August 23, 2023 • 11 mins
As Dakota is alone this week, he discusses his favorite game genre and the games that nobody seems to talk about. \Check out our socials: https://switchclicks.carrd.co/ The Switch Clicks Podcast Intro Track: Dreams Are Pretty — Seoul June [Audio Library Release] Music provided by Audio Library Plus Watch: https://youtu.be/Y6sVyLLakhM Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/dreams-are-pretty #RogueLike #Nintendo #Gaming
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Currently, my favorite genre of games are roguelikes.
(00:04):
Or roguelites.
Whatever.
Today I'm going to be detailing all the roguelikes that deserve to be loved.
Welcome to the Switch Clicks Podcast episode 150.
My name is Dakota, and today I'm alone.
But that doesn't matter, because I've been wanting to talk about roguelikes for a really
(00:28):
long time now.
And I've created a list of roguelikes that I've loved throughout the years that I've
loved them.
So, this might be a shorter episode, considering I am alone, but I'd still like to talk about
these games.
And I'm hoping that you'd like to try them too.
Now, if you don't know what a roguelike is, it's basically a game where you start from
(00:49):
nothing and you slowly gain abilities throughout a run, or throughout a certain time, or throughout
different rounds, until you die and you restart back to the beginning.
And if I'm not wrong, a roguelite is basically the same thing, but you gather materials throughout
the different runs, and you will eventually be able to grow yourself throughout the different
(01:13):
runs.
Instead of just starting from zero every single time, you still start from zero, but next
time it's 0.1.
And then throughout the game, you're leveling up to your fullest abilities, and you'll be
able to finish the game by the end of it.
So one of my highlights is definitely Vampire Survivors.
Vampire Survivors is made by, I believe, one guy, maybe a small, small team, but they are
(01:39):
incredible at just mastering the, I guess the gameplay and sounds of a very well-made
roguelike.
Essentially, it looks like Castlevania, and I've actually done a Play by Tier review on
it, so if you want, you can go check that out, link in the description.
And the fact that it's such a simple mechanic, where all you have to do is control where
(02:04):
you move, and the only other inputs are clicking on the abilities you get, or the power-ups,
and it's incredible that you're limited to your, however much power you get, because
the enemies will always get harder.
And although it is a max of 30 minutes per round, you can still make a lot of progress
(02:24):
in that 30 minutes.
And then once you're done the game, you just go do it again, with a different character,
and you'll kind of just repeat the process.
But it's just, I can't describe it, but it's incredibly satisfying to go through a game
like this, almost mind-numbingly so.
I think I heard somewhere that the lead developer also worked on gambling machines, because
(02:48):
it almost feels like a gambling machine.
You get that rush of brain chemicals if you need it, and it just, I don't know, it's
just so satisfying.
And considering it's usually $3, it's also free with Xbox Game Pass, I believe it just
came out on the Switch recently.
(03:09):
It does have some extra DLC, but it is an absolute steal for anybody that just wants
satisfying gameplay.
I'd say my next really good one is Peglin.
Peglin is actually a very interesting game, because I saw it on Steam, it is still in
early access, and I was kind of considering it, but I didn't really want to jump into
(03:30):
it considering the price.
The price is a full $22.50 Canadian.
And that's a little bit steep for an early access game in my opinion.
But it eventually went on sale, I believe currently it's on sale for about 16% off.
It's basically Peggle and Roguelikes mixed into one.
(03:52):
If anybody's played Peggle before, you basically have a ball and you need to destroy a certain
amount of pegs that are colored and get as many points as possible.
In this game, it's the exact same thing.
Every once in a while, you'll get a power up and you have to choose between a few, choose
between a few power ups to gain different abilities and throw different balls at the
(04:12):
pins.
This game is super satisfying again.
You can almost just mindlessly play, but you still need to think about what you're going
to be doing in the future and what you're preparing for.
Also the abilities are super unique, considering the limited nature of enemies are in line
(04:33):
to get to you.
So you have to somehow either think about, okay, do I want to do a lot of damage for
the one before me or do I want to do a small amount of damage to all of them in the single
line?
You also need to think about where you place the ball considering where it will bounce
to because the more pins you break, the more damage you will do.
(04:56):
And also you might hit a critical pin.
So that'll get you more damage.
At the same time, you also have to think about your health and what pins you need to hit
to get your health back.
