I was trying to think of which games created certain mechanics that became popular and copied by future games in the industry.
The most famous one that comes to my mind is Assassin’s Creed, with the tower climbing for map information.
Funny enough, Rogue doesn’t have a set of permanent enhancement for a wider meta game. In Rogue you start over from scratch always and every time. That’s the difference between a roguelike and a rogue liTe game. Binding of Isaac and Spelunky are roguelike. You die, you start over from scratch. Hades and Slay the spyre are rogue lite. Every run gives permanent enhancements that change the next runs, so each time you start slightly different or progressively better.
Hades, yes. That’s a premier Roguelite with meaningful meta progression.
Slay the Spire is fuzzy on that point. I would not recommend it to someone looking for a Roguelite. It straddles the line in that it has very limited meta progression which is quickly exhausted and basically works as a tutorial. Once you’ve maxed out the card unlocks for each character it plays with the same feel as a Roguelike game. It’s still not a pure a Roguelike since the starting boon choice and the card swap event allow some minor meta-influence between runs, but there’s no more meta-progression.
I often describe slay the spire’s meta progression as “a roguelike with homework”.
A roguelite is ostensibly something that has enough features of a roguelike to be noted, but not enough to be considered one. And I’d argue there is way more to what makes a roguelike than permadeath with no meta progression.
Also Slay the Spire has less meta progression than Issac. Hades is in a whole nother ball park.
