In my discussion section today, we theorized as to why Roguelikes have been gaining popularity in recent years. We talked about the increase in popularity in gaming as a whole to the fast paced nature of Roguelikes to the comfort of having failure as a mechanic and not a punishment. The point I wanted to start with, however, is the increase in funding of indie studios. With the increase of technology, more and more people have access to game development tools and as such indie games are more popular which encourages more developers. Right now, I would say, we are in a positive feedback loop gaining more and more games from indie developers. This loop leads to a widespread increase in games in every genre and the evolution that comes with it. Every genre gets more sophisticated as developers find unique ways to tweak mechanics to make their game stand out. Innovation is now able to be chased because developers now have access to technology and funding. But where can you go in a genre such as Roguelikes?
Yesterday, we defined a few definitions of what a Roguelike is -some stretching a little more than others. But what all had in common were two main ‘virtues’:
- Procedural Generation
- An expectation of death and repetition
A third virtue, you could argue, is some form of randomization in weapon or ability loadout but that is not what I am after. What I wanted to talk about is what is implied in the second virtue. These games all use health and, more importantly, they all use health as a resource. With having health as a resource, you have the player responsible for when they feel as though they need to take damage. This could be because they are taking a smaller hit to avoid a bigger hit or to burst down a boss while letting the minions wail on you. Either way, with death being expected, damage is expected as well. This is where a core part of innovation comes into play. How does a player regenerate health? Can they? Is it reliable?
Health is easily understood and widespread across almost every game which is why the regeneration of it is often a core mechanic of the game. A spark of the revival of Roguelikes, Spelunky, (very good game, Spelunky 2 is available on most platforms and I highly recommend even if you haven’t played the first) has the player start with four hearts. Most enemies deal one heart of damage, some two, and a few traps are instant kills. The biggest problem late-game, however, is getting damage combo’d by enemies because of the stun after taking damage. As such, the player will often have to choose to take a controlled bit of damage to avoid being “spelunked”. The game combats this by giving the player a controlled way of regaining health. Almost every level contains a pet which can be brought to the exit of the level to regain one heart. (There’s also some other… less moral ways.)
Looking at Cult of the Lamb, however, the game entices you to not have to take damage. There are tarot cards which regenerate hearts of which you will almost always see two and choose one on every stage. There are also chests which have a chance to drop hearts and sometimes there will be a heart room that you can move towards. All of these share the same problem, chance. You cannot rely on taking damage because there is no guarantee that you will be able to get it back. There is also a fleece wherein you build a damage multiplier for every enemy killed without taking damage. The tradeoff being you receive double damage. Cult of the Lamb, contrary to Spelunky, is not built for you to take damage which is reinforced through its method of regaining health and its generosity of not combo’ing the player. Other Roguelikes don’t allow regeneration at all which goes to show how different each one can be played. Health being the first things players notice is what drives it to be the starting point of innovation in Roguelikes. Changing how health is used and gained as a resource drastically affects how a game is played and how every obstacle is used.
This is an incredible well thought-out post! As someone who chose Cult of the Lamb as their main playthrough for this week, I never even thought about the health system as yet another way the game differentiates itself from other roguelikes. Something that we discussed briefly in preparation for our in-class debate on Thursday was the idea that your cult in the game is an extension of your character and thus reflective of your general success in the game. That being said, I would like to posit that there’s even further nuance to the health system you described, in that there’s both the very explicit health bar for the player character but also a sort of metaphorical “health bar” that corresponds with the general success of your cult. I wonder how one would measure a “forgiveness” mechanism for the latter, or how you would compare the penalties of both of these kinds of health. Just some food for thought. This is genuinely a really sick post, nice work! 😀
Great point about health resources and management – I think it’s definitely a good way to judge difficulty in a game, but I never thought about how it’s an immediate thing that a player notices when playing, even subconsciously. When we were having the debate about roguelikes and roguelites in games, I was thinking about how popular first person shooter games were in the early 2000s/2010s, and how I had repeatedly heard the joke that goes something along the lines of “Oh, you just got shot by 13 people? It’s okay, duck behind a wall for a few seconds and wipe the strawberry jam off your face, you’re good to go!”. This method of automatic health regeneration versus the much less forgiving health restrictions of roguelikes makes me wonder if part of the reason why roguelikes became so popular was because many AAA games were losing their sense of stakes in order to be accessible for the largest range of players? Just a thought, but I think it’s an interesting observation to make, especially when we talk about why roguelikes now – maybe too many players got tired of just being able to ‘wipe off the strawberry jam’?
Love this post and I’m glad you called out the resource management of health in Rougue-likes and it got me thinking about how Hades handles health as a resource since that was the game I chose to play. With Hades the main way you heal is by getting Centaur hearts which are a dungeon reward that gives you extra max health, running into a fountain room that you commission to be built for all the stages (with tartarus being free) in the underworld which is kind of a freebie stage that gives you a reward as well as healing, and through various boons/items you might rng into being able to get. On top of all of this potential healing there is also God Mode which passively increases your damage resistance after each failed run to help players who struggle with taking too much damage. For me, I find this abundance of healing and damage resist to say something about the importance the game places on the story and narrative. God Mode is an option to ensure that even if you aren’t the best at the game you can still progress through it and experience the story over time as you grow stronger run after run and I think having that accessibility for the less-skilled players is great! (also I’m not going to lie even with God-mode on I still struggled and you still have to manage your resources)
One thing I found interesting when I was thinking about Health as a resource in Hades is that there is a sort of trade-off between extra combat power and healing where for example if you encounter Sisyphus he offers you health, gold, or darkness. Darkness can be put to permanent powerups and gold can go towards making your current run stronger as you can encounter buffs to buy from Charon, if you took too much damage and need to heal you sacrifice potential combat power for healing. Additionally, sometimes you have to make a choice between doing a dungeon that rewards a centaur heart or one that gives a god buff or other reward instead and additionally Daedlus’s Hammer and God boons can sometimes offer boons that will provide healing but you sacrifice not choosing one of the other boons that might make your attacks more lethal. I was just wondering if any of the other Rogue-lites from this week had a similar trade-off of health vs combat power?
I think using health as a resource depends a lot on the game that you are playing. In a game like Spelunky, taking a bit of controlled damage means two things:
1) That you know enough about your environment to accurately assess what is controlled damage
2) That you are willing to sacrifice a part of your health to preserve the rest of it.
Given that Spelunky is a game about mostly about adventure, these kinds of interaction make sense thematically. You’re learning about the surroundings around you and perservering through tough fights in spite of a bit of damage. However, in Cult of the Lamb, using health as a resource thematically does not make much sense to me. The Main Character is a cult leader. A leader getting hurt and/or killed should have lasting effects on the group that follows them. Moreover, why use your own health as a resource when you can use your followers? Furthermore, the talk of health as a resources also makes me think of no-hit runs. In Spelunky, there is not much thematic difference in a no-hit run vs a hit run. The only thematic reason to go for a no-hit run in Cult of the Lamb is if you want to avoid using your followers as sacrifices, which should make the game harder. Ultimately, I think health as a resource is a great tool that should be applied in scenarios where it makes sense to.