Quick Look: Teleglitch

I LOVE TELEPORTERS.

I HATE TELEPORTERS.

The start of the video demonstrates the need for a new genre for these types of games, Roguelites. They are like roguelikes, but are not full rougelikes and are not usually as dense, thus the term roguelites.

oh god all i see is nose eyes and medical supplies filling my vision

I'm glad you guys checked this out, I almost sent you a link to this to let you know.

@amatureidiot: I like it!

Well this looks kinda cool. I hope there's some weird stuff later in the game to play up the horror aspect of it, because this first level nailed atmosphere but was never difficult or surprising enough to turn that setting into scary. Maybe we got a first taste of that with the mysterious man-eating wall.

Also I just bought this game.

See, from an etymological perspective, I'm with you. Modern roguelikes are not like Rogue if you know what I'm saying. But then, I wouldn't say that the Nethack that came out in 2003 was all that like Rogue either.
The problem I have is equating density to roguelikes, which implies that Rogue was actually super dense. For the most part, it was generally unforgiving, but it wasn't really until the crazies behind Nethack (and all attendant spin-offs) went down a dark path of feature creep that the mechanical density really started to crop up. For me, roguelike as a descriptor is a little divorced from the hardline tradition that carried on from those ASCII RPGs that predominantly associated with the term over the years.

As a term that evokes difficulty, permanent death and procedurally-generated maps, roguelike functions perfectly fine. For hardline traditionalists, they only need to see a screencap to realize it's not exactly the same as those ASCII games or even that it's a tile-based RPG like TOME. And finally, I'm sceptical of creating a gradation or division between ASCII roguelikes and other roguelikes. As an overarching term, it means that there can be some bleed over from the people that really like Binding of Isaac or Teleglitch and want more of the gameplay and are willing to try new things. If using roguelike to describe one of those more friendlier games means someone will download and play Brogue or participate in the 7DRL challenge, man, that's fucking worth it for me.

I love the chunky sound of your keyboard. Need me some of that.

I don't know... I'm kinda getting tired of indie games that always has this either very pixelated look or really blocky pylogons. I just want to see something new from indie games.

@castiel: Antichamber was very blocky and something new.

Saaaaame here. It'd be cool if Patrick didn't champion every indie game he stumbled across because I feel like these are less interesting than all the AAA games he loves to hate. Too many indie games these days look, sound, and play the same. They're all defined by one or two gimmicks that are entertaining for a bit but not enough to sustain a whole game.

Unreal World was a rogue-like-ass-rogue-like. You saw how far you got in that one, it should make sense to you why people scoff at the term getting thrown around so lightly.

Great game but you really need to conserve ammo. It get's really evil by stage 4 when enemies start to shoot and you are running out of things to shoot them with.

Telefragged.

Geometry Wars 2 is my favorite roguelike.

What the fuck, making fun of Estonian game development. Obviously they haven't even played Skyroads - THE best game ever made.

The problem with calling this shit a roguelike or not, and trust me, I've been a part of the "true" roguelike community for many years now, has a lot more to do, I think, with accessibility.

The community I frequent doesn't even talk about Dungeons of Dredmor, a perfectly good and fun roguelike, one because it's commercial and two because of the sacrifices made in the name of accessibility, that is, its lack of an updating character sprite in favor of animations, the grindy and unbalanced skill system, et cetera. People who've never played Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup or NetHack wouldn't judge these flaws in the same way that an expert would, so in some sense I understand why a lot of indies are opting for the less-direct path.

That and literally every major roguelike of the past twenty years has been freeware - ADOM, Tales of Maj'Eyal, Incursion, the million Angband derivatives, and the hundreds of small things that get created as part of the 7-Day Roguelike game jam.

But the games WE play don't get jack shit for coverage, outside of the occasional nod by RPS. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is a zombie-apocalypse roguelike in the truest sense of the word - ASCII, an interface derived from NetHack, always free, and as obscure as anything out there. It's being updated practically daily, with recent additions such as FEMA camps, zombie children, temperature, and a resizeable view window. It's awesome, but very few in the Giant Bomb audience are bound to like it, because of that ASCII, because, on Linux, it asks you to 'compile' the game, really, because it's a tried-and-true roguelike.

