What defines the roguelike genre in video games?

A roguelike is like playing a game where every time you lose, everything changes so you have to try again from scratch.

Imagine you are building a house out of LEGOs. In most games, if your house breaks, you can just fix it with glue and keep living there. But in a roguelike, when you lose, the entire house disappears. The next time you start, a new house is built for you with different rooms and shapes, even if it looks similar on the outside.

The most special part of these games is the dungeon. It acts like a giant, shifting puzzle box. Every level might have doors in different places or stairs that lead to a new spot than before. This is called procedural generation. It means the computer rolls dice behind the scenes to decide where things go. You never know exactly what you will find around the next corner because it was made up just for that run.

You only have one life. If your character falls off a cliff or gets eaten by a monster, the game is over. You cannot use save points to try again from the middle of the level. You must start all over at the very beginning. This makes every choice feel important because you know that if you make a mistake now, it could cost you everything.

You also collect items like gold coins or swords. If you find a special sword and then lose the game, that sword goes back to your backpack forever! It is like keeping a trophy from the adventure. When you play again next time, you start with that strong sword in your pocket, making the new house a little easier to survive.

So, it is about permadeath (one life only) and replayability. You learn patterns instead of memorizing the whole map because the map keeps changing.