If you spend any time around video games, you have seen the word everywhere, attached to everything from dungeon crawlers to card games to shooters. It has become a common phrase, yet the label gets stretched so far that its meaning has blurred. So what does roguelike mean, really? At its core, the roguelike genre describes a game built around randomly generated levels and permanent death, where losing sends you back to the start to try again with everything reset.
This guide breaks down the definition, the history behind the strange name, the crucial difference between a roguelike and a roguelite, and the standout roguelike games that show the genre at its best.
A roguelike is defined by two core ideas working together. The first is random dungeon generation, meaning the levels, enemies, and item layouts are procedurally created each time, so no two runs are alike. The second is the permadeath feature, meaning that when your player character dies, the run is over. There are no extra lives and no reloading, so you begin again with a fresh world and, usually, a new character.
That combination creates the genre's signature tension. Every decision carries weight, and resource management becomes a constant tactical challenge as you ration a limited supply of health, food, and special equipment. Traditional roguelikes control a single character across a uniform grid of tiles, use turn-based movement so nothing happens until you act, and measure the passage of time in turns rather than seconds. This rewards gameplay strategy over reflexes, since you can pause to weigh every possible combination of actions before committing.
Anyone asking what does roguelike mean eventually runs into this debate. Because the term was being applied so loosely, developers and fans gathered at the International Roguelike Development Conference in 2008 to agree on a shared set of rules. The result, known as the Berlin Interpretation, remains the most cited exact definition of a roguelike game today.
It does not treat the definition of a roguelike as a single yes or no test. Instead it lists high-value and low-value factors, and the more a game has, the more it counts as one of the canon roguelike games. The high-value gameplay elements include random environment generation, the permadeath feature, turn-based play on a grid, a high degree of complexity built from a number of different game systems, resource management, and combat. Lower-value factors include controlling a single character and facing a real tactical challenge each turn. This flexible framework is why game developers still argue over the edges of the genre, since almost no modern game ticks every box.
The name is unusually literal. It comes from a 1980 game called Rogue, a dungeon crawl that used text characters to draw its maze-like levels. The developers of Rogue, chiefly Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman, with Ken Arnold later contributing the display code, drew heavily on Dungeons & Dragons and built a game where the goal was to descend, survive, and retrieve the Amulet of Yendor. That small dev team created a formula so durable that games copying it became known simply as being rogue-like.
For a long period of time the genre stayed niche, kept alive by fans who would sink much time into mastering its systems. Then indie developers rediscovered the formula in the 2010s and set off the boom that continues today.
Part of what does roguelike mean lives in these originals, and the traditional wing of the genre is still going strong. NetHack is the most famous, a fiendishly deep game where the purpose of unidentified items is part of the puzzle, since you must test each one to learn what it does. Angband sends you down a huge dungeon toward a final boss, while Ancient Domains of Mystery, usually shortened to ADOM, blends dungeon levels with open areas and natural features on a wider world map. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup streamlined the classic design for newcomers and remains a favourite.
These games track the status of the player in fine detail, from stamina decay and hunger to a limited supply of gear behind the occasional locked door. Because of the permadeath feature, your stored game data is wiped when you die, which is exactly the point. Japanese Mystery Dungeon games, including the Shiren the Wanderer series, brought the same ideas to console players with a more immersive experience for newcomers.
As the genre grew, developers softened the harshest rules, and a new label appeared.
A pure roguelike wipes everything when you die, deleting your stored game data and starting a brand new game from scratch. A roguelite keeps the random levels and death-based runs but lets you carry something forward, such as permanent upgrades or currency that makes the next attempt with a new character a little easier. That steady progress is the dividing line. Most of today's best roguelike games are technically roguelites, though in casual use people apply the roguelike label to both.
The modern era spread roguelike elements into every genre imaginable. The Binding of Isaac paired the formula with twin-stick shooting, Darkest Dungeon added gothic party management, and Rogue Legacy turned it into a platform game where each heir inherits the last one's progress. Risk of Rain applied it to co-op action, and Crypt of the NecroDancer fused it with a rhythm puzzle game, proving how far the ideas can travel. Indie designers kept experimenting too, with figures like Rich Carlson exploring roguelike ideas in the practically infinite space of procedural design.
Good game design is what separates the greats, since randomness alone is not enough. The best results come when the game processes chaos into fair, readable challenges, so that reacting to your current situation feels skilful rather than lucky.
Roguelikes thrive because they solve a problem every developer faces, which is how to make a game worth replaying. Procedural levels mean near-infinite replay value from a small amount of hand-built content, and permadeath makes every session meaningful. For players, the appeal is constant learning, since your player actions get sharper each run even when you lose. That loop of failure, learning, and mastery suits short mobile sessions as well as long ones.
Yes, roguelike is one of Steam's most active tags, covering thousands of titles, and roguelite and roguelike deckbuilder are popular sub-categories too. The genre's endless replay value makes it a favourite for both indie developers and players, so new releases appear constantly across every major platform.
The r/roguelikes and r/roguelites subreddits are the largest hubs for discussion, recommendations, and news. RogueBasin is the long-running wiki for classic roguelike knowledge and development, while many individual games run active Discord servers where fans share runs, strategies, and mods.
So, what does roguelike mean? It is a genre built on randomly generated levels and permanent death, born from the 1980 game Rogue, formalised by the Berlin Interpretation, and reborn as one of modern gaming's biggest trends. Whether a game is a strict roguelike or a forgiving roguelite, the appeal is the same: every run is different, every choice matters, and getting better is its own reward.
Emerson Gray · Editor
Editor
