How do you judge a good roguelike? And how does Binding of Isaac stack up?

It’s been a long time since my last entry, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about games. It’s been a couple of years since my last entry, largely due to having a job, but also because I haven’t felt particularly inspired to put my thoughts into writing. However, I recently completed a master class with The Narrative Department, led by Susan O’Connor, which got me writing much more. Most recently, I’ve been working on a DnD one-shot that I’m probably putting way too much detail into, but it’s been a lot of fun creating characters, scenarios, and twists for the players' journey.

I’ve also been playing a lot of games, of course. Over the past few months, I’ve made a concerted effort to play through games I hadn’t tried before. I recently completed God of War Ragnarok (phenomenal), played through about half of Need for Speed Payback (hilariously corny but enjoyable), and finished Dead Space (maybe one of the best games I’ve ever played).

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had time for my old classics. I’ve played plenty of 2K basketball and recently got back into EA’s NHL franchise, which I loved as a kid but drifted away from in college. And, of course, I can never quit my all-time favorite game: Binding of Isaac.

Binding of Isaac was my introduction to both indie games and roguelikes. Since picking it up for free via PS+ around 2014, roguelikes have become my favorite genre, and I’ve played dozens over the years. Recently, out of curiosity, I decided to rank them all. But to do that, I first had to ask myself: what makes a roguelike good?

If you’ve read the word “roguelike” three times and still don’t know what I’m talking about (and haven’t already Googled it), a roguelike is a game where players have one life to progress through a series of procedurally generated levels. If they fail, they must start over from scratch at the beginning. The name comes from Rogue, a game released in 1980 that pioneered many of the genre's defining design choices, such as permadeath and procedural generation.

The original roguelike, Rogue. How far we've come eh?

Each attempt at beating a roguelike is called a run. As players progress, they collect rewards that make them stronger and more capable of handling the increasing challenges ahead. A variation of the genre, called roguelites, distinguishes itself by allowing players to earn upgrades that provide permanent buffs across future playthroughs. At this point, most roguelike games technically fall under that definition, but for the sake of this exercise I’m grouping them all under the roguelike umbrella.

Progress in roguelikes isn’t always linear. One run might provide the perfect combination of power-ups to help you defeat a previously insurmountable boss, while the next several could end in failure almost immediately. Some runs facilitate gathering resources to unlock buffs for future runs but players may forgo long-term progression in favor of an all-in push to defeat the final boss. When I think of roguelikes, I think of variety—the game provides a variety of options for the player, and the player can approach the game in a variety of ways.

So what makes a roguelike good? Here’s my grading rubric:

Failure is Inevitable

Roguelikes are punishing games designed for multiple failures before players achieve success. While this may be frustrating for some, those with the willpower to continue understand that failure makes progress feel exhilarating.

When I started playing Binding of Isaac, it took me several runs before I could even clear the first stage. I was ecstatic when I did—only to realize I had to do it all again, this time with tougher enemies and bosses whose patterns I'd yet to learn. This continued until I reached the final boss, Mom, who utterly destroyed me. I must have played Isaac 50 times before finally defeating Mom, and when I did, you can bet I was jumping off the couch, fist-pumping in celebration. There aren’t many things in this world that can evoke that reaction out of me, but overcoming the challenges thrown at you by a roguelike is one of them.

I got real used to seeing this screen in The Binding of Isaac.

The best roguelikes offer a high degree of variation between the types of enemies spawned and challenges thrown at the player. Players will likely be killed by the same boss multiple times before they develop a successful strategy to beat it.

If I can beat a roguelike after just a few attempts (or worse, on my first try), I’m going to dock points from it. To me, roguelikes should evoke the challenge of early video games, where there were no difficulty settings, and players had to perfect their skills to win. I want to feel my palms sweat as I face the boss that’s been giving me nightmares. I want to be on the edge of my seat in a last-hit scenario. I want to groan in aggravation before getting into pro-gamer stance for one more run.

Rewards Experimentation 

Most roguelikes are built around power-ups: as you explore and fight enemies, you gain items that make you stronger and better equipped to handle tougher challenges. These power-ups come in many different forms, including weapons and armor in action roguelikes, new cards in card battling roguelikes, stat boosters or attack modifiers in dungeon crawler roguelikes, and many more.

Acquiring power-ups is fun, but what's really fun is combining them and getting potent results. Maybe you pick up an item that increases your damage based on how many coins you have, then later find another that grants a coin for each enemy defeated. Or perhaps you have a card that doubles your block, so you pair it with one that deals damage equal to your total block, leading to devastating attacks.

One of the most satisfying aspects of roguelikes is becoming overpowered—reaching a point where you can obliterate enemies effortlessly. While not essential to making a roguelike good, it certainly is a big positive. Carefully selecting power-ups and watching them synergize into a dominant build validates the strategic choices a player made throughout their run.

