The One Video Game Feature Everyone Is Sick Of

As Dark Souls Would Say, “You Died.”

Of course, there’s no cut and dried definition of roguelike, rogue-lite, roguelike-like or any other such terms. That’s a major can of worms among players, developers and the industry as a whole.

One thing that can be said with certainty is that, in The Binding of Isaac, Diablo, Spelunky, Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, Supergiant Games’ new full-release smash Hades and other similar series/games, mistakes are easily made and permadeath lurks during every encounter.

The spectre of permadeath is one that constantly stalks the player. Fans of these sorts of titles will know just how deflating it can be to get an excellent run going, with a combination of power-ups that just feels fantastic, only to meet a grim demise with the knowledge that RNG likely means you won’t find that unique loadout again.

On death, the whole experience begins anew, with the player character reduced to their starting powers and not really having gained anything beyond experience (more so of the game, its enemies and so on, rather than EXP) and perhaps a new record in terms of distance reached.

These are exactly the qualities that make such games so darn addictive for fans, but it’s still, quite the blow for a run to come to a swift end. Especially when the player felt that they had the potential to get much further this time around.