"I felt like playing 30 hours of story mode was actually the tutorial": Too many RPGs and JRPGs end after their combat really gets good, Vampire Survivors creator says, which is where the roguelike formula is so great

You don't leave an interview with Luca Galante, Mr. Vampire Survivors himself, without talking about roguelikes. So when I sat down with Galante to chat about his publishing arm, Poncle Presents, I also had to ask about the roguelike explosion that only seems to accelerate each year. Galante, who's responsible for a big wave of Survivors-likes, is unsurprisingly thrilled to see the genre, this framework of systems and gameplay loops, infecting more and more games.

"I'm really happy about it, honestly, and I'd like to see it implemented in more standard games, I guess, even AAA games," he says of roguelike elements gaining popularity. God of War: Ragnarok has a roguelike mode, so does The Last of Us 2, Destiny 2 tries another one every few months, Elden Ring Nightreign is basically a big roguelike, and even Donkey Kong is dipping his toe in with Donkey Kong Bananza's new DLC. Roguelikes are most prevalent in the indie space, and those indies regularly serve up some of the best games each year, but the genre is popular at every level of the industry.

"I'll give you an example," Galante continues. "I'm a fan of RPGs and JRPGs. There's been some big AAA RPGs that came out in the past few years where I felt I was truly having fun with the combat of these RPGs only when I reached the end. I felt like playing 30 hours of story mode was actually the tutorial for the game.

And then when I finally started to have fun with all the different skills and abilities, the game suddenly ends. So that's the part of the game where, okay, start from the story, I met these characters, I learned how to play the game, I got all these items and so on, and now I'm an expert at the game. So now, for me, that's the perfect time to play the game in a roguelike way.

"Now you can actually throw challenges at me, and now I'm playing the game just because I enjoy the game and fully understand the gameplay and so on. And so the fact that there's a lot of roguelikes that just give you these gameplay mechanics and throw them at you, that you have fun with them from the get-go, for me personally, is fantastic. That's what I look for even when I play those big games."

I've had similar thoughts while playing some of the best games of 2025 so far. French JRPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and 2D Metroidvania Hollow Knight: Silksong come to mind. Both are brilliant, but both backload some features that I really, really wish I could've gotten sooner. Ghost of Tsushima gave me the same feeling years ago. I'm torn between meaningful progression and up-front fun. I wanted to spend more time with them, and by the time I felt like I'd mastered them the game was either over or clearly ending, but I didn't quite want to do a whole New Game+ playthrough.

In this sense, the replayability inherent in the roguelike loop gives players that opportunity to flex their skill set without starting a game over, or worrying if they have enough runway left to really savor this stuff. I'm with Galante on this, as a fellow roguelike enjoyer.

"I think something that we see in games, in trends, is that they come and go, basically," Galante adds. "There might be a point where we just all get bored of the randomness of the roguelikes and we just go back to very plain, linear, I don't know, PlayStation 2-style action games or something. It is actually something I feel like I'm missing nowadays sometimes.

But yes, I'm really happy. I think it makes a lot of sense because these kinds of games let you have fun in so many different ways that I feel like it's almost the right way to play a game, if I can say that. I mean, it comes from someone who made Vampire Survivors. Of course I think it's the natural course of a game."

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 congratulates Team Cherry on launching Hollow Knight: Silksong, which coincidentally might include a nod to the French JRPG and GOTY rival.