I was talking to someone about gaming and it occurred to me that I didn't post a game yet. Might as well start with one of my modern favourites.

I feel like Dead Cells set the template for the modern roguelite in terms of progression and the difficulty curve. There's essentially three parts of this game: the baby area, before you've maxxed out enough of the stats that you're actually going to use; the mid-game which is just training you to complete the "final" boss; then the post-game which is for people who have a far better attention span than I do.

I'm happy, as with most things in gaming (and maybe life?), to be good enough at Dead Cells to enjoy it. I can reliably get to the last area, and kill the Hand a lot of the time, but anything more than that just starts to feel like I'm playing the game just to play it, rather than because I'm enjoying it. I'm glad that stuff exists for the people who want it, but I can live with what I see as the core gameplay loop.

This does have a bit of a steep learning curve but it never feels cheap or unfair, which I think is super important in the early game, so that you can actually get established and not just feel like you're getting beaten up constantly like I do in things like Souls games.