I’ll go to the dungeon and find a beauty there

I won’t be surprised that those reading this have more than once encountered such a genre as – “Roguelike"or in common parlance"Bagel». Today, I want to tell you about what it is, what it is eaten with and what you can play among the endless number of these baked goods.

What is Bagel and is it tasty??

Roguelike These are games with randomly generated locations and the main goal of which is to die and become stronger and stronger, gaining experience, remembering the timings of enemies and in the end kill the final boss. Oh, how could we live without these final bosses?.

But is it only the random generation of locations that makes Bagels so special?

Of course not, we shouldn’t forget about the variety of genres from which our Bagels, ranging from such genres as Dungeon Crawler Andwhether Metroidvania, ending Soulslike or Shooter, which are surprisingly perfect for each other.

Starting point

I would like to tell you a little about the reasons why Bagel so popular and to whom does he owe it?.

You don’t have to be a fortune teller or a person who studies the gaming industry inside and out to name Bagel, which became the very starting point for the growth of the popularity of this wonderful genre.

Of course, I’m talking about The Binding of Isaac, released in September 2011, and from that moment on, the gaming industry heard and began to wonder what this "Roguelike». You don’t even need to think that after the release “The Binding of Isaac» the genre has received a great increase in popularity not only from players, but also from independent developers, for whom this genre has become a starting point in the gaming industry and remains so to this day.

Gems of the genre

Okay, about what it is Bagel We’ve talked, all that remains is to give examples of games that definitely deserve your attention and that are likely to keep you busy for tens or even hundreds of hours.

1. Dead Cells (2017)

Probably one of the most famous games of this genre, which is also called Dark Souls from the world Bagels and on which I can confidently say you can spend a hundred hours without completing its passage to the maximum (The author of the article played 95 hours, but did not complete it).

What this game has that others don’t, what happens there and why this game is so popular?

Let’s start from the very beginning, we play as a walking corpse who can only jump and somersault to evade enemies, his goal is to destroy the Hand of the King, and then kill the King of these places, where the events of this game take place.

What weapons and ways in which we will kill our enemies? The developers worked on these and gave us more than 100 types of various weapons in the form of: melee weapons, bows, shields, folding traps, grenades and various supernatural powers, each of these types of weapons are not similar to each other and have a different range of applications and various additional. buns in the form of additional bonuses, for example: +70% damage if the enemy is on fire, or you deal 2x damage, but enemies also deal 2x damage to you, etc. n. which allows you to make different combinations that can kill the enemy faster than usual.

But this game has something that makes you stay in it much longer even after the final completion of the game, these are “Boss Stem Cells”, which are issued after completing the final boss (There are only 5 of them, but as they increase they become more and more difficult to obtain). We can assume that these are difficulty levels that you can choose yourself and after passing at a new difficulty level, you are given the 2nd stem cell and so on until you reach 5 cells. But I assure you that it is very difficult to get these cells (For example, the author of this article completed the 2nd cell in 60 hours of play and right now is sitting on the 3rd cell ).

It’s worth talking about the locations where we will rush around and knead everything we come across. The game has a total of 24 locations including 3 DLCs – “Fatal Falls”, “The Bad Seed” and “Rise of the Giant” (the last thing is free), each location is a place unlike anything else, starting from the “Prison Cells”, ending with the “Throne Room”, which have their own dangers, ranging from traps and poisonous sources, ending with enemies who can kill you alone if you are not ready to meet them (Ulearn from your mistakes as they say)

I would like to mention the bosses, for whom you need to select an individual play style and try to memorize each of their attacks so that your precious health is not taken away. There are 8 of them in total, but you can only kill 3 in one go, of these 8, 4 are from the original game, and the remaining 4 are from 3 DLCs that are not required to be purchased.

2. Hades (2018)

If we talk about popular Bagels, https://casino-yeti.co.uk/bonus/ it would be a sin not to mention the nominee for The Game Awards 2020, which was on the same level with Last of Us Part II and Ghost of Tsushima in terms of the number of sympathy from the gaming community.

