...I definitely can tell the quality of the game and everyone raving about it made me try to get over my apprehension of Roguelikes, but for the life of me I'll never understand the appeal of repeatedly attempting the same content until you reach a perfect run and losing all but slivers of progress. What's the deal with Roguelikes that so many indies are in that genre now?
I see Roguelikes as a continuation of Arcade games.
Arcade games are almost exactly the same each time, so when you make more progress on average, you know you're getting better at the game and learning its patterns. Arcade games were pretty much enough to kickstart a whole medium, so there's definitely appeal here!
A
Roguelike expands on this by removing the pattern memorisation - you
know you're getting better at the game mechanics and
not just rote memorisation due to the randomisation of the challenge. Because the core elements are the same between your first run and your hundredth, any progress you make is due to you improving at the game. The trouble with a more "pure" Roguelike (Rogue, Spelunky) is there's no guarantee you will
ever make it to the end, and for many people, that's OK.
A
Roguelite* kind of takes a step back, it gives you permanent upgrades or unlocks between runs both to kind of guarantee that with persistence you'll eventually make it to the end, and also to ensure you get new mechanics over time as you play, rather than overwhelming a new player with everything. The downside is that it often feels like there's an element of necessary 'grind' to it as the end-content is balanced around having unlocked various things from failed runs. When you fail, you're unsure if it's because you need to improve at the game, or just because you lack the necessary unlocks.
I think the super clever thing that Hades does is for players who don't enjoy the core loop of
replaying content solely to get better at it - now there are story hooks so that dying doesn't become a "waste of time"** but a
key to unlock the next part of the story.
The reason so many indie devs gravitate toward roguelikes is because they're super fun to work on with unique challenges, they provide endless gameplay, they're quite popular, and there's still a lot of room in the... genre(?) for innovation!
*The distinction between Roguelike/Roguelite is pretty weak but it sort of makes sense for what I wanted to explain
**I don't think restarting an arcade game/roguelike is a waste of time, especially if it was enjoyable.
