01.10.2008, 09:17, written by Mario Donick

Definition Struggles: Is LambdaRogue a roguelike?

If you follow the discussions in the roguelike world, you surely have noticed The Berlin Interpretation (B.I.), trying to name important factors of roguelikes, based on the roguetemple definition. Now Krice announces that he will answer to the B.I. with his own definition – and admits that his definition would currently exclude the original rogue from the collection of roguelikes, because rogue had no possibility to choose a character class.Well, I did not take part in creating the B.I., but I will now check if LambdaRogue is a roguelike, based on that definition.Every factor gets a number. If met by LambdaRogue, the high value factors of the B.I. will be coded with 2 and the low value factors with 1. If LambdaRogue meets a factor only partly, it will get 1 resp. 0.5 points. Factors which my game not meets at all will get a 0.The highest possible sum is 23, at least 2/3 of it (15.3) should be needed for a game to be considered as roguelike. Here we go.High Value Factors (0, 1 and 2)

• Random Environment Generation: 1 (18 levels are random generated, 2 levels are fixed)
• Permadeath: 1 (usually it's there, but the player can buy an expensive life insurance at a hospital)
• Turn-based: 2
• Grid-based: 2
• Non-modal: 0 (there are special shop screens, and the B.I. says that games which present shops that way are modal. Personally, I would give LambdaRogue at least a 1, but as I want to stick as tight as possible to the B.I. for this check, I give it 0 points.)
• Complexity: 1 (Compared to the big roguelikes, LambdaRogue is easy to solve)
• Resource Management: 2
• Hack'n'Slash: 2 (Kill
• Exploration and Discovery: 2

Low Value Factors (0, 0.5 and 1)

• Single Player Character: 1
• Monsters are similar to players: 0 (monster have special abilities, but do not use items and have no inventory)
• Tactical Challenge: 0.5 (As I said above, LambdaRogue is rather easy to solve)
• ASCII Display: 0.5 (ASCII is not the default display mode when the game is started the first time)
• Dungeons: 1
• Numbers: 1

Scoring and ResultLambdaRogue receives 17 out of 23 points and can therefore be considered a roguelike, at least in the way I applied the B.I.RemarksThe result is of course distorted by my developer's view on the game; actual players might say that the factors complexitiy and tactical challenge should score 0 Additionally, the factors that are only partly met could have been coded more precise.

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