roguelike

English

NetHack, a roguelike

Etymology

Rogue +‎ -like, after the 1980 computer game Rogue, which introduced the genre.

Noun

roguelike (plural roguelikes)

1. (video games) Any of a genre of computer role playing games loosely characterized by various characteristics such as randomised environment generation, permadeath, turn-based movement, text-based or primitive tile-based graphics and hack-and-slash gameplay.
   • I “Like-Like” Roguelikes (Because Love Should Never Be So Cruel), 2011

     If you haven’t played a ‘roguelike’ before, it’s basically what happens when you take a twitchy hack-and-slash game like Diablo and make it boring, confusing, and frustrating.

Derived terms

• rogue-lite