Giant Bomb Presents: Delving into the History of Roguelikes

Hey Austin, you are a pretty cool dude...Love your work!

Have you ever checked out Angband? It was based upon Moria, and from my understanding more or less supplanted it in the roguelike community in the 90s. It's still in active development and has been ported to modern systems.

@dlcraddock: Yes but at what cost. Completely throwing away some very good design decisions that made gameplay and storytelling intertwine so seamlessly and in its place adding variety for variety's sake took away DkS' greatest charm. The shitty story that is totally out of sync with everything DkS tells us and rather uninspired design (in comparison) for creatures and places made me never touch the thing again after 1 playthrough I barely got to finish (while literally the only TWO games I actually made a point to get platinum are DkS and DeS)

Yes, it has variety, the newgame+ concept is cool and it has a lot of different weapons BUT AT WHAT COOOOST

I guess if people just play for the kicks of "play sharply or die repeatedly," then it's a 'great' game. But DeS/DkS is so much more and so much richer than just that.

Great feature!

Grow up. People like games for different reasons.

I'll give this a listen when I get home. Thanks, Austin.

@shinluis: Dude, the greatsword in Dark Souls is pretty much the same model as the greatsword in Dark Souls 2. Gigantic weapons are par for the course in all the Souls games.

@dlcraddock: Did you ask any of the devs how they tested their games? I would imagine that the repetitiveness of their procedural generation algorithms would only become clear after hours of tests.

Also how many of the rogue-like trailblazers actually made money? It seems like a lot of these games appealed to incredibly niche audiences and were unintuative as heck, so I can't imagine that they were successful financially.

@blacklagoon: Yes I have! And Angband is great. It's especially fun running into iconic characters, or picking up artifact items like Galadriel's Phial. It does differ in some fundamental ways from the original Moria, but it's a great game in its own right.

Moria just holds a special place in my heart because it was my first roguelike, and I was very young when I played it. My mom was actually a big fan of the game (she had been introduced to it by one of her employees), and I have fond memories of her teaching me mechanics and controls. She liked to relieve her work stress by rolling a half-troll warrior and bashing the living hell out of everything.

First brad's interview now this?

I am really enjoying these. Please keep them coming

@thatpinguino:

1) Testing occurred via the only method with which developers can reliably test any game with procedurally generated content: playing over and over and over. Most of these guys created their roguelikes when they were in college, so they had plenty of friends willing to spend hours playing and proffering feedback. Angband and NetHack are tested much more extensively than most roguelikes due to the team-based nature of development. As I cover in the back, the developers on those games tend to concentrate on areas that appeal to them. Some developers spend time tightening procedural algorithms; others like to study the rate at which certain items do or do not spawn; and so forth.

2) Few developers of seminal roguelikes have made much money, a trend that continues today depending on the roguelike you work on. Roguelikes are a niche genre; roguelike SYSTEMS, like permadeath and generating content procedurally, are what attract mass audiences. See: Diablo, FTL. Of all the developers I talked to for Dungeon Hacks, I would bet Thomas Biskup, creator and maintainer of ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery), has made the most. He successfully crowd-funded the resurrection of ADOM and ADOM II. How much of that went to him, I don't know. But Biskup and the other devs all have day jobs--some in games, most not.

I am absolutely in love with this type of content on GiantBomb. Scattered throughout the silliness some extremely thoughtful discussion is very much enjoyed.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

@daviblight: It's what makes me completely proud and eager to talk about this site with people slightly outside our little bubble.

@fiyenyaa: I know, some of them have always been over the top and the ludicrous Moonlight Greatsword is proof of that. They have always been either fair realistic or grotesquely fantastical but DkS2 has a lot more bad taste with things like yellow quartz sword and whatnot.

I'm not against the weapons being huge, it's more like their designs in 2 are really meeh most of the time. I specially remember the staffs being very bad taste

Never trust anyone who gets angry about other people's taste in video games

I like the idea of this kind of themed one-off podcast. Please do more. Gaming-ology is always fun to delve into in depth, imho.

Awesome. Roguelite is my fav genre.