There's also bombs on the arenas that can do just general damage to all the enemies.
Those are very helpful.
But it is still in early access and they are still updating it very constantly.
(05:22):
I don't know off the top of my head what version they're on, but I am definitely going to keep
an eye out.
I'm a girl, so every few months they release an update and I definitely check it out.
The next game that I like is both Risk of Rain games.
Now the first one, it's a side scroller and you're basically just walking around this
(05:42):
world defeating enemies as they spawn.
And because the side scroller is kind of limited on the gameplay that you can really stretch
it and you can't really get too powerful, game breakingly powerful.
I played the first game when the second game was already out and decided, okay, I'll grind
the first game for a little bit, then I'll check out the second game.
(06:02):
But once I checked out the second game, wow, it is a major upgrade.
They changed from a side scrolling pixel art to a poly 3D environment with 3D, slightly
open world, open area if you want to call it by the Legends Arceus term.
(06:22):
And this game is a game that you can break.
You can repeat your own run multiple times to get more abilities and there seems to be
infinite abilities.
You always find new stuff and everything that is given to you, you can stack and you always
feel more powerful than you did before.
(06:42):
Nothing feels like a worthless item.
Nothing feels like it was worthless to pick up concerning sometimes there is a debate
if you want to pick something up and the amount of unlockable stuff in the game is mind boggling.
It'll take you hours and hours to beat it.
But it's also a game that you could slightly turn off your brain and it'll still be amazing
(07:06):
to play.
Another game I wanted to shout out was Crafty Survivors.
This only released I believe a few months ago in March and I just saw it on the page
because it looked very similar to Vampire Survivors.
And considering it has the same name, I would not be surprised if it is very heavily inspired
(07:29):
by it.
This one's very similar.
You get different characters and you are fighting enemies in this actually limited area of the
different levels.
And each time you'll go through and you'll fight slightly harder and harder enemies with
these different characters.
I will admit some of the characters are a little bit hard to grasp the concept of each
(07:55):
of them.
They're a lot more in depth.
You really need to think about where you're going to be moving while you play the game.
It's not really a game that you can go mindless on.
And some of the town-building mechanics, that was really what drawn me into the game, some
of the town-building mechanics can, honestly it feels a bit worthless.
(08:18):
Mind you, I don't know what they've added since I've played.
I'm looking at the Steam store right now and there's definitely quite a few things that
they've added since I've played back in April.
Concerning it has been what, six months now.
So I'll definitely go back and check it out.
And I definitely recommend anybody to check it out as well because it is only $5 and they
(08:41):
also have a bundle with another roguelike game it looks like.
It almost looks like nearly similar to the game itself.
But I think it's honestly worth it and I am following the development of the game.
So I'd like to do a review once the full game comes out.
The other one, and honestly probably my favorite one that I really, really want to go back
(09:02):
to but I have this thing where I don't want to go back to a game until I've almost forgotten
about it.
And I'm getting pretty close unless they're going to make a sequel to it but it doesn't
look like Digital Sun Games will make a sequel to it.
And that game is Moonlighter.
Moonlighter is one of my favorite all-time indie games.
(09:22):
It has a perfect balance between a tycoon-y shop building or town building and a roguelike
dungeon crawling element.
Essentially there's two sides of the game like I just said.
There's one side where you're going into a dungeon, you're defeating enemies, collecting
items, trying to not die, and kind of taking a chance on when you want to leave the dungeon
(09:48):
so you can take all the items with you to your shop and you will place them up for sale
and put them at the right price so the customers that come in will buy the stuff.
The negotiating tactics of trying to find the perfect balance for an item is incredible
as well as the speed that you unlock stuff is fair.
(10:09):
It's not like you're going to be waiting for a few hours or you're going to be wanting
to skip time through the shop phase.
You want to play that part.
A, because there's shoplifters you have to kind of go and grab.
B, you have to keep it all stocked if somebody does buy everything in that section of the
(10:30):
store.
You also want to be thinking about how much money you get for your next upgrade for your
item so you can defeat the next monster and get even better items.
They did make a DLC for this game that I unfortunately did not play, but I will definitely be playing
that in the future.
(10:51):
If anybody wants to check any of these games out, honestly they're all available on Steam.
Some if not most of them are available on the Switch and other consoles as well.
Thank you for joining me in discussing all the rogue likes and rogue lights I love.