In some sense it's frustrating to see commercial games taking the name, getting a massive amount of popularity and introducing a lot of people to this new vision of the genre, while we, who've been playing these games for *decades*, sit on the sidelines with our pet projects that nobody even thinks about.

There's nothing wrong with new shit incorporating cool features. The problem arises when the people who made this thing what it is basically get ignored, like weirdos with their silly text games.

Estonia is pretty crazy with their IT. You can vote online and via text message for example. Wouldn't surprise me if they have a decent developer community.

@mdnthrvst: While I can see where you're coming from, I just don't think anyone at GB has it in them to dive into the deep end of something like that. Don't get me wrong, a feature dedicated solely to seeing how far the GB crew could get into traditional roguelikes would be absolutely amazing / hilarious, but that requires a rather large amount of commitment.

That being said, now that Dave isn't working on rebuilding the site anymore, maybe such a feature could be possible. A Dave / Vinny / Drew / Patrick crew trying their best to live through a traditional roguelike would be awesome.

Im from Estonia and didnt know about this.

But in his defense a lot of Indie games are very interesting, and have intriguing ideas. Meanwhile, a lot of AAA games are very boring, and don't exactly stimulate like they may have years ago when they were more unique. Plus it's interesting to see what a very small team, if not just one guy, can develop, versus a large team of people with different divisions in that team.

If I were to get into games without going through the process of trying to be hired by a game development studio, I'd be an indie developer. I may have great ideas that I struggle to put into a full fledged game, and have the will to follow it through to the end. In that case, you kind of have to give props to Indie developers for actually creating a game, and getting it out to market. Guys like Patrick, and others who show off these games, are giving the Indie developers some much needed publicity so they can make some money, and continue to pump out other games.

At the same time, AAA developers who actually strive for innovation, and combine genres in ways that are interesting and fun, need to be pointed out as well. The games that a AAA developer can create are the ones that truly have the potential to blow every other game away, even Indie games, due to sheer manpower. However, it's where a AAA developer gets hamstrung by their publisher, or just by a lack of desire to really push the envelope that you keep getting these games that are the same, ordinary play that never stays in the spotlight for long, if at all.

Basically it seems the best of both worlds would be a AAA developer, that has the passion of an Indie developer.

Why is Ryan hooked up to oxygen tubes? Did he get really sick/hurt and I didn't hear about it?

Looks like there's possible game for Dave's list of Eastern European/Russian/Etc. list & looks quite interesting. Hopefully soon it shows up on steam or greenlight as I'd be more likely to get it there but it does look quite fun & enjoy the wicked look to it.

@safetscissorz: Here's how that'd go:

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup:

P: So this is a fork of the original Dungeon Crawl by...

(Average MiBe plows through the first through dungeon levels picking up junk)

V: What's that?

Da: I think that's a slime?

V: Go kill it!

Dr: OH GOD WHAT'S HAPPENING

Da: It's corroding my equipment?

P: Well what does that potion do?

(Drinks an un-ID'd potion of degeneration)

Da: SHIT MY HEALTH IS GONE

(Orc Priest walks by and smites the shit out of them, game over)

NetHack:

P: So this is one of the oldest games still in active development...

(NetHack isn't currently in active development)

Da: It's asking if it wants to choose our class for us. Should we?

V: Oh, that's a bad idea...

Dr: No, go for it.

P: That's the point of roguelikes, isn't it?

(Spawn as a Gnomish Healer)

Da: Aww, I've got a little dog!

P: So this story seems kinda thin...

Dr: "For a good time, call 867-5309?" What the heck is going on in this game?

Da: OH SHIT I FOUND A PLATEMAIL

V: Wear it!

(Dave puts a platemail on his Gnomish Healer, gets horribly burdened, finds a staircase and falls down the stairs, crushing his Gnome in a single turn)

V: Well that wasn't fun.

