How rogue-like!

Die, die and die again.

Let me ask you a question: are you stubborn? I don't just mean ' I played through Dark Souls' stubborn, I'm talking 'I played through Dark Souls, went down the skeleton route by accident, and brute forced my way through armies of over leveled baddies until the game itself forced me to turn back around' stubborn. The kind of pig-headed stubbornness that borders into nigh-on masochistic insanity at times. If so, you may find yourself dissatisfied with many modern mainstream games. 'Why do so few games feel built to reward persistence?', you may think. 'Will I never get a game that acutely challenges the upper limits of my obstinance?' Well, you're in luck, because I haven't just got one game for you, I've got an entire subgenre for you.

The Rogue-like and Roguelite subgenre is a division of gaming that is built around the core concept of challenging the skill of the player rather than their avatar. They're games that face you up against a randomized challenge, with randomized equipment and a tough-as-nails path to victory. And they expect you to die. Over and over again. Each time you are sent back to the start with nothing but the knowledge you gained from that run. The fun comes from mastery. From learning all the enemies behaviours, the uses of your loot, the synergies between items and, for absolute diehards, the behaviour of the procedural generation algorithm. There is no point of mastery that exceeds that person who can predict the layout of a random level.

It is this mix of random chance and skill that makes these types of games so alluring for the speed running community. Which, as I have discussed before, is a community that can be very healthy for your game's life cycle. There is always a new challenge so that players can never reach that state of over-familiarity with the levels, this can help speedruns feel fresh and dynamic. Then there comes the issue of bragging rights. Speedrunners love to prove how well they can utilize a good deck or scavenge a bad RNG run. However, being crowned the speedrunning king of a Rogue-like is not the same as being crowned as the king of Mario 64 runs. That kingdom is built on a foundation of sand, so players have to be constantly on their toes for whatever the next run might throw at them.

For the purposes of this blog, I will be primarily focusing on a subdivision of this subgenre: Rougelites. This is purely because I have the most experience with them. Rouge-likes are games that have all the hallmarks that I described but is limited to turn-based gameplay. These confines do include a couple of games that certainly have my interest; 'Slay the Spire' and 'Darket Dungeons', but I've just never got the chance to actually sit down and play them. Luckily the much more generous list of 'Rougelite' games features many absolute gems that I would absolutely love to talk about today. So let me start with the very first 'Roguelite' I ever played.

There are a few games that are preceded by their reputation. The kind that are spoken about in rumors and whispers from a friend of a friend. Spelunky was one such game for me. It looked simple enough, a cutesy platformer with a few obstacles, but looks can be oh-so deceiving. For those who are unfamiliar, Spelunky is a 2D platformer that revolves around an Indiana Jones-looking adventurer as he scours cursed ruins for treasure. Standard affair, nothing special. The kicker comes from that fact that these ruins constantly shift their layout, just to throw you off your game. But even that is only the tip of the iceberg.

Spelunky's creator Derek Yu decided it would be fitting, in his 2D platformer, for the player to be as vulnerable as a paper vase. As you can imagine, that turns a fairly sparse cave full of a handful of spiders and some traps into a absolute stress-fest as you desperately try to maneuver around each threat in order to reach the exit in time. Oh, but reaching the exit won't do. Afterall, we're stubborn completionists. So then you end up scouring the levels for every bit of bonus treasure and each lost damsel, only to find each level has a hidden time limit that summons an unkillable ghost if you surpass it. So you end rushing through the levels, grabbing all the collectibles, buying all the items, becoming incredibly resourceful and then... you die from a insta-kill trap. You wind up back at the beginning with none of your loot, gold, progression or confidence. At that point it's all on the player to pick up that controller and start again.

That is the beauty of Rougelite games. Your progression through them is based as much on your ability to learn and endure as it is to be skillful. That being said, it is rather soul crushing to start again having gained nothing for your time, and so some Rougelites have systems in place that can reward you even for failed runs. On such game is Edmund Mcmillen's 'The Binding of Issac'. 'The Binding of Issac' retells the biblical story of Issac and Abraham only with a modern little boy named Issac and his unnamed devout christian Mother. She believes that god speaks to her to declare open season on her son and Issac is forced to retreat to his room and hide beneath his- trapdoor? (Am I the weird kid for not having a trapdoor as a kid?) What follows is a fantastical journey through psychological and biblical imagery and symbology as Issac escapes deeper and deeper into his Psyche. Or into his past. Or into a box. Okay, the premise isn't quite so cut-and-dry here but the resulting product is one of the most famous examples of a Rougelite ever.

