I don't really have a ton to say about them because I am bad at video games. I just despise the mechanic of Permadeath+Randomization. Everything about the genre screams "get good" while punishing all the central premises of learning. It's just random difficulty while feeding you semi-similar levels on the supposed "beginner levels". Every so often you'll have some bullshit happen that wipes all of your progress, with not a single save point in sight.

Look I'm playing games to have fun, not to feel like some super badass that has mastered every possible mechanic a game can throw at you based solely on the beginner levels. It just feels like the genre exists to punish you, rather than to foster enjoyment.

  • El_Pilso [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Not to be the obligatory pedant... But those really aren't roguelikes. :stirner-cool:

    Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup remains one of my all time favourite games due to its simplicity and adherence to the old-school roguelike ruleset (Permadeath, Random world, Turn-based, Tile-based). You can play it online for free. Also watching a short tutorial run on YouTube helps a ton. It's deep, rewarding and the amount of unpreventable death is reasonably low. It's also open source, community developed and pretty charming.