Briefly about the plot of this game – Zagreus (main character) hates his home and his father (God Hades) and therefore tries to escape from hell to Olympus. And throughout the entire game, the gods of Olympus help the main character by giving him damage bonuses or changing the type of shooting or weapon strikes.

Speaking of weapons, there are not as many of them as in Dead Cells, only 6 of them, but each of them requires different tactics and a different approach to gameplay making each of your playthroughs different from the other, this is also influenced by divine help, which helps you change your weapons making them completely different and radically different from what it was at the beginning, which gives you a reason to have fun with combinations of skills on your weapon.

There are also not many locations in this game, but we can say that this game doesn’t need them if we take into account the fact that the developers do everything according to the Greek canons and therefore there are only 6 locations in this game, 2 of them are neutral: the House of Hades and Charon’s Shop, and the remaining 4 are game ones and this is where most of your gameplay takes place. If we consider neutral locations, then at Home, the player can improve himself, and Charon’s Shop appears in each level and gives you the opportunity to buy healing, or a blessing to improve yourself. If we consider the 4 remaining locations, then in each of these locations there are unusual enemies that differ in design and method of attack, as well as bosses.

Speaking of bosses, since we are talking about them, let me tell you about them: There are 6 bosses in total, 3 Furies which are the first bosses that appear randomly after defeating each of them, Hydra, Theseus and Minotaur which are a paired boss and the final boss is Zagreus’ father, Hades and after completing the game you will complete the game and then you do not have to complete the game unlike Dead Cells, but even so you can continue to complete this game by arranging a challenge for yourself and playing at the highest difficulty level.

3. Slay the Spire (2017)

Slay the Spire is a card roguelike whose goal, surprisingly, is to complete the game to the end. There are a total of 3 acts in the game, which are arranged in the form of a map, and on this map we choose how to move. There are a total of 7 types of rooms on this map

1. This is a room that can be considered a loot box, which has everything in it, from some treasure to an enemy that can seriously ruin your life.

3. A room where you can find relics and some gold that will help you buy something

4. Camp, here you can rest, restore your HP or improve your cards that will deal more damage

6. A special type of enemy that is stronger than usual, but is given a reward in the form of a relic that will most likely help you in passing

The game also has 4 different heroes, each of them differs in starting cards and relics, also differs in the amount of HP that is available to him, each of them also has a different fighting style, for example, the starting character is an ordinary swordsman and his attacks are also not much different from the simplest attacks in other games, the second character mainly specializes in poisons, so many of his attacks are weakening enemies, etc. n.

4. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (2014)

Well, since I mentioned Isaac, it would be a shame not to talk about him, but not about the first part, but about its remake, which is much larger and more interesting than the original. Briefly about the game – this is a game, one big Biblical reference and everything that is in it is most likely in the Bible, which makes it quite dark and at the same time unlike other games.

Let’s talk about game characters. In this game there are as many as 34 of them and each of them has its own unique design, characteristics and starting items, each of these characters will have to be opened by fulfilling different conditions, and when you pass certain bosses or locations, you will receive various items that will help you in the further passage of the game.

Weapons or Artifacts that give you bonuses to your characteristics, improve and change your shooting, help you restore HP, or help you somehow interact with various objects located in the location, so: in this game there are more than 700 such artifacts! And each of them differs in design and in its ability and purpose, but our study of weapons does not end there.

This game also has Trinkets that give only passive effects, but each of these effects is irreplaceable and will help in some specific situation, for example, you have little money and you find a Counterfeit Penny that gives you a 50% chance of giving you two coins instead of one, etc. n. But unfortunately, such Keychains can only be worn in quantities of one piece, but you can make it so that you can carry more, for example, using Mom’s handbag.

But even after this, the list of items does not end there, for example, there are Synergies that change your type of attack, improving you and your attack, but there are also those that, along with positive effects, give negative ones that complicate the passage, but unlike Trinkets, the player can take more than one piece, thereby connecting them and removing the disadvantages of the first, but it happens that they do not combine with each other and therefore you need to take this into account or you will spoil your passage.

