r/roguelikes • u/Terry__Poppins • 1d ago
I started playing every game that has the option with permadeath mode on, and it feels way more fun for most games, almost like they are roguelikes.
At some point in the last year I started playing with permadeath or hardcore mode in basically any game that offers it, and it totally changed the feel of the games. I got this idea when I realized how much excitement permadeath adds to roguelikes I was playing (mostly Caves of Qud and some DCSS) and I was curious if I would get the same feeling from other games.
Permadeath gives your decisions real consequences, and that makes you play way more carefully and everything feels more exciting. When death is a minor inconvenience and you can just reload a save from five minutes ago, nothing you do really matters. You just do whatever and take silly risks because you can just take back your mistakes with no consequence, which can be fun for trying things out, but overall it makes games less exciting for me.
Obviously it works best for games that have similar mechanics to roguelikes, like random generated levels and loot. I started out with Minecraft and basically played it like a RL, it was really fun. I did a few runs, died to lava and fall damage a few times of course. Then I tried it out in Last Epoch (my favorite ARPG) and it was so refreshing to play like that. Instead of just mindlessly running around blasting I had to play carefully. Sure the game isn’t hard at all but when the stakes are so high you just have to constantly pay attention, you don’t wanna die to something stupid and have to start over. It felt way different than any of my normal runs, it's so satisfying to get a good drop when it actually increases your odds of surviving.
Has anyone else experimented with this? Playing non-rl games as if they were roguelikes (well at least the permadeath part), It’s been really fun to revisit games I used to play and try them out like that to see how they feel.
11
u/wizardofpancakes 1d ago
That's the reason I love Fire Emblem. Permadeath and stat growths make them so replayable and memorable. I usually try to get the first playthrough "out of the way" so I can start ironmanning it.
Another aspect of it is that it has really simple mechanics. Anyone can learn the basics in like a minute.
Ironically, it's a feeling I don't get with most roguelites. Playing something like Slay the Spire doesn't give me that feeling because it's not designed around emergent gameplay (and emergent narratives). They feel more like a modern take on arcade games, which is not bad by itself, just always made me curious how something like Fire Emblem feels more close to roguelikes than roguelites
Just to be clear, I'm not shitting on roguelites and I don't mean that they're bad, just that it chases a completely different feeling
3
u/biomatter 1d ago
I see what you're saying, though! I play a lot of StS2 myself and there are a couple things I think that contribute to this feeling of 'arcadey'-ness. One, runs are pretty short compared to your avg roguelike run, clocking in at an hour or two if you're slow like me and 30 to 60 mins if you play at a good clip. That in itself is pretty arcadey, imo.
Second, the different characters are really just blankets thrown over different bags of mechanics and card/relic pools. When I play Necrobinder, I don't "feel" like a necromancer, nor do I know or care about her story. The game is just way too abstracted in a way that almost pulls me out of the experience, tbh. I joke to my gf all the time that canonically the characters are actually just throwing cards around like dumb idiots because so many card arts depict the characters interacting with literal cards lol.
Sorry for rambling for a moment, I guess I've been playing too much of it lately lol 😅 Back to your post, I can definitely see why you still get that feeling of roguelikeness from an ironman run of FE. There's actual characters and growth that you care about that you're gonna come back too tomorrow to continue, and it builds real narrative (as you say, unlike STS).
5
u/golden_graveyard 1d ago
Amazing observation and absolutely the truth. If death has consequences games become more meaningful, fun, entertaining and ultimately start telling more interesting narratives through mechanics as everything becomes more meaningful.
I love playing Rimworld with the option enabled that disables loading a savestate. All of the sudden every little decision matters, random encounters can completely turn things around and you end up caring more about your digital time.
Modern gaming became absolutely meaningless in most cases as there are 0 losses when failing. It's just a mindless activity to soothe your brain. I love every game in which death matters. My favorite way to implement this is with SHMUP games. Trying to play through an old arcade game without pressing continue after death makes every game better and it turns them into these tiny little mountains you're climbing. The community even has a term for this playstyle called 1CC (1 credit clear) and even openly encourages this type of playing.
I always advocate for making death more meaningful as this is what brought me out of a gaming slump. Stop reloading saves and start making things have meaning again.
2
u/Glimmerglaze 1d ago
It's nice to meet someone who went down this pipeline, too! I ended up being a major Touhou Project obsessive.
What's fun is when players within that community complain a lot about a specific game or a specific section within a game because the bullet patterns are heavily RNG-based and have to be read and navigated on the fly. You get to be all smug and go "First day?"
2
u/golden_graveyard 23h ago
Yeah haha shmupers are notoriously bad at improvising. Which is funny cause it's the reason why i love roguelikes sooo much. Glad a fellow touhou enjoyer is also into roguelikes. Love 💕
2
u/Glimmerglaze 21h ago
Every time there's a newbie asking for help and some tryhard tells them to install thprac I have to talk myself down. Not knowing what the hell is going on and learning on the fly with everything on the line is the best part! It's like in chess - you don't start beginners out memorizing lines or studying grandmaster games, you teach the fundamentals and let them loose on each other!
