Quick Look: Nongünz

Quick looks getting shorter everyday

@steveurkel: The games are also very lackluster, bring on E3!

I'm not big into roguelikes, but the art in this is gorgeous. Great music too.

Bought this instantly. Five English pounds for moving nihilistic art and gunnery? Like I could even try and say no.

This game has a really curious aesthetic, I'm really digging it.

i'd really like someone to give me a solid substantive argument why "roguelites" are bad, reflecting on the actual form of the genre itself

it's always seemed to me that roguelites are hated because they are roguelites, a buzzwordey-ass buzzword type of thing which seems to invite backlash merely for the fact that it is a buzzword, but not in and of itself a substantively repulsive form of game

i mean the only defining factor of a roguelite is the concept of a "run", that the game is meant to be played in 5-30 minute bursts with permadeath and often but not always some sort of metaprogression, which is just, you know... a way to design video games. time was, a lot of games were designed that way

if anything, the whole genre is in dire need of a rebrand

I need to know - are there palette swaps?? I love the style but this seems like one of those games that would really benefit from something like that.

It's a bit more complicated than that, A roguelite's main defining characteristic is that it's not a Roguelike. In order for a game to actually be a Roguelike, it has to follow the main tenants of Rogue, and it's ancestors, like Nethack etc.

The most agreed upon ruleset is the Berlin Interpretation, which states a series of rules that a game must follow in order to be a true Roguelike, this being the internet some people are pissy about games being labelled as Roguelikes when they are technically Roguelites.

Therefore Roguelikes are less a solid genre, and more a catchall. You can get some real interesting games in the genre, due to the possibilities available.

Wouldn't it be pronounced like "non-goons"?

@thepullquotes: erm

nobody gripes about roguelites because they are insufficiently Rogue-like

they gripe about them because they are pervasive

idk what any of that has to do with my original post

I can't give you an objective treatise or whatever on why the genre as a whole is bad, but I can tell you why I don't enjoy them. Spoiler blocked for length.

Great, not every game needs 45 minutes. They came in, showed me what the game is, and got out.

yo so i just played this game for a few hours and it's WAY more complex then pack realizes

for one thing, it's absolutely more of an idle game than a roguelite. the "clicking" is a huge part of it, and there's actually a lot of the game that ben didn't even touch on, like the fact that you can eat cards and build guys and there's an entire other game that happens when you quit the game, which is where the actual idling takes place

pretty neat game. i encourage the gb duders, esp jeff, to look into it more

Man I love the music. It's pretty chilling.

@quadrophrenic: Huh? Who ever said roguelites are bad? Personally, I like roguelites way more than roguelikes because that meta-progression is something that keeps me going. BUT, I still insist on differentiating between those two umbrella terms since there are quite a few key differences between "lites" and "likes".

Also, they're putting out videos on the weekend, something that wasn't the case not too long ago.

I feel the whole clicker aspect really feeds into the nihilism part. Kind of neat.

Ben and Jeff are the best.

The artstyle is great! It also seems like a good game to check out at some point.

EDIT: I give this game 7 Vlambeers out of 10. The Screenshake needs adjustment.

1. Roguelite.

2. Terrible artwork.

No thanks.

Is the shopkeeper from the Seventh Seal?

This looks like a video game people would want to play.

More videos like this please.

This game must be really hard because it seems like Ben died a lot. I dig the Binding of Isaac level of obfuscation about items and stats though.

@paulunga:every single roguelite that comes out ever has at least 5 comments on the first page that are just "Roguelike? Ugh, no thanks" without any sort of argument whatsoever

it's just baffling to me, considering how... "neutral" the entire concept is

I'd be down for it if there's a port of it onto a handheld. Sounds like a real good pickup-and-play game for commutes.

upwell? acrosswell?

I can't wait for indie developers to come up with a cost effective but vastly more interesting concept than the rogue-like with randomly generated levels.

I feel like at this point they don't even need to put up the video of these kinds of games anymore. The screenshot is all we need. Save everyone the trouble.

I remember a time when people were noticing that Quick Looks weren't so quick anymore and some people complained about that.

Honestly, I'm totally fine with shorter Quick Looks of games like this. Something like Prey? Yeah, that probably does need a solid 45 minutes or so, but the newest 2D roguelike thing? Yeah, 20 minutes is great for that.