Okay, after such a long description of weapons, let’s start describing locations or Chapters. There are 6 chapters in total and there are more than 20 locations with different designs and different enemies and, of course, final bosses that can hurt you just with their appearance, and there are more than 50 of these bosses, among which there is living shit or, for example, a fatter version of Isaac or Zaki’s mother’s leg (whoever understood understood), but not each of these bosses requires a special approach, but there are also some that require a lot of attention and which can become almost a countermeasure for you.

5. Neon Abyss (2020)

Neon Abyss is a game with style as I call it, here every character and every boss looks amazing and the gameplay is fast and dynamic that will not let you get bored.

Let’s start with the characters, there are 10 of them here and 2 of them when purchasing DLC, the characters differ just like in Isaac, starting items and abilities, but also don’t forget about how they look, each of the characters has a cool and interesting design, which can affect the choice of the main character.

The weapons in this game are very strange and each has its own jokes, for example, weapons that shoot only at the target or weapons that shoot, and its cartridges spin around its axis, also each weapon has its own abilities that can help in a difficult situation.

But this is not the most important thing in terms of weapons, the coolest thing about shooting in this game is the artifacts that improve your weapons and thanks to them, you can make not a weapon, but a nuclear warhead that fires huge rounds that occupy half of your screen and fires at a speed of 5 rounds per second, not giving your enemies a chance to resist.

The next and also quite fun aspect of this game is the pets that shoot at enemies and of which you can have an unlimited number, but of course everything is not so simple. Your pets can easily be killed with one hit, and this is very difficult to do, especially if you are fighting a boss, or even a manager.

Speaking of bosses and managers, in this game there are two types of bosses: ordinary and managers, ordinary bosses are a lighter version of managers who are the gods of Olympus, of course we should not forget how cool they are in terms of design, but I also want to note their incredibly well-designed attacks of the bosses themselves, because the attack of the bosses is not at all similar to each other, and their attacks correspond to their design and their ENT, there are 29 bosses in total and 8 of them are managers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I want to say that all this is my opinion and the fact that I played each of these games, some for about 100 hours, and some I played no more than 10, but in any case, I had fun in each game and I want to return to some projects and start playing again, for example, Neon Abyss, which I played for nothing and really regret it.

P. S. I expect criticism since this is my first Blog and I want as much criticism as possible to correct all my mistakes in terms of writing text since this is my first experience in this matter xd

Best comments

Controversial opinion, but I would clarify that we are not talking about Roguelikes, but about Roguelites.
Isaac showed that rather dull in gameplay terms, roguelikes can be taken apart and reassembled to make them more fun and dynamic. Which essentially gave birth to a [s]new genre[/s] new direction. How character leveling was once isolated from the RPG genre and now it’s everywhere. It remains to be hoped that just as DOOM Eternal is not considered a shooter with an RPG element today, the concept of roguelight will cease to exist as an erroneous subgenre. =)

Good for the first time. =)

Clickbait in the title is bad – it’s unclear what the blog will be about. I thought there would be an anime here
It doesn’t live up to the history of roguelights – what Isaac popularized is too little.
Before the mini-reviews too – too little has been said.

Overall the blog is not bad. BUT! The main problem is its pop nature.

I note that the commentator above is right – namely, the thin line between Bagels and Roguelights. For simplicity – Bagel is when the success of each race depends only on luck and your skill. And if you are the son of your mother’s friend, you can beat the game the first time. The maximum that can be opened globally is available characters and a local encyclopedia. In Roglights, success also depends on global leveling. And even if you are the son of your mother’s friend, it will be much more difficult to complete the game the first time (In Rogue Legacy this is taken to the point of absurdity).

And returning to the topic of pop – due to their hardcore nature, bagels remain quite niche products. But roglites are already more popular. I agree that the games listed here are more than worthy of attention (although DC may have overdone the grind and only succeeds due to the exciting combat and wild combinations of weapons, which in itself are fun to use IMHO), but… Only as a direct introduction. Everything that could be said about them has already been said (With the possible exception of NA. But in essence, it doesn’t bring much new to the genre and is unlikely to be remembered).