Well, it meets the requirements for:
- procedural generation of the maps for replayability
- permadeath to raise the stakes and add a sense of danger
And in general there’s sense of high stakes, high rewards, high RNG, fast games, and “play it as it lies” even if it’s not entirely fair. Or fair at all. E.g. you can lose within the first 10 turns to a wandering pack of bears or deer that decide to ravage your citadel the moment you leave, or to an invisible eldritch monster that your first army runs into, or to an early and aggressive neighbor that has a much better early game than you (e.g. Giant Troll), or to a dozen other things. Or you could lose late game to a demonic invasion or a literal Apocalypse. Or your empire could be set back 100 years by a conjunction of planes that brings back all the spirits of the dead, overrunning all your great towns and cities. There’s a just a general sense that the game leans much more heavily on being interesting than it does on being fair, and if that means you lose more frequently that’s the price of a good story & you just roll again and see what story the next game brings. As opposed to a standard 4x like Civ or Endless Space where the games are longer, they are supposed to be fair/balanced, and many of those events would be infuriating.
Also, the first line of their steam description is:
Conquest of Elysium 4 is a quick turn based fantasy strategy game with a touch of rogue-like.
Just for the record, I’m not saying these three elements are requirements or that any games with these things are rogue-likes. I’m saying a common element among modern rogue-likes is 1) permadeath, 2) procedurally generated settings, and 3) a system of meta-progression that persists beyond any given adventure/playthrough/session. But even though a lot of survival/crafting games have random maps and permadeath, that doesn’t make them rogue-likes.
Well, there you go! Crazy Swedes. I’m still not buying it, though. You’ve described some unique elements of Conquest of Elysium 4, and those are some of the reasons I really like it. But I wouldn’t personally call it anything but a 4X strategy game.
Well put. You could say that about a lot of games, but I like how it sets Conquest of Elysium 4 apart from safely balanced strategy games.
-Tom
I like CoE and can see the roguelike side, but I kind of agree it hardly seems prototypical. Anyway; I quickly browsed the roguelike tag on steam to see what I actually had played, and came up with:
*Binding of Isaac- It’s been a long time since I played it, but if there were unlocks I never reached them.
*Ancient Domains of Mystery- I think this is what I confused Tales of Maj’Eyal with. A very classical dungeon clearing kind of roguelike.
*Long Journey Home- Probably the highest budget example, but then again roguelikes tend to be fairly indy anyway.
*NEO Scavenger- Post apocalypse inventory management simulator, better than it sounds. Anyway, since basically the whole game is, well, scavenging, not too surprising you don’t keep your prized shopping cart and 50 plastic bags when you die.
Stone Soup is not on steam, but still gonna mention and link it because it has basically replaced every other classic fight-a tiled-dungeon-with-wands-and-crap-roguelike for me: https://crawl.develz.org/
Now for an aside while I gush about stone soup. I have no idea what they are doing right that other so many other volunteer game devs aren’t, but they release new patches with tons of content every few months, and have for many years. Given that, its it’s pretty unsurprising they have such a large and active player base. Anyway, the game itself does a bunch of cool things, but my personal favorite is the seamless blend of procedural dungeon generation with set piece rooms/areas done by hand. It’s done in such a subtle way you can’t always tell, and there is such a ridiculous supply of set pieces you are really unlikely to recognize one from another run.
I don’t believe “Brogue” has any unlocks. Does Dwarf Fortress?
And while Spelunky has unlocks, they are only cosmetic “skins” for the player to look different, or shortcuts that should never, EVER be used anyway.
Binding of Isaac has tons of unlocks. They’re just really fucking hard to get.
That did it, many thanks.
