Spelunky 2

The term roguelike is an interesting one. It was originally created to describe games similar to the 1980 game Rogue, a dungeon crawler with randomly generated levels, turn-based combat, and permadeath with nothing carrying over from run to run. Now the term has expanded to include any game with randomly generated levels or encounters and permadeath. Some folks have extreme ire against the term being used in such a sweeping manner, debating online that the term should be roguelite instead. While I do have my own definitions for what both roguelike and roguelite means, they are just my personal definitions. My opinion on the debate as a whole is that it doesn’t really matter. Genre names are more limiting than anything else and language is a continually growing, evolving thing so terms often become bigger than originally intended.

But this is all to say that I love roguelike games. I love when a game in the genre succeeds at still feeling fresh after dozens, or even hundreds, of hours played. I’m fascinated by how the games all have their own sort of gameplay language they use to speak to the player. I adore getting lost in games that are so heavily mechanics driven, playing run after run, and learning a little more about the game each time. I wanted to take some time to discuss a few of my favorite games in the genre. Keep in mind, I haven’t played every roguelike. Some major games I’ve only played little to none of would be FTL, Risk of Rain, and Nuclear Throne. And honorable mentions going out to Darkest Dungeon, Slay the Spire, and Into the Breach—all of which are incredible games, but feel to me to be games with roguelike elements more so than roguelike games. But with all that out of the way, let’s get into my top five favorite roguelikes.

#5) Hades

Hades released last year to instant critical and fan applause. It topped many best of the year lists and has been a commercial smash hit for developer Supergiant Games. And I found myself on the outskirts of this celebration, however. I picked up Hades the day it released on Switch and loved the gorgeous art direction, the intense and lightning quick combat, and expressiveness allotted to the player when building a run from boons offered by the Olympian Gods. However, I found myself less interested in the story and characters as most people seemed to be, preferring to just hop back into the next run. I was disappointed in the lack of gameplay benefits the relationship system brought. Neither of these are bad things really, just things I didn’t particularly care for in the game. Hades is incredible, no doubt, but it came out pretty much the same time as another roguelike in 2020—one you will be seeing later on this list—which devoured all my free time of a few months.

#4) Streets of Rogue

Streets of Rogue is a fantastic little game with incredible depth. As a top down, 2D immersive sim, each floor tasks you with completing certain missions like neutralizing a target, stealing from a safe, or escorting an NPC to the exit of the level. How you complete these missions, though, are completely up to you. You can hack enemy turrets to fire upon their owners, use vent systems to poison a building full of hostiles, sneak around all guards, or just go in guns blazing and killing everyone in your way. What makes the game great is the options given to the player and how the game world reacts to them. Some classes immediately hate each other and will fight on sight like the members of the opposing gangs, thieves and police, gorillas and scientists. It leads to some of the most chaotic situations a roguelike can offer and some of the highest satisfaction too when everything goes just according as planned.

#3) Enter the Gungeon

Enter the Gungeon probably has the best moment-to-moment gameplay out of any game on this list. It’s face-paced, brutal, and an absolute blast to play. Shooting down enemies, dodging bullets, sliding across tables, and rolling through pots and boxes all feels incredible due to the insane amount of polish in the game. Enemies are all expressive and easy to spot, things explode into clouds of pixels that then cover the floor, and every gun has a unique reload animation. And everything in the game is a gun. The enemies are bullets, the bosses’ names are gun puns, the guns you can pick up are reference guns in movies and games, there’s even guns that shoot smaller guns which in turn shoot bullets. The difficulty is set higher than most roguelikes I would say, but it feels so good to play that you will find yourself loading up another run again and again and a gun and again.

#2) Spelunkey 2

Remember when I said that another roguelike came out around the same time as Hades? Well this is it. After not being able to really get into the first Spelunkey, I was shocked how much I loved Spelunkey 2. It feels like a remixed and perfected version of the first game with tweaks, changes, and new additions to keep things fresh for old players and exciting for new players like myself. I’ve never played another roguelike where the player’s skill matters as much as in Spelunkey 2 due to the fact that the item pool is very limited and the game is obscenely difficult, with death often coming instantly and hilariously and with you cursing Derek Yu. It can feel discouraging to get far into a run only for it to end in a second due to a poor jump or misplace bomb, but if you stick with it there are some of the most satisfying challenges to be overcome in the game. I named Spelunky 2 my game of the year for 2020, so if you are interested in a deeper look at what makes it so great, you can find that here.

#1) The Binding of Isaac

This is it, folks. The big one. The reason I bought a New 3DS and a PS4. The game that started me on the road to loving video games. My favorite game of all time.

The original flash Isaac was one of the first modern roguelikes and helped popularize the genre. The game has been expanded many times—I personally picked it up during Rebirth and after—which has lead to sine wave of quality, but the game is so vast, with some many secrets to discover, hundreds of things to unlock, nearly unlimited synergies between items to learn, all leading to no two runs feeling the same. The game has its own language that it speaks to the player with and it expects them to learn in order to tilt luck in your favor. What started as developer Edmund McMillen wanting to make a smaller game poking fun at Catholicism blossomed into something bigger, something more personal, and one of the most popular indie games ever made. This game means so much to me, and there is so much I want to discuss about it at any given time, that I find it hard to write about because my thoughts get wiped up and spun around like a hurricane. It is my “forever game,” a game I can pick up anytime and anywhere and still enjoy it. Come Hell or high water, from the beginning of Creation until the moment of Rapture, I will always love The Binding of Isaac.

