Which is the first 'procedural videogame' in history?

Rogue (1980) - there is a game genre called 'Roguelike' for a reason, right? The first 'Roguelike' videogame in history is Rogue itself, since Beneath Apple Manor (1978) featured a lot of common elements, from procedural dungeons to gameplay basics, despite the authors never knew about the other game. Political intrigues (or multiple discoveries) apart, procedural content generation has a long past before Rogue, from the twisty mazes of The Amazing Maze Game (1976) to the whole living worlds of Dwarf Fortress (2006).

Undoubtedly a successful past and present, but what worries me are the influences of the concept humble origins on its future. Since most of the 80s computer memory was very limited, procedural content generation was a clever way for 'packing' data - which is quite a technical workaround instead of a feature.

A case I've found quite emblematic is the Elite (1984) one, planned for offering 256 procedurally generated planets to explore and then limited to just 8 by in order to hide the algorithm 'imprecisions', like very far or bad named planets. Today, procedural content generation in modern triple-A videogames is very limited, like weapon generation in Borderlands (2009) or dungeon macrostructure in Diablo 3 (2012) but a lot of indie games are still using algorithms for producing core contents, keeping the concept of 'Roguelike' alive.

Why this difference? In my opinion the effort of producing a whole set of graphic and audio assets for rendering a detailed triple-A procedurally generated world is so high that invalidates its original purpose, preventing the 'Roguelike' to be a real gameplay element. So we've a lot of pixelated true Roguelikes made by low budgeted indies and few detailed games with little procedural elements just for spicing up the gameplay.

Obviously I'm waiting for No Man's Sky (2016) and its full skinned 3D procedural galaxies and graphics for changing my mind. Meanwhile...

Plot!

Somewhere there is a sacred crystal that can make any dream true... but it changes location every time so it's impossible to find! Choose your character, grab random weapons, eliminate the competitors, collect teleporter keycards and follow the crystal to the edge of the world! Use UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT for moving, A BUTTON for firing, hit the B BUTTON for reloading your weapon or hold that for inspecting your weapon. You can compare your weapon with a nearby one on the floor holding the B BUTTON down. While comparing, hit the A BUTTON to swap your weapon with the other one.

(Want to share something? You can find me on Twitter!)

Install / Add to home View game sources ...or play it online below!