'The Binding of Issac' is an isometric shmup-eque game. You start off in the attic and end up fighting your way through a whole host of gross, randomized, beasties with the damaging power of your tears. (It's a weird game) This culminates in a final confrontation against your psychotic Mother, represented in your dream-like state through her heeled foot, which I'd imagine Issac must have become pretty familiar with in their years together. Of course, the levels and bosses are also randomly generated and the secrets are always placed hodgepodge around the map. Players have to navigate this maze, collate items and transform your snivelling protagonist into a demonic killing machine by the end. Where Binding of Issac goes above and beyond the usual Roguelite is in the unlockables. Certain actions that you perform unlock new items that you then have a chance to pick up on subsequent runs, some actions even unlock new characters that start with a whole host of pre-acquired items. And just like 'The Stanley Parable' suggests: The end is never the end. Once you beat the game the first two times you will find that your third run has an entirely new final arena with a much harder boss. This keeps building up and up until you end up fighting Mega Satan. Seriously.

But if all that 'religous symbolism' is too much for you, perhaps you would prefer a more sane Rougelite. Well, I've got you there too. As for the last few weeks I have actually been playing a fantastic little indie Roguelite called 'Risk of Rain'. In 'Risk of Rain' you are tasked with conducting history's least organized raid as you blow up a cargo starship and rain it's inventory all over the single most dangerous planet in the galaxy. Then your dumb ass has to go down there and grab as much loot as you can before executing your exit strategy; which is commandeering the ship that you shot down in order to escape. Again, Simple enough, right? (Once-more, no, you ought to have learned this by now.) Everything on the planet desires to, and is fully capable of, ripping you limb from limb, and things only get worse the longer you hang around.

'Risk of Rain' has a progressive difficulty system wherein the more you dilly dally in the level the harder the game becomes until it is unbearable for anyone who hasn't yet reached immortal godhood. Luckily, all the loot that you are tasked with scavenging also happen to double as items that power you up and pushes the you ever closer to the overpowered dream. As you defeat more powerful bosses and clear obscure challenges, you unlock new high-powered gear and brand new characters that fundamentally change up your play style. But all of that pales in comparison to the real reason that I love 'Risk of Rain' so much: Cooperative play! This is one of the few Rouglites that allows you to die over and over with your friends, allowing you to share your torment with those you love.

Roguelites and Rogue-likes are a very particular game for a very particular type of player. Good thing that target audience is abundant enough for games of this genre to do well. Spelunky has a legendary status amongst indie games and is even has an impending sequel in the works. 'The Binding of Issac' has been ported to everything with a graphics chip. (despite the fact that the PC version is really the only way to play.) And 'Risk of Rain' has a fully 3D sequel already out and enjoying updates. If you are the type who seeks validation in conquering difficult tasks, or just finds satisfaction from the act of perseverance, then I'd urge you to give some of these cheap titles a try. You may just find your next mountain to scale.

Speedrunning done quick

Rolling around at the speed of sound.

Quite often when it comes to competition in games we default to thinking of the online space. Ranked online matches, tournament games and E-sports come to mind. But what about the perfectionists, those that compete against each other to see who can be the fastest to push through a game, start to finish? Well, then we enter the world of Speedrunning and GDQ (Games Done Quick). People have been finding ways to rush through their favourite games since the days of the super Nintendo at least, and likely won't ever stop. The challenge comes from being intimately familiar with mechanics and exploits whilst displaying appropriate reaction time to act upon this information in order to edge those few seconds ahead of the last person to attempt this. 

Although Speedrunning has only entered the prominence fairly recently, the art form didn't go unnoticed before the founding of GDQ. Who remembers the 1989 commercial/movie 'The Wizard' with Fred Savage? The entire driving plot point of that film revolved around the $50 000 prize for Speedrunning the first level of the, as-of-yet unreleased, Super Mario Bros 3. Of course, that movie was terrible and everyone involved likely wishes they could erase it from their memory, but is shows that Nintendo were aware of the Speedrunning community and wanted to represent them in their cinematic opus. At least before their next opus, the 'Super Mario Bros' movie.

For my part I will readily admit, Speedrunning was never really my go-to choice for video game entertainment. As someone who likes to immerse themselves fully into the video game world, the last thing I want is to be thinking about how to break boundaries in order to skip a difficult section, however I can still respect the level of talent and acumen required to pull it off. The first time I witnessed someone showcase the Level-glitch in 'The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past' I was certainly blown away. Using the way that the game stores it's levels, an enterprising player can skip from the first few screen to the last in no time and beat the game in just under 5 minutes, it's pretty wild.

