take a look at Heat Signature

I'd sort of like to have a game that plays like a traditional roguelike, but without permadeath, at which point concepts like fairness become less important to worry about; that funny death no longer forces you to start the entire game over, so the death can be funny rather than frustrating.

Syoban Action's "Mystery Dungeon mode" (press 0 on the title screen) seems like a model for the sort of game I would like, but with roguelike rather than platformer gameplay. In particular, some quirks of this game mode are as follows:
* Level is randomly generated. There is a guarantee that there will be a platform below your starting point, but that's about it.
* Some traps from the regular game will be present; whether they're a problem depends.
* When you die, you are sent back to the last checkpoint, but the level you're on is re-generated (particularly important because of the next point). You will lose a life, but there is no negative effect of losing lives; your lives can go negative without game over.
* The levels aren't guaranteed to be clearable. In some cases, you might be able to reach the goal, but unable to hit it without dying afterword. (If you are familiar with the game, or with certain difficult Mario romhacks, you'll know what I mean by this; it sometimes goes by the term "kaizo trap".)
* The game doesn't even pretend to be fair, other than having the guaranteed platform I mentioned. There might be an invisible block spawning where you start, pushing you into a pit right away. Or, an enemy might spawn right on top of you, killing you before you can react. Or, you might find yourself unable to progress, and have to press the 'O' key to kill yourself (and get a fresh new level).
* With that said, there's occasions where you can clear a level early; you may need to look ahead to make sure that you won't die during the cutscene after you pick up the sword (and sometimes you can't tell), but it can pay off if you are lucky.

I think it would be interesting to see a turn-based game with roguelike gameplay that is like this; in particular, when there isn't a significant penalty for failure, and where being able to succeed isn't guaranteed, failure can be fun.

Neither DD nor FTL are roguelikes or even decent roguelites.

From what GOG has to offer in this department (not much, really) only The Pit and ToME deserve a self-respecting rogueliker's attention IMO. All the rest tagged "roguelike" here are either not roguelikes at all or plain modern indie garish crap.

I so glad we have clear definitions on what Roguelites and Roguelikes are and can therefore definite say what is and what is not. makes life much easier. It is not like it is some made-up term that can more or less be applied to anything, or something...

You're right. Words mean whatever people want them to mean. I'm surprised people can communicate their thoughts to anyone else at all. gog should just remove the rougelike tag entirely and admit that every game they sell is roguelike (as compared to now, where it is roguelike if the devs say it is).

I wouldn't throw "modern indie garish crap" in the same bucket as non-roguelike games being tagged as roguelike, though. One is a matter of aesthetics, and the other is a matter of redefining what roguelike actually means. I, for one, do not consider Bionic Dues to be "modern indie garish crap" and you would have a hard time convincing me it's not roguelike. Honestly, I find tome4 to be the very definition of modern garbage (mainly because I've seen the source code). I'm sure we can both agree that Sundered and Dead Cells, the two most recently added games with a roguelike tag (although Tangledeep got re-added after it moved from in-dev, so it appears between them when sorting by date) do not belong, as they are in no way like rogue. Of the 36 entries (not all of which are individual games, obviously) tagged roguelike, I currently count 11 definite non-roguelikes, 14 roguelikes and 11 that I can't determine from the description alone (so probably non-roguelike). Plus people call games roguelike that aren't tagged as such by gog (and shouldn't be, either), such as FTL and Darkest Dungeon.

I don't know what possesses me to comment on this crap any more (in a necro'd thread that I already posted in, no less). Maybe it has to do with the fact that I hate Darkest Dungeon and everything it stands for so much. It's just another battle I lost before I even knew there was one (kind of like Linux being pronounced by Americans in a way that neither Americans nor German-speaking Finns would pronounce Linus with an x).

So when I think of Rougelikes, I think of Nethack or Dwarf Fortress.

Don't get me wrong, Darkest Dungeon has a great artstyle, but it looks more like a turn based...something than anything that hearkens to Rogue. There doesn't appear to be any exploration, (proper) dungeon crawling, and it has a party system, which actual roguelikes being lonely affairs.

Fire Emblem has permadeath, but it isn't a Roguelike. In fact, it's a very strict TBT.

I'm not sure what to class this game as. But I wouldn't even call it a Rougelite.

Well, I don't play BD though I do have it and ran it once or twice (I'm a big admirer of Chris Park's views on game design but I prefer to admire it by buying his games and not playing 'em :) safe AIWar not so much). But it seems to be more tactical RPG-roguelite mix for me.

Yes, I do agree about ToME, I also do have it and don't play it just because it's just crappy take-off of magnificent Angband, copy made with any possible tentacles but not with human hands and brains. But it is a pure roguelike IMO though modern-ish and crappy one, of course.

As for DD, I'm totally agree with you here. It's a modern abomination for schoolboys or persons with similar IQ and game tastes. For me, the real and the best "darkest dungeon" is a brilliant Infra Arcana.

Did you guys even read the op?

Making it clear that my question is directed at Galesian and later commenters who seem to have skipped over the beginning of the thread.

Linus Torvalds on how to pronounce Linux.

Also, German speaking Finns? I'm sure they exist, but I'm not sure why they'd be important in this instance. Perhaps I've missed something.

Reading is for wimps, I got important opinions here.

Darkest Dungeon is pretty rougelike. It has all that blood!

This should be a snapchat filter.