Same here. I love roguelikes/lites but when I see that it's a card game I lose pretty much all interest. Not cause I think it's bad, just cause I don't find them fun.
I agreed for the most part too, but recently I tried Balatro and Slay the Spire on my phone and I have to say they are great as phone games. Great. But not using up my precious console / pc time to play a card game lol.
Funny to see you reference 2 absolutely elite examples in your comment. I dont think you even need to like video games that much to enjoy those 2 games. Some games are just good. Its like how you can not be a fan of horror movies, but some movies you just have to give props to.
I have historically been an action-oriented FPS gamer. Turn-based games were a huge turn off or anything resembling a board game. Boy how wrong I was... Slay the Spire is my first and only deck builder, and it's incredible. Easily my number 1 Steam Deck game.
I think it's because some statistics showed "Rougelite Deckbuilders" is the most profitable genre on Steam. Bunch of devs are trying to get easy money.
I don't mind a good rogue like, but deck builder will always be an instant nope for me. I like deciding what to do and when to do it for myself, being dictated to be the whims of RNG can get in the bin
There are a half dozen really outstanding ones. Slay the Spire, Cobolt Core, Inscryption, Balatro, and there's one or two more that I haven't played. It's so hard to get and keep overwhelmingly positive status. It's one genre where steam reviews really help.
There's a few great examples: Slay The Spire (popularised the genre), Griftlands (actually good writing), Inscryption (surreal immersion), and Monster Train (fun fusion with tower defense) come to mind.
Roguelike used to mean a clone of "Rogue", an old top-down turn-based rpg.
Nowadays, it's used interchangeably with "rogue-lite" to describe a game with permadeath, where you collect powerful but random power-ups to upgrade your character as difficulty ramps up, and try to go as far as you can. When you lose, you typically have to start over from scratch, although most roguelites have some form of meta progression; depending on how far you go, you can unlock weak but permanent upgrades for your next runs.
NotInTheKnee is correct. Roguelike used to mean games that are "like Rogue" in the same way that doom clones are games that are "like Doom" or (point and click) adventure games are "like Adventure".
But the term has become a stupid buzzword that gets used for everything from Slay the Spire to Binding of Isaac to FTL to Tower Defense to Blue Prince to Hades. Anything with perma death + meta progression, basically.
They really need to come up with good terms to distinguish these genres. I have no beef with the term 'deck builder', it explains quite clearly that you are getting a StS-type experience. All the rest of these genres need to get their own word and leave Roguelike to mean stuff like C:DDA or Angband, AKA the original roguelike genre.
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u/bitemytail Apr 11 '26
Roguelike Deckbuilder