small groups of not so challenging enemies against a very powerful player character. One could even be forgiven for thinking that there’s little point in engaging with it at first. Those are just the opening floors, however, and Akito/KK need to get through thirty of them before reaching the mode’s initial end. It doesn’t take long at all for the difficulty to quickly ramp up, and players will inevitably find themselves overwhelmed.
Fortunately, skill unlocks and certain equipment carry-over between runs, causing players to really think about what they want to invest in as they carry out their next few attempts. Those investments really do matter here unlike in the main game and can thus mean the difference between success and failure. In other words, the Spider’s Thread is following Prey: Mooncrash’s example and making players put their knowledge of both game and self to work to master combat and make it to the end. It isn’t for everybody, but that’s fine since those who don’t like it can just enjoy the main game instead.
As the likes of Hades,The Binding of IsaacandInscryptionhave shown, roguelike and rogue-lite games can and do see massive success, but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule. The chances of success also seem to decrease as the games employing such mechanics grow in complexity. When a game isn’t a deck-builder or 2D dungeon-crawler, going all-in on rogue-lite mechanics may not be the best idea. If that perfect balance isn’t struck, then it likely won’t matter how good the rest of the game is as most players will simply tap-out out in frustration.
Instead, developers who want to bring such to their games should do it as an add-on instead. Give players a more forgiving, traditional campaign to play around in first, then release the rogue-lite mode as something optional and separate. This way more players can jump in and get invested, those who love it get to put their skills to the test, and developers get to make the kind of game they want without getting hamstrung by expecting too much too soon. Everybody wins!
