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I've recently played Diablo 1 and 2 and I'm totally hooked. Now I've been wondering what genre this game belongs to, so it would help me find similar games.

Wipqozn
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Sir Ksilem
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1 Answers1

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The genre has a few popular names, including:

  • Hack and slash
  • Action RPG
  • Dungeon crawl
  • Diablo-like or Diablo-esque

And sometimes even the term "roguelike" is used - there is a vast difference between the roguelike genre and games like Diablo, but the latter are obviously influenced by the former.

The most common term I've encountered is "hack and slash". There are many, many games that belong to this genre, especially since the success of Diablo.

The excellent Moby Games site has a page about the genre, which briefly outlines what defines it as well as providing a list of all the games it considers to be "Diablo variants".

Oak
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  • Interesting. Half of that Moby Games list seems to speak directly to Torchlight (though I don't know if that's because Torchlight set/took the trend in the other games [which I haven't played] or because whoever wrote it was a Tochlight buff). – Raven Dreamer May 04 '11 at 07:39
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    @Raven the only thing I can there which is unique to Torchlight (and its predecessor, Fate) is fishing and using the fish for modifying your pet. – Oak May 04 '11 at 07:57
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    And yet I consider the original Diablo to be a graphical clone of ularn http://www.cordier.com/ularn/index.html. – ohmantics May 04 '11 at 07:58
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    Whoa, that article is totally Torchlight biased. – Jeff Mercado May 04 '11 at 08:58
  • @ohm Larn and Ularn are roguelikes - which have indeed inspired the Diablo-like games, as I have mentioned above. – Oak May 04 '11 at 09:01
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    I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the original Diablo was designed as a Roguelike (which means turn-based), then one of the designers suggested making it run real-time. It ended up awesome and led to further changes that turned Diablo into what it is today. It still isn't a roguelike, of course, but just some trivia. I'll see if I can find that article again... – Grace Note May 04 '11 at 11:36
  • Sometimes it's also called Hack and slay. Maybe you could add it as an alternative – Scoregraphic May 04 '11 at 13:18
  • Isometric hack and slay action RPG would describe it most precisly. – EricSchaefer May 04 '11 at 17:15
  • I'd concur with Action RPG. It defines Diablo as an RPG in all the usual ways, except that it's real-time where RPGs are traditionally turn-based. – Joe Dovahkiin May 04 '11 at 20:57
  • Am I right if I say torchlight is made by the creators of Diablo? I remember seeing that somewhere. – Sir Ksilem May 05 '11 at 07:49
  • @Sir once again, mobygames to the rescue! (scroll down to see collaboration of authors on other games). – Oak May 05 '11 at 09:30