Just because Roguelike games routinely reset a player’s progress doesn’t mean they can’t tell a good story. Quite the opposite in fact. When a Roguelike game really investigates the kinds of stories that take place in gradually more knowledgable loops, they’ve produced some of the best stories in modern games.
Whether they bury deep lore in environmental design that requires constant playthroughs to figure out or they deliver story content piecemeal between each run, Roguelikes are one of the most exciting new narrative frontiers that only video games can deliver.
WhileThe Binding Of Isaaccan lay claim to being one of the first wave of Roguelikes that popularised the entire genre, it’s also worth noting that it spurred the storytelling devices the subgenre would become famous for too.
Whether it’s the sparse cutscenes delivered between zones, the environmental storytelling of each zone, the clues towards the narrative some items give, or the structure of bosses, its hard to imagine what Roguelike storytelling would look like withoutThe Binding of Isaac. The many story theorists who still pour over the game to this day are proof of just how effective the game’s narrative is, even if there aresome slightly unfair mechanics that can ruin entire playthroughs.
ThoughHitman 3may not seem like an obvious choice as a Roguelike, its core design tenets put it squarely within the subgenre.With some of the best kills in the series,Hitman 3encourages the player to repeat levels over and over again, using developing knowledge to forge a better understanding of the mechanics and the story.
By playing each ofHitman’slevels over and over again, the overarching story of the entire series draws into focus as carefully hidden secrets reveal themselves to observant players. Watching Hitman’s cutscenes is only half the story, and its use of Roguelike storytelling techniques is sure to cement it as one of the bestHitmangames ever made.
This humble indie game truly dominated the conversation by being a relatively simple but powerful evocation of everything that makes the Roguelike genre great. While it excels at base building, combat, and art design, its narrative prowess shouldn’t be overlooked either.
By tying the power curve of building a cult directly alongside progression in the broader game, the simple but fun story becomes inextricably tied with the player’s increasing skill, encouraging ever more diabolical acts towards the poor creatures making up your cult and the final confrontation with the player’s eldritch master. In short: it’s a hell of a lot of fun and one of thebest Roguelike horror games out there.
While this technically isn’t a game unto itself, thePrey: MooncrashDLC is one of thebest pieces of DLC releasedin recent memory and laid down the core concepts ofDeathloopto come by investigating the narrative implications of a time loop.
In an already terrifying and existentially fraught game likePrey, theMooncrashDLC uses its segmented setting from the main gaming to tell a quick but powerful story about the technological hellscape of thePreyuniverse and the broader state of Roguelikes themselves.
Sanity is a key concern in horror stories, andDarkest Dungeonis one of the purest evocations of the idea in modern games. By having an ever-rotating party whose sanity meters are key to success,Darkest Dungeonshows the tangible impact adventures filled with someincredibly difficult boss fightscan have on the poor adventurers the player sends out to face them.
Things get even more interesting as lore tidbits are handed out upon successful adventures into the game’s various dungeons, slowly painting a picture of its decrepit and horrifying world. Though it’s not a barrel of laughs,Darkest Dungeonclearly has the Roguelike narrative bonafide.
As one of the most prominent, big-budget experiments in the Roguelike genre, and certainlyone of the best Roguelikes on the PS5,Returnalhad a lot of expectations to meet. Luckily for us, it met those expectations and then some by spending its considerable resources delivering not only a brilliant game mechanically, but also one of the most triple-A Roguelike stories to date.
Making use of stunningly realized cutscenes, first-person perspective horror sequences, and a story that has a surprising amount of twists and turns for a Roguelike,Returnalis a true trendsetter that (hopefully) many more Roguelike games will follow in the future.
Where some games use their budget to focus on the fidelity of their cutscenes,Hadestakes the opposite track, using the visuals of dating simulators and cannily fusing it with the Roguelike genre to focus on sheer quantity and quality of character dialogue and storytelling. While that means there are no cutscenes per se, the amount of effort put into telling its story is self-evident.
Populated by figures from Greek mythology,Hades’sstory of a wayward son trying to escape the underworld is filled to the brim with interesting characters who encourage and intensify thecrazy builds needed to face the game’s greatest challenges. For example, a speed boost always comes with an engagement with Hermes, Artemis will weigh in when it comes to ranged attacks, and Ares will always be around to provide the most brutal attacks.
Some games are so unique that they fundamentally reconfigure the entire critical landscape asone of the best games of the decade so far, which is exactly whatInscryptiondid to the Roguelike subgenre. Where games likeRogue LegacyandThe Binding of Isaacset the subgenre up,Inscryptiontwists its core principles in such surprising and meta-textual ways that it feels wrong to spoil them.
Rest assured that no matter how experienced a gamer is in the Roguelike genre, they’ve never played anything quite likeInscryption. This genre-bending metatextual ARG-filled masterpiece takes a player seriously, delights in surprising them, and tells a sincerely profound story that will stick with every player for years to come.
