I was trying to think of which games created certain mechanics that became popular and copied by future games in the industry.
The most famous one that comes to my mind is Assassin’s Creed, with the tower climbing for map information.
Isn’t it called “rogue-like” because that last part of metaprogress was not in rogue? Maybe I’m confusing it with roguelite.
Be careful; you’re stepping into a holy war. There are some who stick to “the Berlin Interpretation”, where there are far more criteria to what makes a roguelike, and from my perspective, it makes those games so close to Rogue that it’s not worth giving it its own genre, plus this classification came out just before Spelunky ruined it. Colloquially, you’re typically right though. Most will call a game roguelite if your progress gives you upgrades that make the next runs easier, whereas a roguelike may still have unlocks that add more variety or “sidegrades” that are neither better nor worse.
I think the Berlin Interpretation is quite outdated and was not even good at the time, but I will defend it on this one point. It does not provide a threshold for what is and is not a roguelike, the Berlin Interpretation just lists criteria that are important to consider when determining how roguelike something is. The heap paradox is an exercise for the reader.
