10 Fantastic Video Games You’ll Never Play Because They’re Too Hard

4. Rogue Legacy

A common question surrounding game difficulty is the whole "Were games harder when we were younger/they were older?" concept. Well to be honest, yes they were - but not because developers have necessarily become more forgiving over time. Instead it's purely down to the limitations of the time, meaning it was far easier to create a challenge when everything existed on a 2D plane. So, if you're one man with one attack and a jump, dying because you so much as touched something - throwing more guys at said man or cranking up the amount of shots needed to take an enemy down will do the trick. Less game mechanics or world design to faff about with or equalise means more dials can be simultaneously cranked without breaking everything in the process- leaving only the player on the receiving end of everything. All of this is to say that this template still allows developers to craft some fantastic experiences, especially when they do take the time to make everything feel more fair - producing gems like Rogue Legacy that see you tackling a procedurally-generated castle with nothing but a couple of a attacks and a character who changes their special ability every time they die. It's a perfectly simple yet elegant approach, scratching that "Just one more go" itch with the idea being you never know what power-up or level-layout lies around the corner - however, this very fact of relying on the repetition of death to complete it has put far more people off than it has endeared them to its weird and wonderful ways.