MyLife4Night: I'm happy to see another roguelike card games like Slay The Spire coming to our store because Slay The Spire was a HIDDEN GEM!
chimera2025: I love Slay the Spire as well. I was shocked that I did. I played it on a whim and loved it.
Lifthrasil: What does Roguelike mean in this case? This word is a huge warning sign for me, that I probably won't like the game. But I do like card games and Monster Train looks interesting.
chimera2025: I'm glad I'm not the only one who is confused when roguelike is thrown out.
The term roguelike comes from the eponymous 1980's video game Rogue which was a dungeon crawler. The term originally meant games that are like Rogue, as in dungeon crawlers, but it's since evolved to represent a genre of games.
Modern use generally means the game has permadeath, some sort of progression system, and procedural generation or other means of randomization in story progression or level design. The games are usually more difficult to "win" or complete because the game is saved automatically and death means starting from the beginning, sometimes with some benefit of previous attempts.
In the case of deckbuilding games, your progression is in the cards you add to your deck, more powerful cards, to assist with more powerful enemies that will appear as you progress further, and death (losing the core) results in starting over. Sometimes you can unlock things during previous attempts to make future attempts easier.
In FTL no your first attempt your very unlikely to make it to the end, because certain events can lead to sever losses that can cripple you, and you lack an understanding of strategies and weapons to purchase. As you make multiple attempts you will progress further because the progression is in the the knowledge you earn, knowing the potential outcome of events, better strategizing of routes to pick, knowing what kind of weapons work well together, understanding how to defeat enemies. Death results in starting over from the beginning (there's no reloading a saved game after death), but you can unlock new ships along the way meaning future runs could potentially be more difficult or easier.
This is the best representation of a modern roguelike game.