Reikon Games’ Metal Eden is one game that has a lot of eyeballs on themselves thanks to their presentation and overall gameplay experience. The upcoming first-person shooter boasts some crisp visuals and fast-paced gameplay. Some people, however, might be wondering if the game has any form of Roguelike or Roguelite feature.
Given how modern video games prefer some form of Roguelike or Roguelite features, this is a fairly justified query to have. So, if you are wondering whether Metal Eden will have Roguelike or Roguelite features, or a straight-up Roguelike, read on, as we try to pinpoint and clear the doubts among any interested gamers.
Is Metal Eden a Roguelike or a Roguelite
According to our demo playthrough and impression, Metal Eden doesn’t seem to be a typical Roguelike or Roguelite experience. Rather, it is a linear, fast-paced first-person shooter where players can jump around and shoot enemies with ease.
It doesn’t have any of the roguelike or roguelite features. It doesn’t come with procedurally generated levels. Rather, it has handcrafted, linear arena boxes where the player gets trapped for a time until they dispatch the enemy. Not only that, but the enemy placements and enemy spawn areas are also not randomly generated.
Every time you die and revisit an area, the enemies will still spawn in the same area you died. Even the guns you procure throughout the game are only given to you at certain moments in your journey. They aren’t procedurally generated, and you don’t lose them when you die.
So, if you were wondering whether Metal Eden is a Roguelike or a Roguelite experience and were apprehensive because of that, don’t worry. It’s as linear as it gets, and it is extremely fast-paced and fun. You will be shredding enemies in style, jumping and running all over the place, while enjoying the dystopian sci-fi storyline of Aska liberating an overrun human space station from an anomaly.
What Would Make Metal Eden a Roguelike or a Roguelite Experience
For Metal Eden to get considered a Roguelike or a Roguelite experience, it needs to have certain gameplay features attached to it. While both genres are rooted in similar game design principles of randomized events and experiences, they are a little varied in terms of their overall gameplay.
Roguelikes generally have these features. It has quite a broad level of gameplay details, but ideally, the game should have these:
- When you die in a Roguelike, you lose all of your progress and start fresh.
- There’s no meta-progression, and the only progression players make is in the form of getting to know new information.
- Roguelikes have heavy procedural generation per run. It can be for the loot, levels, and encounters.
On the flip side, Roguelites, while mimicking the features of Roguelikes, tend to be slightly different. They generally come with these features:
- When you die in a Roguelite, you keep some of your progress in the form of resources, upgrades, or unlocks to make the future runs easier.
- There’s strong meta-progression in Roguelites in the form of fixed upgrades, new weapons, and abilities unlocking over time.
- While you will find procedural generation in Roguelites, they are balanced around hand-crafted elements to maintain pacing.
These are just some of the differences between Roguelites and Roguelike games in general. So, for Metal Eden to get considered as a Roguelite or a Roguelike, most of the things need to be randomized. This includes randomized gun pick-ups, abilities, and even enemy and level layout placements changed accordingly.
Since the game doesn’t have any of them confirmed, and the demo doesn’t show any indication of the game having any of these features, Metal Eden isn’t a Roguelike or a Roguelite game. That is fine, as the world needs more fast-paced first-person single-player shooter experiences, and the game fills that void perfectly. So, play the game, enjoy it, and maybe partake in some trophy/achievement hunting in Metal Eden.