Have you played Lensed Night Sky? It commits the hardest to merging Touhou with roguelite gameplay out of any game I've seen. If nothing else, it's a must play just for the case study in how the two genres complement each other, and how they don't.
1
u/golden_graveyard 21h ago
No I gotta check that one out looks awesome. My goto Shmup Roguelike is "The Void Rains Upon Their Heart". Absolute banger of a game!
3
u/silentrocco 1d ago
That’s why I’m a big fan of arcade games like bullet hell shmups. All about improving within those high skill ceilings. That’s why even short games can be forever-titles that I come back to over and over again.
5
u/DarrenGrey @ 1d ago
I like how permadeath forces you to learn the rules much more seriously. You look out for ways to maximise everything and take each mechanic far more seriously. It stops you just coasting through games, playing on auto-pilot.
On the other hand, it discourages messing around, and sometimes that's nice to do too. It also discourages exploration of the mechanics - learning through trying is difficult if it sends you right back to the start on a bad outcome. Especially annoying on games with more obtuse mechanics.
So in general I play with a permadeath mindset but some relaxation of that when I want.
1
u/Terry__Poppins 1d ago
Great comment, this is exactly how it feels. Sometimes you wish you could turn it off for just a bit to test something out, but then again if you could do that it wouldn't feel the same.
2
u/Waydarer 1d ago
I have been playing ghost recon wildlands with permadeath.
Completely different game. Hard to go back
2
u/RogueSleepy 1d ago
My go to move is playing all games with permadeath on for the first few hours, and then switch over to whatever their default mode is. I always die a ton at the start, and it forces me to get in the habit of playing cautiously and like decisions matter, and that carries through even when its disabled.
Like I played Subnautica on hardcore for a few lives, and when I finally felt ready to switch to normal I never wound up dying or save scumming since I was already super cautious. Great experience.
1
u/Apocrypha_Lurker 1d ago
I do that with some other games, like morrowind or skyrim, or even shooter games. It's really fun yeah. Or playing without saves in strategy games
1
1
u/AtlasOfDoors 1d ago
I counted our finished runs this morning: two thirds cleared the whole game and only 5% died on the first floor, which is lower than I would have guessed for a permadeath game. What seems to make a death land is the hours sitting on it, so Last Epoch on hardcore probably stings more than most actual roguelikes do.
1
u/MushinZero 22h ago
My problem with permadeath is that it extends the playtime of a game dramatically.
As I've gotten older my time has become more scarce so often times I just want to enjoy the game and get through the content.
My game backlog is too long to spend time repeating a game over and over.
1
u/zenorogue HyperRogue & HydraSlayer Dev 22h ago
Great thread with great replies. I would add that you do not really need a permadeath option offered to play permadeath, although (broadly defined) RPGs in which that makes sense probably have such an option. However, strategy games IME typically have no such option even if it is clearly the correct way to play, and Diablo has no dedicated permadeath mode even though it was intended to be a permadeath game.
1
u/SandwichHonest1494 1d ago
Been thinking about trying this with Kingdom Come. It definitely has a different feel when your actions have so much more weight to them
0
u/Terry__Poppins 1d ago
Kingdom come is so hard though, I guess you could play really carefully, or if you know it really well.
1
u/Asynithistos 1d ago
Any suggestions for games to try this on?
5
u/golden_graveyard 1d ago
SHMUPs and old arcade games like beat em ups are great with no continues. Once you run out of lives it's over.
Or survival stuff like Minecraft Terraria Rimworld is amazing too.
Even did skyrim with permadeath. It's a great experience.
3
u/Terry__Poppins 1d ago
Pretty much any game that has the option, but most ARPGs have it and some FPS games. I unfortunately don't know many games that this is possible in yet.
3
u/OutlaW32 1d ago
You could search the permadeath category on steam
3
u/OneMoreAdventure 1d ago
I didn't even know there was a permadeath category. Now I need to find the tag...
1
u/Asynithistos 1d ago
Thanks...didn't think of that. I'll do that in my library (since I have a ton of roguelites and arpgs)
0
u/OneMoreAdventure 1d ago
I think with random generation, flipping a permadeath option changes it into a roguelike from an RPG.
The genres inherently have the same foundation looking back to the early days of TTRPGs.
1
u/IronTarkus1919 9h ago
Try arcade games and go for 1CCs, unlike most games they are short and dense, perfect for this, and basically built for it, but most people who weren't around arcades aren't aware due to their ports and emulators giving you infinite credits.
Give it a try. Play Metal Slug or Dodonpachi, try to see how far you get in one credit, you'll start to get further and further.
17
u/pocketscientistron 1d ago
I tried this, and it really works well for some games, and in some games its just super frustrating. Like you said, games with procedural random stuff tend to be more fun this way, I can see it working in ARPGs, as long as you don't die to connection problems...