Traditional roguelikes (or as real ones say, simply roguelikes) have been a massive blindspot for me. It's such a niche genre that even the most popular games, such as Caves of Qud and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, I've only ever heard in passing and I'm unsure if I've even seen screenshots of either game. Well, there's no better time than the present, and over the past month, I've essentially been treating Brian Walker's Brogue as one of those old desktop games you play while doing homework.

That's not to say Brogue is simplistic, however. In fact, Brogue is very difficult and repeatedly kicked my balls until they were a red, pulsating, bloody mass. I often came away from the game frustrated and angry, only to relaunch it a few minutes later. It's not that Brogue is necessarily unfair, it's not, but the randomly generated nature of its level design and enemy placement does mean that there's a certain degree of unpredictability that leads to some runs being more difficult than others. I only got to depth 13 on my best run and felt I had gotten my fill by then. What kept me playing, then? Frankly, I didn't expect the game design to be as nuanced as it is. Brogue is a veritable sandbox in which you are given key items and are forced to make decisions in enemy and puzzle encounters with them. It's sort of similar to a survival horror game in this regard (though I'd never argue it is one), especially with how making bad moment-to-moment decisions can get you killed quickly. Items are typically not identified when you acquire them, requiring either usage or duration of time to discover their true properties. This can lead to dangerous scenarios if you're not careful. Putting on a powerful suit of armor will bite you later if you find out it's cursed after prolonged use. A random potion could turn out to be a potion of incineration and burn you to a crisp within seconds. These moment-to-moment decisions make Brogue rather stressful and tense, which is not what I expected at all from a (relatively) modern PC game less than four megabytes large. The environments you traverse are varied and often dangerous: pits of lava, fields of flammable grass, and goblin encampments with psychic totems. This means that Brogue is quite varied and you probably won't be getting bored if you have any proclivity with the genre. It shouldn't have to be stated that this game is the perfect "play while you're doing something else all day", and that's not to disparage it, the entirely turn-based nature means you can put it down and pick it up at any point without even having to pause it. There's not much to comment on visually, but I will say that the game's ASCII visuals are more detailed and dare I say beautiful than I expected. Bodies of water cycle colors between tiles which gives off the impression of undulating tides. Enemy visibility is great and each is given an easily identifiable ASCII symbol and color. More effort than I expected in that department.

If many roguelikes are of a similar quality to Brogue, I definitely want to explore the genre more. With a genre largely populated by hobbyists and genre enthusiasts, there's almost certainly no shortage of them. Brogue is a great game to get into roguelikes with, but beware of its high difficulty.