I have always considered myself not really one for roguelikes. I grew up on narrative games with beginnings and ends. Your *Zeldas*, your *Final Fantasies*, what have you. I generally am more attracted to games that have *some* semblance of a storyline, because I am constantly thinking about my time and how I spend it. When I'm playing a roguelike, I spend more time thinking about the other games I could be playing and finishing. It's admittedly not very mindful of me. But I recently got a deep, deep craving for roguelikes these past few weeks. It came from me once again spinning my wheels, jumping from one game to another for 30 minutes at a time, trying to find something that would give me some serotonin after a series of unbelievably exhausting weeks.[^1] I figured if I'm gonna be doing that for 30 minutes at a time I may as well play something that fits that timebox, and picked up a couple of roguelikes on sale that looked good. One of those games was a cheap little title called [Tiny Rogues](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2088570/Tiny_Rogues/), and it made a couple of things click in my brain. *Tiny Rogues* is a twin-stick roguelike where you go through rooms and clear out enemies. Each room clear you get some sort of item or a level-up. Do that 100-120 times (10-12 floors, 10 rooms each), and that's it! You're done. I won my first run in *Tiny Rogues*, which is pretty unheard of for me as far as roguelikes go. But that's the "clicking in my brain" part coming into play. I thought I'd be disappointed by how easy it was for me, but the reality is that it made me want to play it more. Like, a *lot* more. Like, this much in a week more. ![[Roguelikes and Landslides-20240811152022002.png]] This is because *Tiny Rogues* has a masterful sense of snowballing. It's a game that makes getting absurdly strong and clearing out rooms in under 5 seconds a given, if you've got a good build going. The game starts out a little tough, but by the end you're chain-casting lightning that procs off of your dash which, coincidentally, is being buffed by a pair of boots that makes your dash procs proc **twice**, and you picked up a perk that makes meteors fall from the sky every time you cast lightning, so now the entire arena is just a swarm of fireballs covering the screen for a brief moment before a pile of gold coins is revealed in the debris. What I came to realize is that it's not that roguelikes waste my time, challenge does. It turns out I don't want a perfectly balanced, razor-thin difficult roguelike. I want one that lets me feel like I perfected a team of characters in a 30 hour JRPG, but condensed in a 30 minute session before I start work. **That's** why I've bounced off of so many of the roguelikes that are considered the best of the best: *Darkest Dungeon*, *Slay the Spire*, etc. Getting my ass kicked for not playing perfectly feels awful when you're deep in a run, especially if it's a roguelike with not much meta-progression. Of course this is all personal preference, but yeah, Snowball Roguelikes are absolutely my new jam. If you've got any recs for more, hit me up! [^1]: Don't worry I know it's depression, I'm working on it lol.