I know this might sound dumb, I always hear some Indie games are known as rogue-like games, But I never understood why, can someone explain this genre to me? and what does a game need to be considered rogue-like?
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The simplest, most literal answer is that a rogue-like game is a game that is like [Rogue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game)) (note: released in 1980).
A long time ago, there were less genres. And when a game was impactful enough to create copycats and derivatives, media would define the subsequent games as [original title]-like.
You might remember it happening with Dark Souls in the last decade, where for a time there seemed to be a ton of “the Dark Souls of [something]” and other games (including Hollow Knight to my memory) being labeled as “Dark Souls like”. Usually the genre becomes defined over time, such as “[Diablo Clone](https://www.diablowiki.net/Diablo_clone)” being redefined as “isometric action RPG with randomized loot”. This hasn’t happened with Roguelike partially because of how niche the actual game is, so much so that knowing Rogue was once a new game is sort of just a piece of trivia nowadays.
With Rogue, there’s a number of defining traits. The [wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike#Key_features) is a good list of them. But you hear about them so often because the features are relatively easy for a small team to make an oversized impact with (random generation creates more playtime for less programming time), so small indie teams can focus their ingenuity and creativity on other aspects, such as interesting player progression or character development or physics or art, or something else that gives the game some special charm.
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