During These Completely Precedented Times, I'm Playing Roguelikes
Although in fairness, I am always probably playing at least one roguelike.
“My girl gave me a bolt cutter / we love to break in / reclaim all the spaces they forget they had taken / And all this is our / it's gonna be be what we make it / if only the stars were close enough we would paint them.”
-Bolt Cutter, Doomtree
Circa November 2016 and the day after Trump got elected, my friend Emmeline sent out an open message to everyone in her circles offering space for anyone who needed it. Emmeline is the one who first taught me the simple joys of zining, the act of repurposing and reinventing She is not the first one to teach me the importance of space, but she certainly reinforced the idea. In times of strife, we hold vigil. In times of difficulty, we carve out space for ourselves.
A few days after that, my friend Steenz organizes a community care event handing out zines on the Delmar loop. This feels like it happened both yesterday and seventeen years ago. (An aside, whenever I have to pick an arbitrary number, I find myself picking seventeen more times than not. I have not discerned a particular reason why).
At this point in time, I hadn't fully become invested in the roguelike genre. I had played through FTL a few times, but my next roguelike wouldn't be until 2018 with Subset Games' Into the Breach. I was however still essentially playing the same game on loop as Destiny was in the halcyon era of Rise of Iron.
“Respawn and remember / the chorus always returns / why does this apocalypse feel so familiar? / How many deaths till I learn / my way back?”
-Roguelike, Gaunte & Big Cats
Early 2020 was fundamentally weird because before the world shut down in late February and March, my world had irrevocably changed in late January because I experienced diabetic ketoacidosis, which is a not so fun way of saying my body decided to make acid out of fat cells because it didn't have enough insulin. So for a couple weeks I was in the hospital learning how my life was going to change thanks to be diabetic. And then I went home, had a perfectly normal few weeks, and then proceeded to have a weird rest of 2020 with collective society.
At this point my friend Bill gets me into Slay the Spire and Hades. It becomes my fascination and during the bulk of 2020, I cycle between Slay the Spire, Hades, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Destiny 2. I have written about the later three at length. Slay the Spire, I have written about in passing, but Slay the Spire marked the deep entry into the roguelike genre.
I have not actually defined roguelike, so let's do this now. Roguelike is a genre of game named after a game called Rogue. Rogue is famous for a few different reasons. It is a difficult game. It is a game with procedurally generated element. It is a game meant to be played several times. It is a framework that has been applied to all sorts of genres. Metrovanias, isometric brawlers, bullet hells, and card games. Slay the Spire is a deckbuilding roguelike that was so successful it influenced years of roguelikes to come and honestly, it managed to be the premiere of all deckbuilding roguelikes even after several attempts at the title. Hades is an isometric roguelike that did the seemingly impossible and married a cohesive narrative to an infinite loop of game play.
Easy to pick up, difficult to master. A perfect genre for someone like me. And there are several others I haven’t even gotten to mention between Balatro, Griftlands, Loop Hero, Risk of Rain, Spiritfall, Tiny Rogues, and Vampire Survivors, but I love all of those too for the record.
“What's the weight of the world worth to ya, kid / Go write down what you see / and see how far it can go / what's the weight of the worth to your side / Here is where you got lost / and here is how you by.”
-Mutiny, I Promise You by The New Pornographers
It's November 2024. Trump has won the election. I have been playing the early access for Hades II on and off since May 2024, and October 2024 saw the Olympus Patch reinvigorate the game with a whole new biome upstairs. Motion Twin, the publisher behind Dead Cells, has coincidentally released Windblown, a 3D isometric roguelike days later and I am switching between the games every few runs. Hades II, I have just shy of one hundred hours in. Windblown, just shy of twenty five. The allure of Destiny 2 is beginning to fade after a decade with the franchise, a fact I will reconcile in May 2025, something you can certainly hold me to.
Most of my gaming for the past week has been roguelikes. Most of the next four years are gonna be roguelike-ish. Same set of circumstances like in 2016, except worse somehow. Completely precendented times. Same core toolbox except with a couple meta-progressions unlocked.
The day after the election, I woke up and looked at the results and I sighed. It was not a sigh of resignation, but of resolve. Of “the work we need to do is the same, but also different now.” Of “I was going to come out as non-binary this week, but now I like *need* to come out as non-binary this week.” I latch on to a sentence my friend Tylor said over discord: “Being ourselves in the face of hardship is among the truest forms of rebellion.” I don't think it was quite a sign of defiance. Determination maybe. I think determination is the closest word.
I made plans. A list of things to do and started the process of doing them. And then I played a roguelike. And then I'll play a roguelike. And then I went about my day. And then I'll live the same days on loop and I'll live that loop the best I can because the loop doesn't end. The work doesn't end. And so we begin again.
And again.
And again.