Da: Ehhh...

__

Continue on for ADOM's labyrinthine interface, Angband's twenty-hour grind, and what have you.

this

I'm starting to warm up to Ryan's term "Pokémon Mystery Dungeon-like" :P

(I think he said it in the QL for Shiren the Wanderer)

This seems alright. I like the look.

When I think roguelike, the distinctive mechanic is not the permadeath or random levels, it's that it's basically turn based. In a rogue-like, nothing moves until you do, and it takes place on a grid. Even the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games satisfy these requirements.

That's why everyone attaching "roguelike" to games with permadeath and random level generation bother me. It's like saying a game with recharging health is close to a first-person shooter when it could be anything. I think it's time we stop marrying those features to roguelikes and admit that lots of games use them now.

I mean if anything, these games that people have been calling "roguelikes" (like FTL) are more like Oregon Trail than anything else.

(OH, and I say this as someone without much care for roguelikes. I just like to trace the lineage of games and I find that Oregon Trail is a much more appropriate comparison)

Yeah, it seems to me that a lot of the people that are down on "roguelike" taking on a broader (and generally more utile) definition are coming at it from the perspective of, "I've been into this since before it was cool." Which, in the long run, seems tremendously limiting and unnecessarily antagonistic. Chances are, if RPS were introduced to an interesting hardcore roguelike, they'd do something on it. That seems to be a way better venue for those games than Giant Bomb. Shit, I give them credit for spending fifteen minutes with Teleglitch. I mean, if a game like that is dismissed as "too accessible" then there's something seriously wrong with the hardline roguelike purists.

@castiel said:

Yeah, for sure. I think these games are too often given a free pass for a having a “retro” art style when they really just didn’t have a big technical or art budget and had to pick a look compatible with their resources. Choosing a retro look is the path of least resistance for indie developers. I mean, this game has some neat elements to its look, but a lot of it looks like a PS1 or mid-90s PC game with crappier textures. It didn’t convey any particularly strong atmosphere to me, though maybe having headphones on and not listening to commentary would help with that.

To put this another way: is there a “retro” style that a Patrick or Brad (or countless other critics — I don’t mean to call any one person out) would look at and say “well, that’s kind of crappy/boring looking”. I can’t really picture it. I think it’s time we start being more critical of deliberately old-school-looking games.

can we call em roguelike-likes ? ahh games

DAT SCREEN TEARING.

Just want to say rougelike or not, this game is really fun and well made

looks alot like the Left4kDead flash game.

@muttersometaxicab: The games we play take hundreds of hours to master and some of us have never beaten them. We do not want accessibility. Accessibility is anathema to the entire reason we play these games, and it's why true roguelikes have never been widely popular. People want progress and permanence, and the genre doesn't provide that.

We're basically one step down from Dwarf Fortress, in a way. Yeah, the Binding of Isaac is a fine game, just don't try to talk to us about it. I'd be much prouder of ascending in DCSS than I was when I beat BOI, partially because it's so short, and partially because the random drops kind of break it (which is another difference - randomization is important, but it's something to work against, and it's rarely the crucial factor. In Isaac you just get Technology and your chances of victory triple.)

Looks very slick.

@mikkaq:

That's why I started using roguelike as a descriptor instead of a genre. Rogue was an RPG. But it was different from other RPGs. "Roguelike" essentially encapsulates the way Rogue was different. It's traditionally used as a genre, but if you detach it from that and use it as an additional descriptor, you can get a "roguelike platformer" (which differs from other platformers in the same way that Rogue differs from other RPGs), or a "roguelike top-down shooter" or whatever you want. Being turn-based is not something many other genres can get away with, but the other roguelike elements translate perfectly between genres, and it's useful to be able to describe them so succinctly.

Personally, I only use the term if I suffix it with a genre, to avoid confusion. A "roguelike", to me, is still a turn-based RPG. But a roguelike platformer or a roguelike.. rhythm game, or whatever, wouldn't have to be, because then I immediately understand how the word is being used. The umbrella term I would use to describe them all (if I had to file this, Spelunky, Shoot First and Binding of Isaac under one folder) is "roguelike-like". And, of course, actual roguelikes aren't part of that category since they already have a name of their own.

