Mini RPG

"Roguelike" is a complete mess of a term, so first I want to establish exactly what I'm talking about: The intersection of three mechanics - Character Progression, Permadeath, and Procedural Generation. For clarity's sake I'm going to call this subset of roguelike mechanics "Mini-RPG". (I don't think this name is very good, but since when is any genre name?) I think the Mini-RPG is the most common layperson's definition of roguelike. [citation needed]

People generally only focus on the latter two parts when describing the genre, but I think Progression is actually the most important part. Seeing yourself get stronger over time, either with new abilities or just bigger numbers, feels good. It's one of the main draws of the RPG genre. The reason the Mini-RPG is so popular is that it takes this progression and speeds it up as fast as possible. You go through the progression arc of an entire RPG in a single play session.

The problem with ramping up progression so much is that it's not sustainable; that's where Permadeath comes in. By resetting the player back to zero every time they die it means you can effectively keep going up forever. And then with just permadeath alone the game would get too repetitive, so finally Procedural Generation comes in to clean things up.

Despite no one talking about Progression, it's pretty clear that people still understand how important it is. There's a reason Binding of Isaac has like a million items. Speaking of items, I think they are one of the things that made Mini-RPGs take off. Compared to increasing stats, getting different items means the way you get more powerful is completely different each run further decreasing repetition.

Now, the cool thing about the Mini-RPG is that it isn't really a genre, just a set of mechanics. In fact you can apply these mechanics to any other genre, and obviously people have already been doing that. Roguelikes are Mini-RPG Dungeon Crawlers, Spelunky is a Mini-RPG Platformer, Binding of Isaac is a Mini-RPG Arena Shooter. Deckbuilder games are Mini-RPG CCGs. Tower Defense games are Mini-RPG City Builders. The Battle Royale genre is just a Mini-RPG FPS.

I think this framework could lead to an easy way to make more "roguelike [genre]" crossovers. Throw some upgrades into Tetris and you have a Mini-RPG puzzle game. I've had an idea for a Mini-RPG Rhythm game floating in my head for a while. (Procedurally generated music is a bit daunting though.)

Laying out the main mechanics also makes it easier to intentionally mix them up. I already touched on items, which were a replacement for the leveling system normally used for progression. If you replace Procedural Generation with the randomness created by other players you can get Competitive strategy games like Starcraft. You could reset the players power level somehow without taking away other progress. (I've always complained about Rogue Legacy not being a roguelike and this helps explain why I feel that way. It does the opposite of this: resetting progress without affecting power level.)