I didn’t play a lot of games released this year. Partly due to a limited budget of money and time, but mostly it was disinterest in most that came out. No AAA game really caught my attention. I found Final Fantasy 7 Remake demo repetitive and tedious so I never picked up the full release and I refuse to support companies like Naughty Dog and Ubisoft, so that crossed out all their new games. Even the indie games I played this year didn’t excite me too much. Carrion was a fun little bite size romp and Hades was so close to being what I want for a roguelight with social mechanics, but sadly fell short. I felt I didn’t play enough games to make another top five list this year, but I wanted to talk about what is undoubtedly my favorite game of 2020: Spelunky 2.

My history with the series is weird. When I first got my PS4, one of the first games I picked up was the original Spelunky because it’s reputation was so strong. However, I found the difficulty completely impenetrable; I could hardly make it out of the caves. The difficulty in Spelunky 2 isn’t any easier (it may even be harder), but the game just feels better to play. There is less stiffness in the controls and you can toggle run to always be on so you don’t have to constantly hold down the trigger. There is one strange control aspect that returns in Spelunky 2 and that is carrying items.

In both games, carrying items is pretty clunky. To bring anything anywhere it has to be carried and only one thing can be carried at a time. This includes weapons, keys, and the pets, who will give you a health point if delivered to the level exit. This can lead to having to manage multiple items at one on levels that require multiple things to carry around, like the floor in the dwellings where you have to bring the key to the chest to unlock the Udjat eye. If you have a weapon on this floor and also want to carry the pet and the key at the same time, get ready for a juggling act of dropping and picking up items.

This clunkiness with carrying items is very obviously by design though. Since delivering pets to the exit is one of the only ways to get health, only being able to carry an item at a time forces the player to assess what is most important to grab and carry, leading to a sort of flow chart to be run down in the moment. This is because different throwable items have different attributes. Rocks only hit for one point of damage and never break while arrows hit for 2 points of damage, but break and become useless after hitting an tougher enemy like a caveman. So you are constantly going over a checklist in your head. Am I carrying an item that can be thrown as a weapon? If no, grab one. If yes, is there a better weapon or item I should be carrying. It’s these little moments of consideration, these moments of assessment that make Spelunky 2 such an engaging game to play aside from the platforming elements.

Like most every other roguelike, Spelunky 2 is a game of learning from mistakes and internalizing what needs to be done in the future. Every different biome has different enemies and challenges to consider. Enemies attack patterns and health need to be learned. Interactions between level elements have to be assessed when scouting out a safe path forward. And, the most frustrated of all, traps that can kill you with one hit need to be spotted and avoided.

There is at least one thing in every biome that will kill you instantly no matter how much health you have at the time. Spikes, bear traps, lava, moving blocks; all of these can end your run in a second. While it is definitely frustrating to build up a great run only to have it snuffed out in the blink of an eye, the instant death traps are necessary for the balance of the game. The game would become trivial with the right combination of items and having traps to constantly look out for keeps the game engaging. You have to always be looking ahead for upcoming traps to avoid, enemies to dodge, and treasure to grab that your mind will be racing a mile a minute while playing. Once you have the base gameplay down, then you can start hunting for secrets.

There are so many hidden things to find in Spelunky 2 from secret areas and paths to take throughout the game, items to collect, and new explorers to rescue. And, if you wish to discover the secret 7th world after the “final” boss, there is something that needs to be done on nearly every level and secrets that must be revealed and, quite literally, death to be defied. It’s while going after this secret world that the limited item carrying comes into play as the game’s way of balancing itself. At a few points, items will have to be carried between levels, meaning that if you get a powerful weapon, for example the shotgun, on an early level, you will have to eventually give it up. It’s a great tool for the game to balance itself. If you are just going for a main path ending, you don’t have to worry about giving anything up, but if you want to see the secret worlds and bosses, you have to sacrifice things.

Spelunky 2 is a game of checks and balances, of risk versus reward. Everything good you can get in the game comes with some drawbacks. The shotgun has knockback that can send you flying back off ledges or into spikes. Paste can help you stick bombs to enemies, but will also attach them to walls and ceilings if not aimed properly. The jetpack offers the best mobility in the game, but can easily explode, causing massive damage. With most other roguelikes, it can be very easy to become completely overpowered and become nearly impossible to be killed once you know what you are doing. Spelunky 2 is not like this at all. With the constant threat of instant death by traps and very good items having massive drawbacks, you have a game where full attention is required throughout an entire run. Good play is necessary and mistakes are harshly punished.

This is why I love the game so much. It manages to stay engaging through every different run, perfectly balanced so it is impossible to easily win a run, and it is simply fun. Puzzling out how to get a trapped pet or ghost pot to the end of level without killing or breaking them is fun. Discovering all the secrets and items is fun. The art style itself is just cute, charming, and fun. Many people considered the first Spelunky a perfect game; so much so that there were those wondering how they could improve it for a sequel when it was announced. I cannot speak for the first game due to lack of experience, as stated before, but Spelunky 2 is about as perfectly designed as a game can get in my opinion.

Atomic Bob-Omb

5 Favorite Roguelikes