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Synopsis & Useful Links
- Our previous episode on a roguelike deck builder, Balatro.
- Guide to BDS boycott of Disney+
- Lauren's website, Fourth Location
- Since finishing this episode, Rob has moved on from Marvel Snap to Subterfuge. This isn't the first time this has happened.
- The podcast time budget is:
- an introduction to Marvel Snap (23 minutes)
- draft - the rogue like deck builder game mode (2 minutes)
- the Marvel Snap economy (38 minutes).
- Someone who is good at the economy please help me. My podcast is dying.
- Air, Land and Sea by John Perry
- Backgammon by Ben Brode
- Marvel Snap's time as a national security risk to the United States
- The Kid Omega crisis
- The Greedy Goblin blog
- At the time of recording Andrew has 79 of the 99 possible ultimate variants
The problem with "roguelike deckbuilders" is that they have no meaningful connection to roguelikes. No character immersively and graphically exploring maps (almost all almost all other modern games do this innovation of Rogue over text adventures), no meaningful procedural generation ("pick one of the upgrades" is not one), no meaningful permadeath (these games let you restart fights because it does not actually matter in them -- you lose because your build was weak and you want to restart, you are not making life-or-death decisions of whether to drink a potion as in Rogue/DCSS). By marketing their game as "roguelike deckbuilder", Slay the Spire devs have negatively contributed to the understanding of both genres (starting every run with a small deck of cards is what differentiates deckbuilders from CCGs -- BTW Richard Garfield seems to be a long-time roguelike fan so I would not be surprised if roguelikes were a minor inspiraton for MtG?). Their fans and devs seem weirdly uninterested in learning about actual roguelikes. The decision to market StS as "roguelike deckbuilder" led to misunderstanding of both genres (in a deckbuilder, you start each run with a weak deck by definition -- this is what makes them different from CCGs) and eventually led to tons of pseudo-gambling games with "pick one of three upgrades" that have nothing to do with roguelike immersion and cause people to view roguelikes negatively. Roguelike communities are a great place to avoid these trends. Controversial games deciding to live on the reputation of roguelikes is kind of a measure of success of roguelikes, but an even better measure is games that do not do so -- such as Minecraft, which turned the freedom and complexity of ADOM and Dwarf Fortress into the most popular game ever. Minecraft also does not seem to attract hate in roguelike circles (as opposed to Diablo, Isaac or Balatro) and it would be interesting to learn more about the upcoming roguelike by Notch.
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