Some developers have even begun implementing mechanics and design choices in order to facilitate a speedrunning meta. This can be as wide changing as when Ryan Clark edited many spare items in 'Crypt of the Necrodancer' to deal damage instead of reward health and gold, which were both useless to Speedrunners or as simple as adding a tracking clock which you can even find in games like 'Hitman 2: No subtitle'. Interacting with, and including, the Speedrunner community with your game is a great way to help cement it's success and longevity. Speedrunners have been known to comb games for years to rinse out every lest secret and deeply hidden mechanic. Just look at the work that went into wringing all the secrets out of 'Spelunky'. You could spend hours online jumping from forum to forum and still not dig up half of the information that Speedrunners have uncovered regarding secret levels, deep mechanics and the like.

There are times when games find themselves naturally pre-built for the Speedrunning world without having to be built from the ground up in order to accommodate them. Just look at 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild'. From the merit of Nintendo's direction in design alone, people decided that BoTW would be the perfect choice for Speedrunning. The game starts off by placing players atop a large chunk of land apart from the rest of Hyrule and forces them through a tutorial before it lets them leave. Once they do leave, however, the entire world is open to them. Players can follow the narrative and travel to the four corners of the land, getting more powerful and resilient as they go, preparing for the final conflict one divine beast at a time. Or they could just B-line it for Hyrule castle and face down Ganon straight up. Not the easiest option, given that you start the game in tattered rags with no weapons and only 3 hearts, but certainly the quickest. And yes, it would be naive to think the Nintendo, of all people, didn't think about the Speedrunning possibilities at all when they made BoTW, but I don't believe that they would design an entire mainline entry around that community. It may have been one of many deciding factors toward the open world Hyrule we know and love, but it certainly wasn't the determiner.

Some games enter the sphere of Speedrunning from genre's one wouldn't expect. Somehow the Resident Evil games are popular for Speedrunners despite being games that inhabit the horror genre. When I imagine Resident Evil, I imagine creeping horror with the occasional puzzle and a fair amount of jump scares; apparently some people just see a race course. 'Resident Evil 7: Biohazard' even went so far as to add a mode that was based around Speedrunning the length of the map with a timer in the corner counting your progress. 'Resident Evil 2: Remake' added a similar mode and a rotating quota of weekly challenges that encourage players to speed through the game in order to beat their posted times. Heck, even the original had some of it's secret weapons locked behind the players ability to finish the game before 3 or 5 hours. (I literally got 11 minutes away from the rocket launcher one time.)

Then there are the challenging games. The ones that foster a reputation for being tough as nails, harrowing experiences that only the stubborn and insane should attempt. Then a Speedrunner comes along and puts everyone to shame by finishing the thing in no time flat. Of course, I'm talking about games like Cuphead and Dark Souls. For some, the mere act of reaching the end is cause for celebration; but for others, they won't be happy until they finish Dark Souls 2 in 14 minutes. It could be argued that in situations like this the purpose of the game is lost but then the same could be said for any atypical method of play, couldn't it?

There are times, however, when it is more impressive to see how quickly someone can complete everything a game has to other, rather than how well they can pull off a wall glitch. That's when you start seeing % runs on 'Donkey Kong Country' or 'Crash Bandicoot'. For a completionist, like myself, this is where you get to see the real masters show you how it's done. Beating the game on it's own terms with all the pinpoint precision going into efficient root optimization and corner skipping. Perhaps I find myself more inclined toward this style of Speedrun because I remember beating 'Batman: Arkham Asylum' for a full 100% in under 6 hours one day. My own claim to Speedrunning fame. Although I'm sure that's not a patch on the actual record, I'm too scared to check.

I see Speedrunning as a very active way in which the gaming community has chosen to show their love for the world's best pastime. (I'm not Biased. Honest.) We show how much we care about these games by breaking them, simplifying them, and speeding through as quickly as possible. It's win win scenario. Gamers get a competitive element to their games that seems so much more worthy then the 'high scores' of yesteryear and developers get to have their games bought and played by more and more people eager to prove their Speedrunning skills. I may moan and gripe about how it's not the way I would play the game but at the end of the day that's not the point. Speedrunning is a sport for those perfectionists that like going above and beyond your average gamer, and they've built one of the most amiable competitive communities in entrainment around that niche. Now, that's praise-worthy all on it's own.