That’s how meanings have shifted. Originally roguelite meant anything that borrows stuff from roguelikes while not playing like the original rogue.
Stuff like Nethack, Dungeon Crawl (Stone Soup), Pixel Dungeon, ADOM, Mystery Dungeon,… were the true roguelikes. If you ask the purists, they’ll probably throw the freaking Berlin Interpretation at you.
The Binding of Isaac muddled the popular definition of roguelike (because frankly, it was not on the radar of many people before that).
Now everything using procedural generation and maybe a hint of permadeath gets to be called roguelike.
Like in every language terms evolve and it’s basically outside of personal preferences. Original definitions and where the term came from are basically optional info.
This are terms that are used for one main purpose: categorize so it’s easier to search that term instead of “games like x”. And for that purpose, roguelike as in “no progression between runs” and roguelite as in “some unlockable stuff” works wonders.
That’s how meanings have shifted. Originally roguelite meant anything that borrows stuff from roguelikes while not playing like the original rogue.
Stuff like Nethack, Dungeon Crawl (Stone Soup), Pixel Dungeon, ADOM, Mystery Dungeon,… were the true roguelikes. If you ask the purists, they’ll probably throw the freaking Berlin Interpretation at you.
The Binding of Isaac muddled the popular definition of roguelike (because frankly, it was not on the radar of many people before that).
Now everything using procedural generation and maybe a hint of permadeath gets to be called roguelike.
Like in every language terms evolve and it’s basically outside of personal preferences. Original definitions and where the term came from are basically optional info.
This are terms that are used for one main purpose: categorize so it’s easier to search that term instead of “games like x”. And for that purpose, roguelike as in “no progression between runs” and roguelite as in “some unlockable stuff” works wonders.