not sure if this will be an unpopular opinion but:

the fun of a roguelike/roguelite comes from being given a weird, randomized toolset and trying to improvise around that. part of the fun is also trying to build off of that toolset to create an overpowered combination of abilities

in some runs you get completely overpowered without even trying, and with others your luck is so bad that you can barely accomplish anything. but the more you play and start to see patterns in how to become powerful, the better you get at using the strangest things to your advantage. in order for this to work, items need to be able to strongly synergize: they need to interact with each other in intricate ways that affect your playstyle a lot

and the problem that I have with modern roguelites is that they just don’t seem to remember this? with the exception of Balatro which completely nails it. but like try creating an overpowered combo in Hades 1 or Cult of the Lamb or Severed Steel’s Rogue Steel mode. you basically just can’t. all of the upgrades are super bland and don’t really have any potential for interesting synergies

I feel like a lot of indie games are being shoehorned into the roguelite mold, instead of being created from the ground up in order to be an interesting roguelite

(this post inspired by me replaying a game with a lot of potential but which fell flat in just enough areas to kinda ruin its own gameplay: Teleglitch. one of its biggest mistakes was that it Should Not Have Been A Roguelite)

some examples of roguelites that (IMO) understand how to be good roguelites and give you lots of interesting options:

• Binding of Isaac (and its sequel)
• BPM: Bullets Per Minute
• Rogue Adventure
• Slice and Dice
• Probably Noita from what I’ve seen, but I haven’t played it

@kasdeya we feel like we have run into (and intentionally tried to get) specific synergies in hades, so we know they exist . . . the thing there is that because so much of the more impactful abilities is blocked behind the social progression you have to know what you're going for and build towards it in the narrative structure

@kasdeya

Risk of rain (rip)

@SeaDonut omg did something happen to Risk of Rain?

@kasdeya interesting... I can't say I really like these games, most of which I have definitely tried. In terms of the roguelites and roguelikes, I'm fine with balatro. I quite liked Dome Keeper and Roboquest. I've also been enjoying Dorfromantik quite a bit (although admittedly a puzzle game). Plate Up! is also a big favourite of mine.

@tempest ohh interesting! that explains why I didn’t encounter options that felt impactful - because I didn’t play for all that long and never really got into the social stuff, so I hadn’t unlocked them yet. I’m glad that the game does eventually give you interesting options though

@kasdeya yeah no we've gotten utterly broken builds in stacking crit damage or knockback or stun . . . it's just that the really combinatorial options aren't available from the start

@kasdeya

Publishers bought out the franchise and ran it into the ground, released a broken dlc, and apparently took away modding capability

@desea woahh omg I’ve never even heard of this game before but it’s so cute! I love it aesthetically

it’s also really innovative, as far as I can tell. bullet hells are not my genre at all but from what I understand they’re usually top-down shooters, instead of giving you more in-depth abilities like this. I briefly tried a bullet hell in the past and didn’t really like it at all, but I love managing my abilities in this game. it kinda feels like a simplified version of WoW combat

I played one game of the demo and died relatively early on. I had a hard time figuring out which areas I was supposed to avoid, which areas I was supposed to stay inside of, etc. - especially when they all started overlapping lol. but I definitely still had fun

in what I’ve seen of the demo so far though, none of the passives or upgrades seem to interact with each other - so I wouldn’t say that it’s doing the things that I like to see roguelites doing. but I wonder if I might start to see more strange and interesting passives/upgrades later in the game

also, I love that this game has co-op! I’ve been looking for a co-op game to play with friends

I think that I could really get into this game! I’m definitely going to keep my eye on it and I’ll probably get it once it goes on sale or once I have more money for games hehe. thanks for the recommendation!

@shijikori ooh omg interesting! I did try Dome Keeper in the past but I didn’t like it for some reason - I can’t remember what that reason was though. maybe it had a time limit that stressed me out?

I actually haven’t heard of these others though! Roboquest actually looks like it might be pretty fun - I’m tempted to try the demo

PlateUp! also seems pretty fun to be honest. maybe a little too hectic for me but idk - I might give it a try too

just to clarify, here are some examples of what I mean when I talk about strong synergies:

• every time you deal damage to an enemy, you give them 1 combo point. when they reach 5 combo points, all 5 are removed and they lose 10% of their health
• you attack 3x as often as usual, but deal 10% of your usual damage

normally that second passive would be worse than useless, but here it lets you completely melt high-health enemies because you deal damage based on a percentage instead of a fixed damage number

• every time you attack an enemy, you have a 10% chance to remove all of their burn and inflict that many stacks of poison on all enemies
• every time you attack an enemy, you have a 10% chance to remove all of their poison and inflict that many stacks of burn on all enemies

now you have a strong incentive to spec into items that inflict as much poison and/or burn as possible, as well as an incentive to make sure that each attack hits as many enemies as possible (damage doesn’t even matter anymore - just number of enemies hit), so that you can keep scaling poison and burn exponentially

I guess I really like when a game’s upgrades/passives become a puzzle of “how can I play into this ability to make it extremely overpowered?”