Hot damn, that's actually wild considering his original game being so popular already, and also the first Hades AND Vampire Survivors existing.

Definitely gonna pick it up myself at some point soon.

The previous record was actually Hades 2 which surprised me too.

Oh, after doing some research, it seems the person who wrote this article did not do theirs.
I'm pretty sure Don't Starve Together, Megabonk, and Elden Ring Nightreign (if you want to count that) all still beat out Mewgenics (especially Nightreign if we count it, by like such a large gap.)

The game itself is really fucking good, I'll give them that, but I stopped playing the moment I learned about the cast list and McMillen doubling down on it. Incredibly disappointed in this centrist bullshit to the say the least.

Ugh I know, imagine playing a game and hearing idubbz, the n-word/f-slur guy. Fucking gross.

idubbz changed for the better tho

Yeah honestly, like I can't say I forgive his past shit but he's absolutely come a LONG way from those days, credit where it's due. I'm more concerned about Edmund including literal nazis (the Kleins) and an actual rapist (Chrischan), along with not clearly communicating any of this to the people he pulled in. On top of that, he pulls the centrist card so hard to defend himself.

I used to love this dude's games, sunk SO much time into the original SMB and both Isaacs, but he's clearly stuck in 2012 4chan.

Gotta wonder where Binding of Isaac falls on the list since it's been out so long and it's players tend to be the ones that put hundreds, if not thousands, of hours into it.

The article is talking about concurrent play, which generally peaks near release for all genres, with a few exceptions (like Hollow Knights sleeper numbers). Isaac came out when there was relatively fewer players and it's a slow growth, so the original probably didn't have a very high concurrent count.

The remake is around 70k peak, although it's oddly high at 20k right now, perhaps because if Mewgenics.

The article is bunk, but oddly enough the all time high by Steamdb suggests it's around tied with DST, Megabonk, Hades II, and a few others at 115k-ish.

Nightreign, as AAA go, 313k at peak, lol.

You can still tell the article is bunk for comparing it to Stray as a cat game. Oh yeah, sure, while we're at it let's compare to Hello Kitty Island players, eh? AI logic. Lol

most-played roguelike/roguelite

hit action roguelike The Binding of Isaac

highly acclaimed roguelite and roguelike games, such as Hades, Vampire Survivors, and Balatro

i'll accept that roguelite means fuck all except 'has meta progression' but none of the games mentioned in this article are roguelikes

I was just memeing on idubbz, Chrischan is in the game, fucking oedipal rapist Chrischan.

Super worth picking up if you like grid based tactics type games. It has so much more depth than I was expecting, every run or two I’m getting some new twist or ability that makes it play quite differently to anything I’ve tried yet.

Plus the sound track is great.

I can't even figure out what "rougelike" is supposed to mean anymore.

Yeah I get that they created roguelite for games that are based on rng runs and has some sort of async progression and I think that has become a pretty practical genre to categorize a wide array of hands that share those traits.

But roguelike should be kept to games like nethack, pixel dungeon etc that share the basic concepts of rogue.

agree re roguelikes but roguelite seems far too broad to work as a genre? like if there was a 'combos' genre that included blazblue, bayonetta, and bejeweled

WTF?! Why?

It means “similar to red”

And yet I tend to like most games that fall into the "rouge lite" category. It feels too broad and yet also seems to work to classify games.

I think it may just be a bit like "RPG" or "Action" that are actually very wide categories that now have a lot of subcategories to help better explain them.

The headline says "roguelite", the Berlin Interpretation is safe for now

Roguelike was the term generally used for all roguelites before they became so popular someone invented a separate word for it.

Combos are one specific element in a game, roguelite is the basic concept the game is built on. Also since when are genres very specific? Rocket League and Mario Tennis are both Sports games.

i think i agree with this which means i only dislike roguelite as a top level category (but see below). in your mario tennis example it might go something like

sports ¬ tennis ¬ arcade (as opposed to simulation)

a mario tennis where it would be practically impossible to win a randomly generated tournament without grinding out some progression would be

sports ¬ tennis ¬ roguelite

so it seems to me like roguelite is less useful as a genre rather than just being descriptive of a feature i suppose

I like most games that fall into the category

same. but considering that, it's still a bad name for a sub (sub sub) genre at best, not a top level one. your RPG and Action examples are quite right but it's easy to imagine games as being e.g. action > beat-em-up > roguelike or RPG > TBT> roguelike. it's the same level as isometric or coop imo

edit: you've helped me talk myself out of my own argument, now i want to spend all my money on combocore and get upset about the inevitable subsequent wave of combolikes

It is a practice that is extremely widespread in domesticated animals though.

