For a while people tried to differentiate roguelikes, which maintained the lack of metaprogression, with roguelites, which did have progression. But that was pretty clearly a losing battle, the two names were far too similar to stay distinct as long as one or the other took off. Some few pendants still try to maintain the distinction, but that ship sailed ages ago.
It’s a really stupid way to differentiate the two as well. Rogue like is the original term and will obviously be the blanket term, but people want to insist that a subset of such games are not actually a subset (“it’s not a rogue like, it’s a rogue lite”) because of the addition of a feature. When in reality most people view all rogue lites as rogue likes.
For a while people tried to differentiate roguelikes, which maintained the lack of metaprogression, with roguelites, which did have progression. But that was pretty clearly a losing battle, the two names were far too similar to stay distinct as long as one or the other took off. Some few pendants still try to maintain the distinction, but that ship sailed ages ago.
It’s a really stupid way to differentiate the two as well. Rogue like is the original term and will obviously be the blanket term, but people want to insist that a subset of such games are not actually a subset (“it’s not a rogue like, it’s a rogue lite”) because of the addition of a feature. When in reality most people view all rogue lites as rogue likes.
I still use it but there are maybe 2 true rouge-likes published a year and no one plays them so it really doesn’t matter.