Why roguelikes are still awesome
Hey, you? Yes, I meant you! Do you know what is a roguelike? No? Thought so. (Expect if you do, in which case you might be awesome.) Roguelikes are not that big in the game industry these days, expect some awesome indie things you may or may not find on steam. In my opinion, this is a problem. Roguelikes are awesome. I’m not meaning only the ASCII-overhardcoremasochist-things like Dungeon Crawl SS, but also roguelikelikeys like Spelunky, Dungeons of Dredmor, and this kind of things. For those who don’t know, roguelikes are often known for permadeath (When you die, you start the game from the beginning) and randomly generated enviroment. These two work well together, because having to restart the game often just to play through the same exact thing sucks. With randomly generated enviroment, every time you play is different. This allows using permadeath without (too much) frustation. For those asking why to have permadeath, think like this. Let’s take a situation where you find yourself in a room where there are two levers on the wall.
Traditional:
You know one of them is a trap and the other one opens a secret passage. You save and pull one of the levers. Wrong one, you die. You load the last save and pull the other lever. The wall opens and you find a crapload of treasure. Or maybe you just checked which lever was the right one from teh internetz. Congratulations. Now, the same situation in a roguelike(y).
Roguelike(y):
Two levers on the wall. One trap, one treasure. Saving is not a possibility, and the right solution is randomly generated. You think your possibilities through; you could try to pull one of the levers, with a 50% chance for loot, and a 50% chance for death. Or you could just move along, wasting a chance to get some cool stuff but sparing your life from possible doom. Or you could wander around a bit, hoping to find some tips, maybe a wall painting or something like that, but with the chance of running to monsters or traps. You look around a bit, and then decide to go for it. You pull the left lever and quickly back away from the wall. After some trembling, the wall opens and you are richer than before.
This is why roguelikes are great. The feeling of achievement is much greater when you risked something to get what you wanted. There are endless examples of this. Attempt to fight the boss for his equipment or just run away, try to enchant an item with the possibility of it being destroyed or just leave the enchanting table. Savescumming and checking the solutions from teh internetz would screw the feeling of success. Roguelikes won’t.