We'd love it if you could follow us on Twitter and listen to future episodes on Spotify and
(11:12):
iTunes.
Join our community discord server to continue today's discussion.
And we'll see you next time on episode 151 of the Switch Clicks Podcast.
Currently, my favorite genre of games are roguelikes.
(00:04):
Or roguelites.
Whatever.
Today I'm going to be detailing all the roguelikes that deserve to be loved.
Welcome to the Switch Clicks Podcast episode 150.
My name is Dakota, and today I'm alone.
But that doesn't matter, because I've been wanting to talk about roguelikes for a really
(00:28):
long time now.
And I've created a list of roguelikes that I've loved throughout the years that I've
loved them.
So, this might be a shorter episode, considering I am alone, but I'd still like to talk about
these games.
And I'm hoping that you'd like to try them too.
Now, if you don't know what a roguelike is, it's basically a game where you start from
(00:49):
nothing and you slowly gain abilities throughout a run, or throughout a certain time, or throughout
different rounds, until you die and you restart back to the beginning.
And if I'm not wrong, a roguelite is basically the same thing, but you gather materials throughout
the different runs, and you will eventually be able to grow yourself throughout the different
(01:13):
runs.
Instead of just starting from zero every single time, you still start from zero, but next
time it's 0.1.
And then throughout the game, you're leveling up to your fullest abilities, and you'll be
able to finish the game by the end of it.
So one of my highlights is definitely Vampire Survivors.
Vampire Survivors is made by, I believe, one guy, maybe a small, small team, but they are
(01:39):
incredible at just mastering the, I guess the gameplay and sounds of a very well-made
roguelike.
Essentially, it looks like Castlevania, and I've actually done a Play by Tier review on
it, so if you want, you can go check that out, link in the description.
And the fact that it's such a simple mechanic, where all you have to do is control where
(02:04):
you move, and the only other inputs are clicking on the abilities you get, or the power-ups,
and it's incredible that you're limited to your, however much power you get, because
the enemies will always get harder.
And although it is a max of 30 minutes per round, you can still make a lot of progress
(02:24):
in that 30 minutes.
And then once you're done the game, you just go do it again, with a different character,
and you'll kind of just repeat the process.
But it's just, I can't describe it, but it's incredibly satisfying to go through a game
like this, almost mind-numbingly so.
I think I heard somewhere that the lead developer also worked on gambling machines, because
(02:48):
it almost feels like a gambling machine.
You get that rush of brain chemicals if you need it, and it just, I don't know, it's
just so satisfying.
And considering it's usually $3, it's also free with Xbox Game Pass, I believe it just
came out on the Switch recently.
(03:09):
It does have some extra DLC, but it is an absolute steal for anybody that just wants
satisfying gameplay.
I'd say my next really good one is Peglin.
Peglin is actually a very interesting game, because I saw it on Steam, it is still in
early access, and I was kind of considering it, but I didn't really want to jump into
(03:30):
it considering the price.
The price is a full $22.50 Canadian.
And that's a little bit steep for an early access game in my opinion.
But it eventually went on sale, I believe currently it's on sale for about 16% off.
It's basically Peggle and Roguelikes mixed into one.
(03:52):
If anybody's played Peggle before, you basically have a ball and you need to destroy a certain
amount of pegs that are colored and get as many points as possible.
In this game, it's the exact same thing.
Every once in a while, you'll get a power up and you have to choose between a few, choose
between a few power ups to gain different abilities and throw different balls at the
(04:12):
pins.
This game is super satisfying again.
You can almost just mindlessly play, but you still need to think about what you're going
to be doing in the future and what you're preparing for.
Also the abilities are super unique, considering the limited nature of enemies are in line
(04:33):
to get to you.
So you have to somehow either think about, okay, do I want to do a lot of damage for
the one before me or do I want to do a small amount of damage to all of them in the single
line?
You also need to think about where you place the ball considering where it will bounce
to because the more pins you break, the more damage you will do.
(04:56):
And also you might hit a critical pin.
So that'll get you more damage.
At the same time, you also have to think about your health and what pins you need to hit
to get your health back.
There's also bombs on the arenas that can do just general damage to all the enemies.
Those are very helpful.
But it is still in early access and they are still updating it very constantly.
(05:22):
I don't know off the top of my head what version they're on, but I am definitely going to keep
an eye out.
