No, it’s rogue-lite. Not -like. Rogue-lite games have randomized runs, permadeath, and (often tons of) meta-progression involving spending stat points, or unlocking new skills or weapons. In many games, the difficulty decreases by unlocking new skills and adding stats. Sometimes the games increase their enemy difficulty as you earn victories, in order to balance the difficulty with all the new choices and skills you have.
Rogue-likes, on the other hand, are turn-based dungeon crawlers that have very little or no meta progression. They may have training wheels like being forced to start with a simple class and unlocking additional ones doing simple things in-game. They do this to avoid overwhelming new players with character choices, and not to make the game easier as yoy play. You get better by learning the game, and not by unlocking more things or adding to stats.
Unboxious@ani.social 4 days ago
These days when people say roguelike they just mean a game that divides its gameplay into short, disconnected runs instead of one long, continuous save. It unfortunately has nothing to do with whether a game is anything like Rogue.
turkalino@lemmy.yachts 3 days ago
Yes, the term is often misapplied, but Balatro has the other key part of actually being a roguelike which is leveling up your build periodically from a randomly selected set of options. The bosses are also randomly selected. It very much is a roguelike
Unboxious@ani.social 3 days ago
Those are neat and trendy features, but I don’t see how they make it anything like Rogue or its ilk.