I LOVE roguelikes! It is my favorite genre, by far!
People have covered most things by now; endless exploration and possibilities, thrill of overcoming a challenge, typically short playthroughs, but people haven't really touched on one of the best aspects of roguelikes: permadeath.
Permadeath is one of the most powerful tools a game developer has available. If used correctly it can produce a tension unlike anything else. There is nothing like the threat of death to add stakes. Not the "oh no I'll have to go back to the last checkpoint and that was FIVE MINUTES AGO!" kind of death. Nor the "I died and lost a trivial amount of money/experience!" kind of death either. The kind of death where everything is over, no going back to a checkpoint or reloading a save despite how desperately you want to undo that stupid mistake you just made. That's what makes games like Nethack so engrossing and addictive. Knowing that, at any moment if you aren't paying enough attention or make a stupid mistake you could lose hours of progress and have to start over at square one. The satisfaction to be gained from successes is the exact inverse of the devastation that would be wrought from failure. It's the sort of thrill that games used to give me back in the days when I had clumsy child hands, and beating any game was a major challenge. The kind of thrill where your hands are all sweaty with tension and you haven't taken a drink or gone to the bathroom for hours because you have a good run going and you don't want to break concentration.
Also, along with the random generation it allows each playthrough to be it's own unique story. Every run in Nethack where I made it past dungeon level 10 is a memorable experience. Like the first time I made it to the end of the game and managed to get myself into an endless battle on the astral plane of air with a veritable army of demons. Or the time I was brimming with confidence after having a largely successful run, thinking I was unstoppable I decided I was going to melee the High Priest of Moloch to death rather than waste MP on spells. It turns out I vastly underestimated his strength and found my HP was rapidly depleting, however I had many curative items available and decided I would simply consume a tin of nurse meat for a full heal... forgetting that even blessed tins take several turns to open and ended up dying not half an hour from beating the game. That one took me a while to recover from. Each game is so very different, despite the fact that they all share the same structure and basic dungeon layout, the events that will play out between entering the Dungeons of Doom and recovering the Amulet of Yendor can vary tremendously, be it finding an exceedingly good item early or managing to escape from a stupid blunder or a monster that you were not equipped to deal with yet.
Hmm, this ended up pretty long and I still feel like there's much left unsaid. And here I thought I would just make this a quick one :/
People have covered most things by now; endless exploration and possibilities, thrill of overcoming a challenge, typically short playthroughs, but people haven't really touched on one of the best aspects of roguelikes: permadeath.
Permadeath is one of the most powerful tools a game developer has available. If used correctly it can produce a tension unlike anything else. There is nothing like the threat of death to add stakes. Not the "oh no I'll have to go back to the last checkpoint and that was FIVE MINUTES AGO!" kind of death. Nor the "I died and lost a trivial amount of money/experience!" kind of death either. The kind of death where everything is over, no going back to a checkpoint or reloading a save despite how desperately you want to undo that stupid mistake you just made. That's what makes games like Nethack so engrossing and addictive. Knowing that, at any moment if you aren't paying enough attention or make a stupid mistake you could lose hours of progress and have to start over at square one. The satisfaction to be gained from successes is the exact inverse of the devastation that would be wrought from failure. It's the sort of thrill that games used to give me back in the days when I had clumsy child hands, and beating any game was a major challenge. The kind of thrill where your hands are all sweaty with tension and you haven't taken a drink or gone to the bathroom for hours because you have a good run going and you don't want to break concentration.
Also, along with the random generation it allows each playthrough to be it's own unique story. Every run in Nethack where I made it past dungeon level 10 is a memorable experience. Like the first time I made it to the end of the game and managed to get myself into an endless battle on the astral plane of air with a veritable army of demons. Or the time I was brimming with confidence after having a largely successful run, thinking I was unstoppable I decided I was going to melee the High Priest of Moloch to death rather than waste MP on spells. It turns out I vastly underestimated his strength and found my HP was rapidly depleting, however I had many curative items available and decided I would simply consume a tin of nurse meat for a full heal... forgetting that even blessed tins take several turns to open and ended up dying not half an hour from beating the game. That one took me a while to recover from. Each game is so very different, despite the fact that they all share the same structure and basic dungeon layout, the events that will play out between entering the Dungeons of Doom and recovering the Amulet of Yendor can vary tremendously, be it finding an exceedingly good item early or managing to escape from a stupid blunder or a monster that you were not equipped to deal with yet.
Hmm, this ended up pretty long and I still feel like there's much left unsaid. And here I thought I would just make this a quick one :/
