Many who have played Rogue Legacy will no doubt recall the game’s immense difficulty. It may seem easy to underestimate how difficult a roguelike platforming game can be, but Rogue Legacy was as challenging as it was unique at the time. However, this is a double-edged sword; this will bring in as many players as it pushes away. So, for Rogue Legacy 2, Cellar Door Games adds House Rule options.
Game Rant recently spoke with Rogue Legacy 2 lead designer and co-creator Teddy Lee, and this is one feature he hopes players check out. It was previously added during Rogue Legacy 2's early access in the Dragon’s Vow update, but it’ll certainly be new for those who pick the game up at launch. What this does is simply allow players to modify a ton of game rules as they see fit, one way or another.
How Rogue Legacy 2 House Rules Work
Although not exhaustive of its capabilities, Rogue Legacy 2’s house rules allow players to change enemy damage, enemy health, remove contact damage, add the ability to fly, and so on. This can go one of two ways: down to decrease difficulty or up to increase it. Speaking on players’ interaction with this, Lee said of the Discord testing group: “One person sets all enemies' HP to 200, and I know another guy who just set everything to 50% because he just enjoys it more, right?”
These House Rules will come with suggestions, however, to keep the general difficulty approach intact. Speaking on the concept of contact damage, “We also added no contact damage because there are a lot of people who can't get used to that type of thing, or they just don't like it.” When players do make these changes, "we just add comments like, 'Oh, if you turn this off, like if you turn off contact damage, we recommend you raise enemy damage by like 20% in order to keep the essence of the difficulty alive.'"
Rogue Legacy 2 House Rules Reward Players, Doesn’t Penalize Them
However, nothing prevents players from dialing it all down or dialing it all to 11. Lee and Cellar Door Games realize that many players may not want to or may not be able to play at that level of difficulty, and Lee encourages players to check out the House Rules. There is no penalty for doing so. Many times, when something modifies a game to this degree, the game will disable achievements. This reinforces a stigma around easy mode and difficulty discourse, and Lee simply said he doesn’t like the idea of disabling achievements. Players who use House Rules will still be able to unlock achievements in Rogue Legacy 2. In fact, Lee said,
We actually give you an achievement. Because we know nobody wants to do it. When we added it, so many people asked if this disables achievements, so we were like, we'll just give you an achievement. Now people will know to just use it. Like, please just use it! We don't want people to feel bad, but it's such a stigma, right?
The first Rogue Legacy was available on Epic Games Store for free, and while many hopefully enjoyed the game and are anticipating Rogue Legacy 2’s release date, there may be some who feel the opposite because of the first game's difficulty. If they loved the concept but not the difficulty, then the House Rules may be for them. They don’t have to worry about the game penalizing them either, instead letting them play the way want to play. And those who want an even bigger challenge, they can do that too.
Lee described Rogue Legacy 2 as a completely different, better game and commented that he doesn’t even play the first one anymore, which is saying something coming from the co-creator. It’s worth checking out for any roguelike or platforming fan, and they’ll hopefully see a world of difference no matter what they are looking for. At the end of the day, this strikes a good balance when it comes to difficulty in video games.
Rogue Legacy 2 releases on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.