For designers: the 12 building blocks of a roguelite

Every roguelite is a particular setting of about a dozen building blocks. Naming them makes it easier to see what a game actually changed, and what it kept.

The loop

1. Run: a bounded attempt that grows harder, and what dying wipes. The dials are length, how it’s split up (rooms, floors, fights or a clock) and how difficulty climbs.
2. Persistence: what survives a run: knowledge, unlocks, power or story.

Inside a run

3. Core action: what you’d enjoy doing even without the roguelite layer.
4. Encounter: the test. Enemies, elites and bosses, and whether fights come from fixed groups or a generator with a difficulty budget.
5. Offer: options to choose from. How many, how often, from which pool, with what levers (reroll, banish).
6. Build: what you accumulate, what it attaches to (moves, a deck, a grid), and how much room it has.
7. Synergy: the rules that make pieces combine: tags, themes, combos, set bonuses.
8. Route: how you choose what comes next, and what you see first: doors, maps or branches.
9. Economy: in-run resources and where they go: gold, shops, even health spent as money.
10. Risk: danger you opt into for more reward: curses, challenge rooms, elites.

Between runs

11. Start: choices before the run (character, weapon, loadout) that shape its opening.
12. Ladder: difficulty you raise yourself, with rewards: Heat, Ascension, Vows.

Three dials cut across all twelve: how much randomness you get and how much control you have over it; what’s shown versus hidden; and how big the content pool is compared with how much of it one run uses. That last ratio decides how quickly repetition sets in.

Same blocks, different settings

Block	Hades	Slay the Spire
Run	4 regions, about 60 rooms	3 acts of map nodes
Persistence	Permanent upgrades and a story told through death	Unlocks only
Core action	Real-time attack, special, cast and dash	Playing cards with energy
Encounter	A wave generator whose budget grows with depth	Authored monster groups per act
Offer	1 of 3 boons in boon rooms	1 of 3 cards after each fight
Build	Boons on five moves, plus weapon upgrades	A deck plus relics
Synergy	God themes and two-god combos	Keywords and relics
Route	Doors that show the next reward	A map of the whole act
Economy	Gold and health	Gold, with health carried between fights
Risk	Chaos gates and Heat	Elites and curses
Start	Weapon, aspect and keepsake	Character and a starting bonus
Ladder	Heat	Ascension

The standout games tend to change one block and keep the rest familiar. Balatro turned encounters into score targets. Revita merged the economy into your health. Hades put its upgrade themes on the doors you choose between.