Roguelike Games Research Articles

Exploring the Role of Action Mechanics in Game-Based Stress Recovery

Digital games can provide effective recovery from stress, with players turning to a variety of genres-including those with game mechanics that can be considered stressors themselves, i.e., action mechanics. We examine whether action mechanics undermine or facilitate game-based recovery by exposing participants (n=60) to a stress induction, and then having them play a roguelike game in one of three conditions: Combat-Required, Combat-Optional, and Combat-Free. We assess experience through self-report and observed physiological responses. Our findings suggest that gameplay-irrespective of action mechanic intensity-supports the recovery process through the pathways of experienced psychological detachment, control, dominance, and pleasure. Additionally, action mechanics were perceived by participants as particularly promising for mastery recovery experiences-but undermine the recovery pathways of relaxation, as corroborated by experienced arousal and subjective stress. Physiological measures corroborate subjective self-report. We contend that video games featuring action mechanics represent a promising strategy for stress recovery, and may be particularly beneficial in the re-assertion of mastery.

LuckyMera: a modular AI framework for building hybrid NetHack agents

In the last few decades we have witnessed a significant development in Artificial Intelligence (AI) thanks to the availability of a variety of testbeds, mostly based on simulated environments and video games. Among those, roguelike games offer a very good trade-off in terms of complexity of the environment and computational costs, which makes them perfectly suited to test AI agents generalization capabilities. In this work, we present LuckyMera, a flexible, modular, extensible and configurable AI framework built around NetHack, a popular terminal-based, single-player roguelike video game. This library is aimed at simplifying and speeding up the development of AI agents capable of successfully playing the game and offering a high-level interface for designing game strategies. LuckyMera comes with a set of off-the-shelf symbolic and neural modules (called "skills"): these modules can be either hard-coded behaviors, or neural Reinforcement Learning approaches, with the possibility of creating compositional hybrid solutions. Additionally, LuckyMera comes with a set of utility features to save its experiences in the form of trajectories for further analysis and to use them as datasets to train neural modules, with a direct interface to the NetHack Learning Environment and MiniHack. Through an empirical evaluation we validate our skills implementation and propose a strong baseline agent that can reach state-of-the-art performances in the complete NetHack game. LuckyMera is open-source and available at https://github.com/Pervasive-AI-Lab/LuckyMera.

DESIGNING A 3D ROGUELIKE GAME WITH PROCEDURAL CONTENT GENERATION USING THE GRAPH GRAMMARS METHOD

Roguelike is a genre of role-playing video game in which the player explores dungeons through procedurally generated levels. If they lose, the player loses progress, and the character starts over again. Procedural Content Generation (PCG) is a computer program that can create game content automatically, randomly, and uniquely, either by itself or with human assistance. In this study, the 3D roguelike game was designed with players playing a character to explore dungeons. Players will enter at one point, explore the surrounding environment, defeat the enemies encountered, avoid traps, collect treasure, and finally exit at another point. Each time the player starts a new game session, the game will generate a dungeon with a mission structure that changes randomly to create a variety of gameplay. This mission generation is implemented using the Graph Grammar method. The game is built using the Unity game engine and is intended to run on Android devices. Based on the black box test results, all the game's features are running well according to their functions. The built games will be evaluated using the GUESS-18 to determine the level of player satisfaction. Based on the evaluation results, the game is included in the "GOOD" category, with an overall score of 49.07 out of 63 maximum scores. The game that has been built is superior in the aspect of personal gratification, while it is weak in the aspect of social connectivity.

Roguelike games


 The spread of the gameable personal computers and game consoles resulted in the diversification of the video game genre, and from the 7th generation of the gaming consoles, the experience support of the games became largely enhanced. These games are now consumable owing to their resolution, the content, the plots are so fascinating so that they tie the gamer to the seat. Gamers seek experiences in the games. Still, such a special genre called roguelike was established, which is characterized by the constant termination of this world of experience in such a way that the gamer, as a results of the high level of difficulty, is obliged to start the game again and again. These new genre games are now leading titles of the new generation consoles, such as Demon’s Souls or the Returnal, gaining huge role in the introduction and sale of the new gaming console PS5. This study aims to reveal specifications of this genre, moreover, aims to describe through empirical research how gamers relate to it, and whether features of these games contribute to the devotion to them or lead to the disappointment from this world of experience. 