Let's be honest with ourselves combocore is really just another phrase for rhythm games, which let's you aggregate things like guitar hero (rythmncombos) and DMC (actioncombos), as it's all about hitting buttons at the right time interval. Surprisingly many darksouls also fall into the combocore/rythmn category - sekiro and Lies of P (with their parrying/dodging timing) which we'll now call soulcombos.

Now we just need to start promoting this through the steam tags.

It's a decent enough game, but I don't really love it. The items are all so boring and the passives aren't much better. Wish there was actual run-changing items like in Isaac.

Well its does not mean "fuck all". It means the games are run based and randomised.

Also Rogue had zero meta progression.

Then I guess no one should bother changing. Good talk.

I think the issue you're having is that you're treating them as categories and subcategories, like most things it's never that clean. It makes much more sense if you treat them as unordered tags. Arcade isn't a subcategory of tennis.

Say for instance you had a multiplayer racing simulator game, you could categorise that as multiplayer > racing > sim, but if you have a similar singleplayer game you have single player > racing > sim so clearly those aren't just subcategories of single/multiplayer.
You could try sim > racing > multiplayer, but what about your city building sims? Now it's your middle category that didn't work right.

If they're independent tags sim, racing, multiplayer you can change any one of them independently. If any one tag changes that changes how the game is played.

No more like millions of players didnt play Rogue and didnt see the necessity to create a new word for a (at the time) super niche genre

Could you share the content of the Bluesky post? It's not visible without logging in.

From what ive seen the crazy stuff is quite a ways into the game, too much of a time commitment for me

There are so many roguelikes and not enough rougelikes. 😔

Thank you!

Edmund has said he specifically did this on purpose. There's no singular game winning item. The power comes from combinations. He added passives and items that seem boring at face value but get better when synergizing with something else.

With all that said I think the breeding is what will make runs broken. Good items will be an unnecessary cherry on top when your cats are overpowered from the start.

Yes the synergies are what makes it but im hoping i unlock recollection later because there are some synergies I know will be broken if I can just get all thr perks/abilities at the same time.

The humor and style definitely gives me a 2000s internet flash game vibe. I don’t necessarily mean that as a jab, it’s just kinda the vibe. Doesn’t look like my cup of tea though.

semantics is the lowest form of discussion

touch grass

this makes sense, appreciate the perspective

of course you're right that a core feature of roguelikes is that each new game starts from scratch. it's roguelite that is vague

now that's initiative. and steam tags could hardly be much worse anyway

Interesting take. You bring up a good point, but the game has been in development for 10 years and it's a really small cameo. I'm assuming most did the voice work for free or a small flat rate. It's not like you're supporting them with royalties every time the cat meows.

If you asked Ben Stiller to remove the Donald Trump cameo from Zoolander he'd probably give a similar answer despite Donald Trump being a far worse person and Ben Stiller publicly being a Democrat. I don't think it's a "centrist bullshit" position to work with people with wildly different views.

For me, it's just such a small issue to focus on and ruin something else you find enjoyable. It's one thing if McMillen was a vocal supporter of Israel or vocal MAGA. Like, I haven't watched a Tom Cruise movie in almost 2 decades because of his role in Scientology, but I watch Zoolander like once a year.

I've played a bit now. My first broken build was probably around 30 hours in. Which, yeah, is a bit.

I enjoyed the game before I started seeing broken builds. It's still a solid tactics game. But it's a genre I like.

I get that, but to me it's honestly less about the inclusions, especially given the dev timeline, but more about defending it so staunchly today with his whole "balancing out" shtick. It doesn't seem like anyone was actually paid for it, let alone under contract, so it would've been so easy to just go "yeah this is kind of fucked up after everything that's happened, let's cut these out before release" instead of doubling down on it and defending the inclusion of literal nazis and rapists.