[WORLD_ENDS_SOON]

Something I see frequently missing from the discussion on roguelikes is the long history of Japanese console roguelikes like the Mystery Dungeon series dating back to 1993. These games have not been very successful outside of Japan but represent some of the earliest successful commercial games inspired by Rogue. They tend to be much closer to traditional "Berlin interpretation" roguelikes (turn-based, grid-based, etc.) than the recent "roguelite" indie games.

[quickthrowman]

I played Shiren the Wanderer a couple years back, it’s a wonderful roguelike with decent depth and a lack of cheap deaths. The warehousing items for future runs mechanic was neat, it was fun to set yourself to win up down the line by leaving something powerful behind to use again.

Games like DC:SS have more depth and choices, but are also harder to just pick up and play. I played crawl at a fairly high level (took 3rd in a tournament and had an 8 or 9 streak) but games like Shiren are more ‘fun’ to me now.