Roguelike (roguelite, whatever) has become an absolute blight on the indie scene, and it's terrible that people consider it acceptable.
It's an awful, unenjoyable concept that almost always serves as a cheap and lazy way to sidestep the challenge of balancing, progression, making content, creating engaging mechanics, having cohesive level design etc.
- Balancing? We can't figure out how we could make players choose to use X, Y, or Z instead of simply picking a setup they like and sticking with it forever, but it doesn't matter because we can just throw everything into the raffle bin so they don't have a choice.
- Progression? A lot of times "progression" across runs either entails tiny insignificant upgrades intended to never really give you much of an advantage (since people like upgrades, but the game has to be random), or even worse, it just unlocks more items you can randomly get.
In that case (unless you can lock off items, ex. in Vampire Survivors) it often leads to a sort of counter-progression: most of the straightforward things you start with are easier to use and just as potent as anything you unlock down the line (they have to be to make the design work) which means all you're doing by playing is diluting the pool and increasing the chances of getting something obscure, incompatible, or difficult to use going forward.
Then if you do randomly get a setup that you actually enjoy using, once you die you get the privilege of going back to having garbage that's no fun to play with.
Reminds me of something like Noita, where the craziness of your setup is clearly meant to be more important than actual progression, except then every time you accidentally blow yourself up it throws the handbrake and it's back to using a shitty wand in the boring beginning area. Although I do still like Noita for the record, it's tough not to.
- Making content? Well the players will be playing the same thing over and over with a randomized setup each time, so we don't even need much game. If they win they can just do it again. There might be different (still randomized) pathways like in a game like Dead Cells, but why bother taking them? In that case there are other unlocks, but virtually none of them actually give you an advantage.
- Engaging mechanics? The game's going to be randomized so the mechanics can't be too in depth, and they won't ever require a lot of skill to master because they'll probably be altered every time.
- Cohesive level design? A lot of times these games are progressively generated, and even if they aren't the player won't have guaranteed abilities beyond the basics, so the design can't be too specific or intricate.
The problem is that some people actually seem to like this crap. There are people who claim they have 10,000 hours on Slay The Spire, and I have hypothesis that could be related to gambling; some people are predisposed to getting a kick out of gambling, I've never been one of those people.
Still, they should stop with this bullshit and make actual games. At this point even if an indie game isn't fantastic or very long, so long as it's an actual game with actual design I respect it.
