Please send help. I can’t stop playing these roguelikes.
It's time to admit, before God and the good readers of Ars Technica, that I have a problem. I love roguelikes. Reader, I can't get enough of them. If there's even a whisper of a hot new roguelike on Steam, I'm there. You may call them arcane, repetitive, or maddeningly difficult; I call them heaven.
The second best part of video games is taking a puny little character and, over 100 hours, transforming that adventurer into a god of destruction. The best thing about video games is doing the same thing in under an hour. Beat a combat encounter, get an upgrade. Enter a new area, choose a new item. Put together a build and watch it sing.
If you die-immediately ending your ascent and returning you to the beginning of the game-you'll often make a pit stop at a home base to unlock new goodies to help you on your next run. (Some people distiguish between roguelikes and roguelites," with the latter including permanent, between-run upgrades. For simplicity's sake, I'll use roguelike" as an umbrella term).