Designers know players love being OP. Balatro makes your multipliers catch fire when you beat a round with a single hand.

Some of the best experimentation comes from uncertainty. Binding of Isaac, for example, features 436 unique items, many of which interact in unpredictable ways. While some synergies are obvious, others only emerge when stacking multiple effects, often with chaotic and hilarious results.

A well-designed roguelike makes you want to try different things every time you play it. Once you understand the game’s mechanics you can experience the joy that comes from discovering powerful item combinations and using them to plow through enemies.

Requires Variation in Playstyle

 

Roguelikes generally rely on procedural generation for each playthrough, which gives each run a sense of uniqueness. No two runs are ever the same, and while you may use similar strategies to approach the challenges you face, the best roguelike games force you to find a variety of different techniques to approach the same challenges.

This forced variation can be achieved in a variety of ways. Some of the best roguelikes I’ve played give you an early starting item that you may want to build around. Slay the Spire, for example, sometimes offers you a random relic when you start a run, and if that relic is conducive to, for example, a more defensive style of play, you may scrap your preconceived plan of an all-out offensive build in favor of a defensively minded one.

While Slay the Spire allows randomness to dictate pre-run bonuses, a lot of roguelike games give players more control over shaping their run. Dead Cells provides players with four groups of randomly generated items and abilities to choose from at the start of each run, allowing them to pick a weapon or ability that suits their preferred playstyle before delving into the dungeon. Skul offers even more control by letting players select up to two basic-level skulls (which determine weapons and abilities) and two relics (which determine stats and bonuses) from a pool containing all common-level skulls and relics before they begin their run. While the run still contains randomly generated pickups, having this much control over the start may encourage players to rely on similar strategies each time they play.

Dead Cells offers its players a choice of weapons and abilities to start a run with, but players may elect to discard them in favor of superior weapons they find during their run.

It should be noted that requiring variation is almost impossible without rewarding experimentation, and vice versa: without necessary variation, players will keep using the same strategies to win repeatedly. Without rewarding experimentation, throwing a ton of variety at players will feel like pointlessly bombarding them with unrelated random items.

The best roguelikes, in my opinion, offer players only a hint of an idea of what strategies they should work toward before the run starts, but once it does, players need to adapt on the fly to develop a strategy based on the resources they find.

Nail the Difficulty Curve

This might be one of the hardest things to perfect in all of game design, and roguelikes perhaps best exemplify the importance of it. We’ve all played games where the gameplay is mind-numbingly easy at the beginning but the difficulty level soars to an insane degree toward the end. Conversely, we’ve all played games that require white-knuckle effort in the early hours but become a breeze after reaching a power spike (a point where the character becomes significantly stronger due to stat boosts, abilities, equipment, etc.).

For most well-designed video games, the difficulty curve rises and falls over the course of the game. This is especially true in narrative-driven games where challenging gameplay may take a back seat to storytelling at times. For roguelikes, you want that curve to be a steady, steep diagonal line that increases gradually as the game progresses. Each new stage should be more difficult than the last, continuing until the player either beats the final boss or dies.

The best roguelikes consistently challenge players without allowing them to rest on their laurels. A key reason roguelikes are so addicting is the sense of satisfaction from every successful encounter and the sense of accomplishment each time a level is cleared. Roguelikes that treat the midgame as a farming period to prepare for the endgame can still be fun, but they don’t quite reach the pinnacle of roguelike design—the games that keep players on their toes throughout.

Stickiness

Finally, one of the hallmarks of a great roguelike is the “one more run” quality, which I’m calling stickiness (because a friend of mine called it stickiness, and I think it’s fitting). Because there is so much variation between each run, good roguelikes have a tendency to make players start a new run as soon as the last one ends. This feeling is especially prominent when you’ve been making it to a certain point before dying and are itching to finally get past it, or when you’ve unlocked a new item that you can’t wait to try out. When I was playing Skul, I’d often make it to the end of a level only to die to the final boss. As soon as my character respawned, I’d jump right into a new run, eager to capitalize on what I learned from my last failed attempt—hoping to exploit a weakness or try out a new strategy I thought would be more effective.

Still, this quality isn’t a given just because a game follows the roguelike formula. If a roguelike is too easy, players won’t get the dopamine hit from a satisfying victory. If it’s too hard, starting another run might feel like an exercise in futility. Sometimes, the issue isn’t difficulty, but time—if a single run takes too long to complete, players may hesitate to start another game knowing they won’t have time to finish it. Or maybe the game suffers from repetitive strategies, where players feel they’re using the same items and tactics over and over again, making each run feel stale rather than fresh.

The Slay the Spire menu screen. Note: I haven't even attempted a daily because I am so eager to jump back into standard mode.

