Some Rogue Lites Under the Looking Glass

Today I’ll talk about a genre of games that occupy a niche in the video game industry, albeit a niche that is gaining traction, simply due to exposure and the fact that there’s more humans on the planet now than back when the original game that all subsequent genre titles are, often loosely, related to, Rogue, was released.

Without going into too much historical or genre detail, maybe apart from recommending the often topically related to rogue likes podcast “Eggplant: The Secret Live of Games” to interested listeners, a dissection of primarily two titles will be performed, and those titles are Enter the Gungeon and Dead Cells. 

  Both EtG and DC, as they shall be called henceforth for reasons of conciseness, are of the action variant of the rogue like sub genre rogue lite, which foregoes certain limitations and rules that define a classic rogue like while keeping enough of the general characteristics to classify within the genre specifications.

While this, in a general sense, will be a rather technical and attemptively dry analysis of those two pieces of entertainment, a certain personal bias favoring one of the two titles for preferential reasons has cannot be denied. Matter of factly, a critical dissemination with a definitive conclusion determining the reasons why one of the two titles is clearly “better” based on intellectual deductions will be made, thereby admittedly reducing the analysis to a highfalutin version of “chocolate ice cream is better than vanilla”, while at the same time hopefully entertaining the reader a good bit, or at least allow for critical thinking towards the titles in question.

A back and forth between categorized aspects of the games will be made, to allow for a side by side comparison of specific design details and diversions.

Enter the Gungeon, developed by the small indie team at Dodgeroll, is the debut title of the studio and generally considered a hallmark achievement within the genre. A mix of bullet hell with rogue lite elements and a highly accessible art style, charming story and a near endless amount of gun related puns, ETG does an excellent job at slowly pealing back the layers of gameplay that offer a huge variety and gradually introduce the player to new story elements while also allowing for the unlocking of new items through carry over currency that is saved between the runs.

The main goal of entering the Gungeon with one of its initial 5 characters, with the addition of another 3 through the process of unlocking them by completing sometimes highly complicated tasks, is to rectify something bad that happened in each characters past.

By finding the gun that can kill the past, the player will be able to travel back in time and fix stuff for their character, by committing shooty acts of bravery.

Yet before that presumably final fight can be fought, the assembly of a bullet which will go into the gun that can kill the past and be fired at the player characters own pixelated skull for time traveling purposes has to be completed.

This will require a carry over sequence or randomized version of such sequence to be carried out by the player, to allow for the formation of the bullet in the assumed final level of the game, by a blacksmith who’s been stuck in the Gungeon for aeons, just like the rest of the NPC cast. And once that’s done, there’s still a metric ton of secrets, hidden levels and items to be unlocked, new modes to be tried and boss runs to be attempted (a sequence of solely boss battles with none of the generic randomized level content that’s generally encountered during each attempt to beat one’s past.). 

Dead Cells, a metroidvania rogue lite, developed by the similarly small indie team Motion Twin, with a few more titles under their belt, gained critical acclaim during its early access development phase and the simultaneously occurring marketing campaign that floated the title above the competition on the Steam top seller list and helped the game gain unexpected traction and allowed the developers to focus on the quality of the game and add content and features based on player feedback as well as the studios general roadmap already during development. 

DC features very accessible slightly gorier and darker pixel graphics, a moody soundtrack and a story about an immortal green blob that inhabits dead headless bodies, likely a result of a misguided alchemic experiment carried out by one of the either undead, evil, mutated or evilly mutated undead inhabitants of its medieval world with Celtic inspirations. Amnesic in the very beginning, the flame headed protagonist uncovers little bits of information and carry over equipment during each run, while also unlocking new dashing outfits and gaining access to abilities that let him traverse previously insurmountable terrain, thereby uncovering new levels and greater challenges.

In gameplay terms, ETG is a top down bullethell roguelite game about shooting all enemies in each room encountered and not getting hit.

DC is a sidescrolling action roguelite game about moving around stylishly, while avoiding getting hit and dropping auxiliary weapons to deal with enemies in a guerrilla like style, quickly moving in and out of conflicts, while the droplets dispose of enemy combatants. Using a shield is also technically an option, but due to the tendency of enemy cluster buildup at higher difficulties, it seems a bit counterintuitive, as only enemies from the front may be blocked and directional clarity becomes increasingly uncertain at those advanced difficulty stages.