I'm a girl, so every few months they release an update and I definitely check it out.
The next game that I like is both Risk of Rain games.
Now the first one, it's a side scroller and you're basically just walking around this
(05:42):
world defeating enemies as they spawn.
And because the side scroller is kind of limited on the gameplay that you can really stretch
it and you can't really get too powerful, game breakingly powerful.
I played the first game when the second game was already out and decided, okay, I'll grind
the first game for a little bit, then I'll check out the second game.
(06:02):
But once I checked out the second game, wow, it is a major upgrade.
They changed from a side scrolling pixel art to a poly 3D environment with 3D, slightly
open world, open area if you want to call it by the Legends Arceus term.
(06:22):
And this game is a game that you can break.
You can repeat your own run multiple times to get more abilities and there seems to be
infinite abilities.
You always find new stuff and everything that is given to you, you can stack and you always
feel more powerful than you did before.
(06:42):
Nothing feels like a worthless item.
Nothing feels like it was worthless to pick up concerning sometimes there is a debate
if you want to pick something up and the amount of unlockable stuff in the game is mind boggling.
It'll take you hours and hours to beat it.
But it's also a game that you could slightly turn off your brain and it'll still be amazing
(07:06):
to play.
Another game I wanted to shout out was Crafty Survivors.
This only released I believe a few months ago in March and I just saw it on the page
because it looked very similar to Vampire Survivors.
And considering it has the same name, I would not be surprised if it is very heavily inspired
(07:29):
by it.
This one's very similar.
You get different characters and you are fighting enemies in this actually limited area of the
different levels.
And each time you'll go through and you'll fight slightly harder and harder enemies with
these different characters.
I will admit some of the characters are a little bit hard to grasp the concept of each
(07:55):
of them.
They're a lot more in depth.
You really need to think about where you're going to be moving while you play the game.
It's not really a game that you can go mindless on.
And some of the town-building mechanics, that was really what drawn me into the game, some
of the town-building mechanics can, honestly it feels a bit worthless.
(08:18):
Mind you, I don't know what they've added since I've played.
I'm looking at the Steam store right now and there's definitely quite a few things that
they've added since I've played back in April.
Concerning it has been what, six months now.
So I'll definitely go back and check it out.
And I definitely recommend anybody to check it out as well because it is only $5 and they
(08:41):
also have a bundle with another roguelike game it looks like.
It almost looks like nearly similar to the game itself.
But I think it's honestly worth it and I am following the development of the game.
So I'd like to do a review once the full game comes out.
The other one, and honestly probably my favorite one that I really, really want to go back
(09:02):
to but I have this thing where I don't want to go back to a game until I've almost forgotten
about it.
And I'm getting pretty close unless they're going to make a sequel to it but it doesn't
look like Digital Sun Games will make a sequel to it.
And that game is Moonlighter.
Moonlighter is one of my favorite all-time indie games.
(09:22):
It has a perfect balance between a tycoon-y shop building or town building and a roguelike
dungeon crawling element.
Essentially there's two sides of the game like I just said.
There's one side where you're going into a dungeon, you're defeating enemies, collecting
items, trying to not die, and kind of taking a chance on when you want to leave the dungeon
(09:48):
so you can take all the items with you to your shop and you will place them up for sale
and put them at the right price so the customers that come in will buy the stuff.
The negotiating tactics of trying to find the perfect balance for an item is incredible
as well as the speed that you unlock stuff is fair.
(10:09):
It's not like you're going to be waiting for a few hours or you're going to be wanting
to skip time through the shop phase.
You want to play that part.
A, because there's shoplifters you have to kind of go and grab.
B, you have to keep it all stocked if somebody does buy everything in that section of the
(10:30):
store.
You also want to be thinking about how much money you get for your next upgrade for your
item so you can defeat the next monster and get even better items.
They did make a DLC for this game that I unfortunately did not play, but I will definitely be playing
that in the future.
(10:51):
If anybody wants to check any of these games out, honestly they're all available on Steam.
Some if not most of them are available on the Switch and other consoles as well.
Thank you for joining me in discussing all the rogue likes and rogue lights I love.
We'd love it if you could follow us on Twitter and listen to future episodes on Spotify and
(11:12):
iTunes.
Join our community discord server to continue today's discussion.
And we'll see you next time on episode 151 of the Switch Clicks Podcast.
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