Exploration in NetHack With Secret Discovery

Roguelike games generally feature exploration problems as a critical, yet often repetitive element of gameplay. Automated approaches, however, face challenges in terms of optimality, as well as due to incomplete information, such as from the presence of secret doors. This paper presents an algorithmic approach to exploration of roguelike dungeon environments. Our design aims to minimize exploration time, balancing coverage and discovery of secret areas with resource cost. Our algorithm is based on the concept of occupancy maps popular in robotics, adapted to encourage efficient discovery of secret access points. Through extensive experimentation on NetHack maps we show that this technique is significantly more efficient than simpler greedy approaches and an existing automated player. We further investigate optimized parameterization for the algorithm through a comprehensive data analysis. These results point towards better automation for players as well as heuristics applicable to fully automated gameplay.

IMPLEMENTASI ALGORITMA A-STAR PADA PERMAINAN KOMPUTER ROGUELIKE BERBASIS UNITY

<p><em>There are many genres found in video games, one of which is role-playing games (RPGs). Roguelike was originally a type of RPG subgenre whose game was based on a risk-aware pattern. The Roguelike game is synonymous with games that require players to play efficiently in order to minimize the risk of losing game progress. This research is in the form of making a Roguelike game by implementing the A-star algorithm to search for the shortest path in the process of chasing enemies against player characters. Overall, this final assignment research is carried out by applying a prototype system development model. The results of this study are able to prove that using the A-star algorithm is one of the right methods for the shortest search in the process of chasing enemies against player characters.</em></p><p><strong><em>Keywords</em></strong><em>: </em><em>A-star, Roguelike, unity</em><em></em></p>

TIṬAL – Asynchronous multiplayer shooter with procedurally generated maps

Would it be possible to bring the promise of unlimited re-playability typically reserved for Roguelike games to competitive multiplayer shooters? This paper tries to address this issue by proposing a novel method to dynamically generate maps at run-time almost as soon as players press the Play button, while ensuring the features what players would expect from the genre. The procedures are simple and practically feasible to be employed in actual computer games. In addition, the work experiments the possibility of incorporating asynchronous game-play element into a multiplayer shooter with human imitating bots where the players can let their bot/avatar replace them when they are not around. The algorithms are implemented and evaluated with a playable game. The evaluations prove that playable 3D dynamic maps can be generated in order of seconds using game context data to initialise the parameters of the algorithm. The paper also shows that asynchronous game-play element is a possible feature for consideration in next generation multiplayer shooters.

로그라이크 게임에 나타난 영속적 죽음의 매커니즘 연구

본 연구의 목적은 로그라이크 게임에서 파생된 영속적 죽음의 매커니즘을 고찰하고 해당 매커니즘이 가져오는 독특한 플레이 양식을 고찰하는 데 있다. 이를 위해 게임에서의 일반적인 죽음의 과정과 영속적 죽음의 과정을 비교 분석했으며 이후 영속적 죽음의 과정이 게임의 플레이와 리플레이에 미치는 결과를 살펴보았다. 영속적 죽음은 캐릭터의 부활 가능성이 없다는 점에서 극도의 긴장을 유발하는 플레이 사이클을 구축한다. 이러한 치명적 패널티는 플레이어로 하여금 죽음을 유예하기 위한 선택적 플레이를 야기하지만 이후 플레이어의 숙련된 스킬을 바탕으로 자신의 선택을 수정하고 대안적 세계를 구축해 나가는 리플레이로 이어진다. 신중한 선택과 대안적 플레이를 요하는 영속적 죽음의 매커니즘을 통해 진지한 고민을 담을 수 있는 게임의 새로운 가능성을 모색할 수 있을 것이다.