Structurally ETG displays a higher degree of rigidity and implements a mechanism of locking the player in each new room encountered until all enemies are cleared, while DC allows for more mobility and due to the addition of multiple variants of turret like equipment lets most situations turn into a fire and forget scenario, with limitations of tethering that cause the turrets to stop functioning should a pre-determined distance between it and the player be reached, while also allowing for resource gathering enemy souls and gold to be utilized for weapon purchases and blueprint unlocks. 

Yet none of the encounters in DC apart from boss fights are required to be solved by combat, turning each run into a potentially highly selective process.

So while DC allows a greater fluidity of movement and refrains from restricting the players freedom until certain parameters are met for the most part, this in effect also reduces player involvement as per internally determined prioritization, hence allowing for completely pacifist speedruns, with the exception of boss fights of course.

Story is implemented gradually in both cases, whereas ETG seems to provide more content on that front as well, with DC being relatively upfront with the overall history of the player character and the happenings of the play world, only adding little tidbits in the shape of nonessential snippets within the procedurally generated levels, while ETG in essence forces the player to collect a specific fragmented item within its world of randomly assembled pre-constructed rooms  over the course of a multitude of runs by gathering monetary resources, so parts of the item can be purchased from the moustache toting singular vendor of the game, or picked up by running invisible obstacle courses and carried all the way down to the blacksmith, to then assemble it on the fifth and lowest immediately available floor of the Gungeon, which will enable the player character to commit temporal suicide and blast themselves back into the past to right a wrong they were previously involved in, which differs for all available and additionally unlockable characters.

While DC can be “finished” within just a few hours of play for the intermediate gamer, the game also cycles straight back to the very beginning of the game, with the addition of an unlocked boss soul that will allow the player to increase the overall difficulty of the game by adding new enemies, reduced resources and changing enemy behaviors. DC allows the player to upgrade stats, thereby increasing damage output and effectiveness of selected weapon types, to allow for a personalized run with the given randomly spawned equipment available, while also increasing enemy health for each stat pickup made, resulting in a balancing act, that, if unchecked, can easily turn the already increasing difficulty into a near instantaneous death experience in later levels.

Selectivity is the keyword here, as either the Rambo approach or the pacifist style both result in either highly limited resources and difficult to beat boss fights or an overall increase in difficulty with reduced survivability.

If utilization of turrets has been activated by player choice sporadic upgrades of said turrets become an unavoidable necessity due to increased enemy health throughout game progression, even without the added enemy health bonus of having picked up items increasing player stats, in turn boosting enemies, rendering them virtually useless after a couple levels without upgrades.

The mostly procedural level generation in DC reduces potential player efficiency by removing the possibility for memorized pattern recognition beyond enemy behaviors and general rules for movement and so on, adding a theoretically huge amount of replayability, that ultimately turns the relative shallowness into an endless grindfest or speedrun grounds, if requested.

As an explanatory gesture, the recently added first monetized DLC, with all previous updates being free, that costs around 5$ and added shroom people, could be completed within 20 minutes after initializing the run, on normal difficulty, with the only incentive to return apart from the bouncy deadly flowerbeds and gassy environments being missed equipment or weapon blueprints that have the potential to alter the gameplay drastically, but only if either randomly found or having been added to a previously selected item pool that can be activated if the corresponding blueprint for the starting zone tubes thingy has been acquired.

On a noteworthy and so far neglected topic, that shall be further neglected henceforth, both EtG and DC do have the option to add modifications to the game, which have the ability to either add random funny stuff or completely change the game in many ways, but, both these games were played in their vanilla versions, to be able to give a slightly less biased perspective, based on ground and unmanipulated values.

To further detail, EtG was completed to 100% unlock after around 850 hours of playtime on a potato laptop primarily played with mouse and keyboard, while DC was played up until two active boss cells - items that can be gathered by killing the final boss and only respawn with the boss if the difficulty is increased per player choice, with EtG always being hard but fair and fun enough to warrant near endless replays until a black hole cannon combo could be utilized to finish the lich, an unlockable extra boss, found within an extra hellish floor below the other other floors, on a janky laptop that had the tendency to micro freeze mid dodgeroll and DC just getting close to damn near impossible around the end levels with two active boss cells and little incentive to keep playing, since no promises for further content beyond increased difficulty were made. It’s not exactly Battletoads levels of frustrating, but quite unforgiving and having finished the game initially after around 4 hours of playtime and the only available range of activities, apart from digging up unfound blueprints, were a small amount of still unbeaten special bosses and random hidden extra levels, the lack of motivation came relatively naturally.