Also this. I never really liked the idea of a roguelike. I have, for a long time now, been getting more and more tired of seeing a game that I think looks awesome and interesting only to hear that instead of crafting well-executed levels and an interesting progression system, they've implemented randomly generated levels that we have to go through every time we die. And sure, they've usually got a progression system of sorts, but it's never fun. I like that feeling in the last ten percent of a game where you feel like nothing save for the final few bosses and a handful of enemies can actually do anything to you and roguelikes/roguelites/whatever you want to call them don't have that at all.

(*cue someone snidely mentioning that that feeling of power comes from "getting good at the game" - still not what I'm looking for).

EDIT: @redhotchilimist said what I want to say about roguelites a lot better than I did. I'm just tired of seeing games with great ideas and great mechanics bogged down by roguelite trappings.

Livin, learnin, hangin on the edge of tomorrow

I honestly wouldn't mind shorter but more meticulously crafted games like Gunpoint for example.

Remember when people used to rag on AAA games for being too similar and that indie games were the ones with original ideas?

I think people are sick of roguelites because adding in permadeath, metaprogression, and random level spawning is a pretty easy way to artificially extend a game's playtime and perceived depth. They're not inherently bad, but there have been a million indie games developed in the last five years that could have really benefited by using a different structure. Imagine the gameplay mechanics of Flinthook, Enter the Gungeon, Risk of Rain, Nuclear Throne, etc, except placed in a more traditional format with handcrafted levels, sequences, and item/enemy placements. It's strange that linear games with a reasonable length are a rarity now. I just want to see more variation in the types of games that come out.

All this being said, some games demand the format. In my opinion, Spelunky is in the top ten of games released this decade because of how well it used the tenants of the genre.

Every single one of these games except Flinthook would be immeasurably worse and lose their main appeal if they dropped the roguelike elements, and I say this as a person who thinks Risk of Rain is a truly terrible game.

The problem isn't that there are too many games that use roguelike-inspired mechanics, the problem is that a lot of them do it poorly.

Also it rules to see people say shit like that indie developers only make this design choice to cut cost. Fuckin exposed em, baby!

@quadrophrenic: Couldy you expand on this more? Specifically on the part about idling.

I get a real area-just-before-Dracula's-mansion-in-Simon's-Quest vibe from this, and I'm all for that. It doesn't look like something I'll play, though. Shame.

I like this game

"they are not sinister don't worry about him or his items" funniest line ever

@quadrophrenic said:

I do. The interesting part to me about roguelikes is that everything is completely random and anything could happen. I don't want to have to unlock most of the game or be presented with choices about what will happen during the next run. I don't want to work up to anything or even improve much at all. I want to start with completely random equipment and skills and see how far I can get in a world where anything is possible.

Personally I feel that every single game that is a roguelike/lite would be a better game if it wasn't.

A lot of these types of games look interesting to me on the surface, but I want to be able to invest in a character and play through the game with that character and build it up. I don't want to have to start over again and again.

You could definitely combine the cost/time-saving aspect of random levels and spawns etc with a simple save system and have essentially the same game but not a roguelike.

I've been playing the same female Undead Priest in WoW for 12 years if that tells you anything. :D

@tikicobra:

Spoilers for some basic information that seems essential to know but Ben seemed to miss:

So it's got the kind of "make the numbers go higher so you can make things that make the numbers go higher" aspect that a lot of idle clickers have. I dig it. I think it's probably a lot better on paper than it is to actually PLAY, but it's a really neat idea, and it's definitely not your typical roguelite.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

You saying the developers of every single one of these games is like "YEAH, roguelites is where it's at, I've always loved this progression system and it's the best thing for our game"? Or are you saying that it's obvious that it's there to cut the workload? I think there are lots of different reasons for it. The one developer blog I followed was by a single programmer with an interest in procedural generation and not a lot of interest in art assets who joined a bigger(but still very small) developer studio he knew to make his prototype into a full game. The decision to make it a roguelite wasn't out of any enthusiasm for the format on his part, he hates that type of progression. But it was a way to frame what he made in a currently popular format. It's just chasing the trend that Spelunky and BoI started and hoping the audience hasn't tired of it.

So do games in this genre keep getting made because people want them or because compelling level design is hard? That email on a recent Bombcast about this matter got me thinking about why no matter how fun these games look to play I rarely feel an urge to play them. (I did play a bunch of Rogue Legacy and enjoyed it, but I never finished it.)

@mathey: That movie is actually listed as an influence for the game.

WELP.... Another Rogue Like, Like, Like, Like that I will surely ... Like