The best thing about this video is the video player deciding "that's it!" and showing the end of video screen when I'm 1/3 through, and also when I'm 1/2 through, and also when I'm 2/3 through ...
Oh my god there's 492 comments. No one is going to read this.
Here's what I think (note I haven't played Rogue itself, just a bunch of "core" roguelikes (Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is the best)) (oh but I've never won any of them because I'm bad at games):
* Unless you're EXTREMELY short on food, like dying of hunger, I would rest up to full or near-full health whenever you are more than a little damaged.
* Going down to the next floor is the biggest "decision" you can make, it always increases the difficulty. The stairs are how the game is paced. So don't rush down to the next floor unless you are absolutely convinced that you're overlevelled. (And even then imo it's worth exploring to find loot.)
* I don't know if Rogue does this, but all the roguelikes I've played do this: if you stay on the same floor too long (to grind), the game will start throwing super hard monsters at you (these are called "OOD" monsters = Out-of-Depth monsters). This is the same concept as the pirates who follow you through sectors in FTL. This works together with the stairs=difficulty thing to always keep you between a rock and a hard place.
* The other 492 people probably already told you but I'm sure the ring you had on was a ring of invisibility.
* Diagonal movement is important!
* Don't forget when shit hits the fan that you can take as long as you want for every move. I am sure the designer explained this in the interview, this is the chess thing. In a good Roguelike you should always be able to feel like "you know what, I could have X instead of Y on that one turn and then I probably would have been ok." You have a lot of options. Not a ton in Rogue obviously but still, you can do a lot more always than just stand in one tile and hit, so if you can keep your head straight you can get out of a lot of messed up situations.
* If you get used to it, when you're on lower floors you could just hit S between every move inside a room. You can probably learn to do it really fast. otoh then you'll need twice as much food per floor. I dunno. Risk reward.
* Remember you can run away from things. Being smart is how you win Roguelikes (from what I can tell watching other people win anyway), not by just tanking all the time.
Anyway, super looking forward to this. I am sorry you are going to probably try reading all these damn comments and I am adding yet another one to the pile. :D
drwhat's comments