Breaking down the quintessential gameplay loop elements yet again, EtG requires constant shooting and dodging including the elimination of all threats within each playroom, before the player is able to move on to the next, randomly attached yet previously built, so therefore memorizable room and DC lets the player bypass pretty much everything, at least in theory, with the result of then making the boss fights harder. If a semi combative approach is selected, DC plays best with the use of the saw disc or pellet turrets, since they can be left unattended and still deal damage with the player character standing around out of enemy attack range, with close quarter encounters often resulting in additional enemies getting into attack range, turning the entire situation quickly into what can only be described as a resource draining clusterfuck, adding to the element of questionability for the potential utility of implementing a one hand weapon and shield combo. Because the shield doesn’t protect the buttocks, ever. EtG adds randomness by having the player find items and weapons in chests that require keys to open, with the pilot character having a limited chance of opening chests without the use of keys. Weapons in EtG vary greatly in handling, effectiveness, projectile types and damage output. So is, for example the dreadful Klobbe, usually found in brown chests, a horrendous way of dealing with anything at any time, making any of the available starter guns the preferred option, while the BSG will eradicate all but the most resistant enemies in the entire room the player is in, likely one of the reasons the ammunition for the BSG is quite limited. Duct taping the Black Hole gun to the Abyssal Tentacle will have even more devastating and visually disturbing effects, while the Bubble Blaster somehow fumbles between the useful and hilarious sides of things.

Weapon sets in DC fall into general categories with longer/stronger weapons like hammers or pikes requiring more time to execute an attack while dealing higher damage, as compared to shorter range/faster weapons in scimitar or dagger shapes that will not hurt enemies as much. 

Usually paired with some medium to long range arrowy projectile or magical fireball secondary weapon equipped, opting for a higher range of mobility compared to the shield variant of gear sets. 

DC thus in theory allows for a high level of agility and great in and out movements for quick and dirty stabs with arrow to the knee finishes while the reality, at least with the chosen gear set, generally reflects deployment of turrets, waiting for enemies to die while maintaining distance to not receive any damage, which becomes highly critical with several boss cells activated, and moving on, collecting resources or, as mentioned several paragraphs higher up, simply ignoring encounters altogether, a principally counterintuitive methodology navigating through a platformer/beat em up with no other means of interacting than navigating the environment, killing enemies or collecting stuff. Then again, the options menu does allow for a timer to be activated, so any potential speedrun can be documented at will.

In direct comparison EtG enforces adherence to essential gameplay patterns and loops while throwing in randomized gear for each run, while DC also has a general framework in place, even though nearly all content and methods of interacting become relatively optional and boss fights remain as the sole integral and forced moments of the experience, apart from hopping around to get from point A to point B. Boss fights in DC are initially quite easy and only require button mashing while becoming progressively harder with additional boss cells unlocked, then requiring a high skill level to be completed without experiencing a resource reduction that would turn continued play near impossible, whereas EtG has the same boss fights throughout, adding boss randomization for each floor, with certain bosses, like the Ammoconda on the second floor, receiving far more dislikes than most other bosses due to highly randomized patterns and fast movements.

EtG does allow for potential intrinsic modifications of perceived difficulty within the vanilla version of the game, by either increasing the curse level of the player by various means, which will increase the probability of encountering harder enemies and extreme versions of bosses, while also adding the potential thrill of being chased by an unkillable ghost like creature throughout the entire game once it has spawned by reaching a certain curse threshold or activating challenge mode, another unlockable game mode, that will add randomized modifiers to each new room, like cyclically exploding electrical traps, turning off the lights with enemies only moving in the darkness and standing still when the player illuminates them with their flashlight and other fun stuff.

DC does this similarly yet less randomized, apart from procedural level generation, decreasing the need for crossing ones fingers hoping for a valuable weapon drop and putting more emphasis purely on player skill. The result is a steady increase of difficulty with each new unlocked boss cell and a higher level of predictability, even more so once the player has unlocked the ability to choose from pre-constructed gear sets in the starter area, allowing the player to stick to their preferred playstyle throughout the game.