Super fun interview. This book wasn't on my radar before, but is now on my Amazon wishlist (I have a couple others to finish first).

Cogmind is my current rogue-y obsession. It's still in alpha (and is rather expensive out of a desire to only have people who really care and want to give feedback involved), but is plenty fun already.

Instead of fantasy it's a sci-fi game where you're a robot and you build your character up by attaching various modules. There's a bunch of other stuff. It has a cool terminal-y look to it, while still being both keyboard and mouse-friendly in terms of UI. There's even a now-optional ASCII look if you want the little characters instead of the default tileset, which imo looks quite good without abandoning the terminal-y look to it.

Indeed. I simply love the personality-driven content, but Austin has brought something really in need on the website. I would love to know more about his academic background.

damn i didn't know the dump truck is still around

I am currently listening but I already love the bit about Dark Souls 2 near the beginning. Will comment on whole thing later.

Thanks for posting this to the front page. I was totally unaware that the GB Dumptruck went through a re-branding.

This was great! I remember discovering Nethack in the back of Gameinformer in their itty-biity side column, the same column where I first heard about Dwarf Fortress. I remember printing out the entire manual at grandma's house and studying the hell out of it during a summer break. It still impresses me just the sheer amount of interactions that game has and all of its secrets(writing elbereth, dipping a long swords in a fountain to get Excalibur, kicking sinks for free rings or some terrible ooze monster, the fucking loot filled Sokoban deathtrap levels)

Despite how much I was amazed by it then, I don't actually play Nethack anymore and wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Its kinda too hard and too esoteric, and there are tons of other rougelikes out now. I think Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is much better/newbie-friendly "traditional" rougelike that feels infinity more manageable than Nethack (I say this as a terrible player of both). Tale's of Maj'eyal is probably one of my favorites. Its basically rougelike take on Diablo with lots of unlockables and lore. I still want to figure out Caves of Qud(post-post apocalyptic rougelike) and actually try whatever Ultimate Ratio Regum claims to be(Dwarf fortress-like?)

Wow, cogmind looks great. Guess I know what I'm doing after work today. Not sure how I haven't seen that before.

Ended up picking up the book before even listening to this podcast, and after reading the first bit of it about BAM and listening to this glad I did. Rogue-likes/lites and I go way back to at least nethack in the 90s. Still want to build a procedural game at some point *looks at the icon for Unity on his desktop*.

Oh man it's really hard to miss Patrick when we traded him for Austin :D

Austin, you're a great addition to the GB crew. I appreciate your approach to the industry and I would love to hear more podcasts like this!

@dlcraddock: Do you cover oubliettelikes in any capacity in the book?

@fisk0: I don't, but they may come up in another book I'm writing. ;)

For a more thorough answer: I explain in Chapter 1 that I could only go back so far in my research and coverage of roguelikes. I chose Beneath Apple Manor as the genre's foundation, and mentioned that plenty of other games (some known, some lost to time) contributed to the genre's DNA. From there, the book moves on to Rogue, Sword of Fargoal, Hack, and other games.

I love that GB started doing these interviews again Keep 'em coming!

This interview didn't really tell anyone who isn't already into roguelikes what roguelikes are. I guess that means it's more for fans of roguelikes than in getting new listeners into them. Was that on purpose, or maybe the guys just didn't think of laying a little groundwork first? I thought it was interesting, even if I'm more the sort of guy who likes to build up levels and abilities that stick around for as long as I play.

I really liked the subject of the interview. That being said I found it grating that Austin talked more than the person he was supposed to be interviewing.

I don't think Austin is comparable to Patrick. I think he exceeds Patrick. I've actually cared about visiting the site again since he came on.

Great podcast. Bring on more!

Man Austin really is Patrick 2.0. Enjoyed the interview.

Interesting topic. but man Austin you have to let the interviewee speak, or else why have them on

Hey, a book I might actually read.

After having just played my first soulslike, I'd now like to try my first roguelike. I thought about giving Below a shot, but the response at release didn't seem great. Guessing I should do Rogue Legacy.