TELEPORTER ROBINSON

When you say this style is getting old, what else has a style like this? The closest thing I can think of is Pineapple Smash Crew, and even that's not all that similar. It's clearly an intentional stylistic decision. Just look at the distortion effect when they teleport. It's obvious that they have some skill in graphics programming. That line of sight rendering is pretty good too.

And it was made by a team of three. I get the feeling a lot of people don't realize just how much effort it takes to make high fidelity art. I'm impressed with what they were able to do within the constraints before them.

(As an aside, I find it amusing that I was praising the PlayStation 4 demos the other day, and now I'm defending a lo-fi indie game.)

@rox360: Eh, that's reasonable. Actual roguelikes are just pretty dear to a lot of people, who don't really take kindly to the name being dragged through the mud.

Right. And I totally get that. "Roguelike Purists" tend to place a premium on how obtuse a game is. But as I noted above, the current "gold standard" roguelikes (Nethack, ADOM, etc.) are mechanically so far from that 1980 game that they almost have more in common with the "bastardized" variants that the purists so love to hate. Rogue was exceedingly simple, and what wonkiness it did have probably had more to do with how game development worked back in the late 70s/80s; everything controlled like shit. Computers could only handle so much data, etc. Hell, even the levels weren't completely randomized. Rogue dungeon levels were generated on a preset grid of 3 rooms by 3 rooms, with some rooms randomly removed. Obviously item placement/monsters were randomized, too.

So even when stuff like Hack and Angband were being created, they weren't forming a new "genre" whose rules had to be fervently followed. They were loosely borrowing the design ethos and some of the features to create something new and exciting. It wasn't until over a decade had passed that roguelikes became well-known for being inaccessible, and if we allow that, then it means the term "roguelike" can change (as all definitions do over time.)

Again, if we break "roguelike" down to "Game that is like Rogue" then a "true Game that is like Rogue" has nothing to do with inaccessibility and a lot to do with sort-of randomization of levels, permadeath and reasonably stripped-down graphics or non-complex rendering systems. At which point, Brogue or DCSS belongs in that category as much as Dungeons of Dredmor or, hell, even Teleglitch. And ultimately, I always find it so weird that an agressively insular community seems to care so much about the way "their word" is being used by people that play games for categorically different reasons, even when that word is an accurate or utile shorthand for a certain set of gameplay mechanics.

@muttersometaxicab: ADOM's command list has well over 100 options for everything from dipping something into a well to wiping dirt off your face. I don't think it has much in common with looser inspirations such as Spelunky.

Besides, all this silly arguing over the nature of genres was pretty much put to bed with the Berlin Interpretation, still the definitive answer to the question of "what is a Roguelike?" It's nuanced and has room for exceptions, and explains rather well that Roguelike isn't solely defined by "like Rogue." There is a canon of follow-ups - NetHack, Angband, ADOM, and Crawl, as well as the original Rogue - that functionally define the genre as it has existed for decades. These follow-ups are certainly more complicated and in-depth than Rogue was, but, well, we've been playing them in many cases for over 20 years. Those games, their commonalities, and all that time counts for something.

And I don't know where you got the idea, but nobody is arguing that Dungeons of Dredmor isn't a roguelike in the same way they argued about FTL or BOI, all I'm saying is that Dredmor isn't a very good one. And in the case of Teleglitch, abandoning turn-based, tile-based combat is about the most fundamental shift you could make to the canon defined by ADOM, Angband, Crawl, Nethack, and Rogue.

Looks pretty darn cool. Might try it if I find the time.

i guess i'm one of the people that bugged patrick about this!! cool game

Someone should start a Time To RougeLike-reference list for Patrick QL's.

I like how Patrick starts the same god damn fight every time a game has some feature he perceives as roguelike.

They should make Patrick play an actual Roguelike. I think that'd be pretty funny.