EtG forces the player to definitively eliminate all threats in each room and may throw a curveball early on by only providing mediocre or highly specialized gear, like Casey the baseball bat, a melee weapon in a bullet hell game, it also adds a thrill or sigh of release solely based on a roll of the proverbial dice, sometimes letting the player complete a level with ease, even though “bad” gear is equipped, at other times making life a lot harder on the basis of boss selection.

DC, while providing procedurally generated, never before encountered albeit regionally similar levels on each run, compared to the randomly strung together yet pre-made rooms in EtG, allows for less emotional rollercoasters by only adding potential difficulty spikes through the possible high density clustering of several enemy types, thus encouraging either quick in and out movements, the placement of hopefully effective turrets or avoidance of those specific areas altogether, shifting the experience from forced to calculated and, optional.

EtG has a bunch of secret rooms that can be accessed by first hitting certain wall segments with any but the starter weapon without infinite ammunition and then blowing up the damaged wall by using a blank, a highly important item clearing the room of all projectiles or in this case, operating as C4. Some of the secret rooms in EtG are relatively sparse, with just a blank at the center of the room, or they could be filled with a bunch of mimics, difficult to dispatch enemies posing as chests, or actual chests filled with nice gear, or 3 witches offering to provide the player with a better weapon by sacrificing another into the witches pot, among other encounters.

DC has hard to access, rarely incredibly useful blueprints, that sometimes are only accessible once other items have been unlocked on previous runs and random story bits that can be activated by interacting with specific rooms or doors, randomly found within each level, that don’t add much to the experience once completed, since the scripts never change. 

DC also allows for the player to enter certain rooms with runes above them, which will remain locked until their required amount of boss cells has been activated. In these rooms the player will most often find either gear after either dispatching or dodging a bunch of enemies or one of the shop types accessible within the game, a cook selling food shaped health, or a snaily looking dude selling either weapons or equipment.

DC also gives the player optional high value extra gear between each level by either completing the level within a previously allocated time or killing a specific amount of enemies without getting hit.

 EtG is structured such that, if the player has enough skill and can acquire the necessary resources, they would be able to access all secret levels including the hellish level only unlocked once one of the player characters pasts has been killed, a time traveling boss fight that differs for each character and requires shooting oneself in the noggin, in one run.

DC, due to its nonlinear somewhat procedural nature will create shortcuts within the progression system, so the player will never get to go through all levels in one run, thereby limiting resource acquisition potential, which is directly mitigated by the upgrade system that already has a utilitarian limit by increasing enemy health along with player strength in an increasing amount.

In terms of out of the box customizability both EtG and DC have all their special features locked away, for the player to be discovered and implemented based on their preference. While 60+ hours of playtime in DC offers Boss Cells, as mentioned previously, as well as a hard to find set of preconfigured tubes that will allow for somewhat chosen weapon and item sets, such as to enable the preferred play style more directly compared to having to restart a run based on getting a bad sword and shield combo as a starter set and added access to previously inaccessible regions to discover new blueprints and battle new enemies, the total variability pretty much ends there.

Having played and unlocked everything in EtG over the course of 800+ hours, the game offers a multitude of optional vanilla modifiers, such as Rainbow mode, which eliminates access to all chests found in a run, except for one very good chest at the beginning of each floor, with a respectable selection of great items and weapons, of which one can be picked. There’s a glitch chest, that has a 0.1% or so chance of appearing, which will teleport the player to a boss level, with a dual version of the next floor boss and if beaten a multitude of goodies will drop, but death is pretty likely there. The game lets the player speed up the game speed by talking to a rescue doggo, have the weapon the player yields randomly change into a different weapon within random intervals in the enchanted run and in challenge mode, the player will face a set of randomized additional hurdles in each room on top of all the enemies.

EtG also has several additional player characters that can be unlocked with a varying degree of difficulty, getting to play the robot is no joke and kicking a TV is involved.

Here’s to randomly sum this writing up:

EtG is a much more enjoyable game with a lot more “layers” and secrets to discover, it just feels like a lot of love has been put into it, while DC seems to ride the wave of a successful viral marketing campaign by adding respectable animated trailers and other assets, but ultimately falling comparatively short. These are the authors opinions.

*Disclaimer*

All above screenshots are from personal play sessions. Apologies for the abysmal EtG quality, the game was primarily played on a white Windows 10 plastic potato in Spain while trying to study.