In the opinion of this roguelike developer, some other factors have been lost in the transition to modern roguelikes. ASCII roguelikes are not just the reticent and uncommunicative infants of the roguelike world that have now been superseded by the fully-graphical adults; they offer two things that modern roguelikes generally shy away from. First, although modern roguelikes do remain highly challenging, most players would agree that classic roguelikes are significantly tougher (in part simply due to the longer expected playthroughs). They treat the player with even more respect than their modern cousins, posing challenges and complexity that might seem unassailable at first; in turn, they don’t offer metagame unlocks, expecting players to be confident enough in their abilities that they don’t need intermittent rewards to remain interested. Secondly, classic roguelikes contain a range of detailed religious systems, where the player is able to interact with various deities, with a “second game” of keeping on the right side of your deity (and using the powers they see fit to give you) overlaid onto the player’s existing trek through the dungeon. In this regard modern roguelikes are, so to speak, slightly more “materialist”—although they add a metagame between playthroughs, they eschew any other factors within a given playthrough beyond the player’s character (or ship).
As you may have noted as we come to the end of this pondering of roguelike history, I’ve used the terms “classic” and “modern” roguelikes in this article, rather than any of the three I listed nearer the start to describe the moderns. I use these terms instead because both of those words are comparatively free of any superior or inferior relative value judgements (since both “modern” and “classic” are often used as terms denoting something positive, desirable or preferable). By contrast, I would argue that roguelite implies something trifling and trivial, roguelikelike implies a lack of purity (and therefore inferiority, or something watered down), whilst procedural death labyrinth (although amusing and strikingly accurate) seems to distance itself somewhat from its own history in Rogue and its descendants, rather than proudly flying the banner of its ASCII ancestors. Speaking as the developer of a new “classic” roguelike—i.e. one which adheres to an ASCII (or in my case, ANSI, but who’s counting?) interface and many of the conventions of older roguelikes, and lacks any kind of inter-playthrough metagame—I prefer this divide instead. Many classic roguelike players (myself included) embrace the widening of our favorite genre to new audiences, but there is a risk of viewing classic roguelikes in a chronological “progress” narrative (i.e. that modern roguelikes are improved and refined versions of the older, cruder games). It is surely much better to see procedural death labyrinths as growth outwards towards greater variety, not as moving forwards towards greater optimization and improvement, and to remind players that the classics have a lot to offer in their own right: and may even yield some unexpected advantages for a player who then returns to the FTL and Isaacs of this world.
