Over the weekend I picked up the early 2008 release Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer for cheap at a Best Buy post-holiday blowout sale. Shiren the Wanderer is the sort of game that has inspired much love from particular fans despite its highly idiosyncratic nature. The game itself is a pretty simple tale of a wanderer named Shiren on a quest for some mystical object.
Shiren isn’t just any sort of adventure/RPG though. Its a roguelike, that very particular love/hate genre of games that inspires as much frustration as it does joy. Roguelikes are games that trace their influence back to the seminal PC game Rogue. These games are defined by a few simple traits: randomly-generated dungeons, turn-based combat, and an unflinchingly high level of difficulty. Death in roguelikes will happen and they will happen often.
Gamers (and games by association) have become increasingly focused on the conclusions of play. Stories demand an ending, blockbusters lead up to epic boss battles, and journeys must conclude. Yet the roguelike remains an artifact against this mode of thinking. Roguelikes typically don’t have a proper ending as much as they just end. Death is the only conclusion, but a momentary one since you can also start over from the beginning.
Roguelikes focus on the process of getting to the inevitable. Each journey is unique with unknown paths, items, and enemies lying just ahead. They are games less about reaction and careful management, resources are precious and need to be used constantly and eventually the grind will wear down the best of travelers. At this stage in games its a fairly significant shift in how gamers approach games, most casual players are immediately turned off by the brutal difficulties and low initial rewards. But for those gamers who are touched by the addictiveness roguelikes are notorious for the games become near-infinite fountains of playability.
So I’m going to continue to chip away at the roguelike and hope for a breakthrough. If not with Shiren, then maybe the brand new Spelunky will solve the riddle for me. Until then, happy random dungeon crawling!
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