It’s that mix of wanting to make progress, the sense that progress is imminently achievable, and it's going to be fun to make that progress that makes roguelikes so easy to play repeatedly. Couple that with the curiosity sparked by the randomness of each new run and you have the stickiness factor that a great roguelike needs.

Those are the 5 core elements that I am using to judge how good a roguelike is. However, there are a few other things I consider when judging the quality of a roguelike. I’ll call these bonus points.

Art Design: Roguelikes vary wildly in their visual presentation—some use pixel art, others lean into hyper-realism, while others adopt bright, cartoony aesthetics or dark, gritty tones. A distinctive art style helps a roguelike stand out. If a roguelike has unique or beautiful (or both!) art design that differentiates it from the pack, I am happy to give it some bonus points.

Those are the concepts I think are worth taking into consideration when judging a roguelike game, but how am I going to math this? As a non-math guy, I’m going to try to make it easy on myself.

Ability to tie in Narrative- Death is a common occurrence in video games, but usually player deaths are not part of the game’s story: when a player dies Mass Effect, the game reloads from a recent save state and pretends that Shepard didn’t just blown to smithereens by a Reaper grenade. When a player dies in a roguelike game, the game usually just takes them back the main menu and invites them to give it another go. But some roguelikes take the player’s failures and incorporate them into the story, resulting in some of the most innovative, immersive storytelling in video games.

Hades incorporates players' deaths into the game's narrative. Zagreus will be taunted by his father, Hades, for failing to escape the underworld and spawning right back where he started from.

A roguelike can be great without brilliant narrative design, but brilliant narrative design can elevate a roguelikes’ standing.

Unique Twist: Many roguelikes take an existing game concept and add roguelike mechanics to it—Belatro is roguelike video poker, Luck Be A Landlord is a roguelike slot machine, and Starbeard is a roguelike match-3. Successfully blending roguelike elements with another genre can result in a highly creative and engaging experience, earning these types of games an extra point in my rankings.

Those are the concepts that I think are worth considering when judging a roguelike, but how am I going to math this?

The 5 main grading categories—Necessitates Failure, Rewards Experimentation, Requires Variation in Playstyle, Nail the Difficulty Curve, and “One More Run” Quality—will all be judged on a scale of A+ through D, with A+ being with 10 points and each grade decreasing 1 point as it gets lower. Two of the bonus categories—art design and ability to tie in narrative—can earn you up to 3 points and a unique twist can earn you 1.

In addition to giving the game a grade, I’ll write a short justification for my grades where I can also share my thoughts on the game. And I’m going to start out with my aforementioned all-time favorite game, The Binding of Isaac.

Binding of Isaac

Necessitates Failure: A+ (10)

Isaac is a hard game for the uninitiated, especially in the early game. The controls are simple, but your character is quite limited—only able to shoot in the four cardinal directions—which can be frustrating as enemies don’t conveniently line up to be hit. Furthermore, there’s a huge variety of enemies with different behaviors that players must learn to handle efficiently.

You don't get this gud without taking your fair share of bites at the apple.

One key reason Isaac excels in this category is that, unlike many roguelites, there’s no statistical benefit to failing. You don’t collect resources to upgrade stats or abilities between runs—the only way to improve is to get better at the game through learning from your failures.

Rewards Experimentation: A+ (10)

With 436 unique items, most of which interact with each other, Binding of Isaac constantly encourages experimentation. Some items boost stats like damage or fire rate, while others fundamentally change how Isaac attacks or moves. The ability to mix and match these effects leads to surprising and often chaotic synergies.

For example, picking up Soy Milk (which drastically lowers damage but increases fire rate) and Ipecac (which makes tears explosive) results in a machine-gun-like explosion barrage. Mixing Brimstone (which turns tears into a continuous laser) and Tiny Planet (which makes tears orbit Isaac) creates a looping laser shield that can melt enemies instantly. Getting all four of these items will make the brimstone beam wrap around Isaac and it will stay active indefinitely as long as the fire key is held and also deal poison damage to enemies. And that’s just 4 out of 436 items.

This is not the combo I listed above, but as you can, the possibilities are endless (and awesome!).

This openness to experimentation makes Isaac one of the best roguelikes for discovering overpowered builds which in my opinion is an absolute win.

Requires Variation in Playstyle: A+ (10)

Unlike many roguelikes that allow you to pre-select classes, weapons, or abilities, Binding of Isaac primarily lets you choose a character—everything else is left to chance. This forces players to adapt their playstyle based on the random items and enemies encountered.

Nail the Difficulty Curve: A- (8)

For new players, the difficulty curve is excellent: very hard but progress is achievable. However, as players get more experienced, the early floors become trivial. While later levels and optional challenges like alternate routes help keep things fresh, the first few floors rarely pose a threat to veteran players.

Stickiness: A+ (10)

With minimal downtime between runs and the allure of new item combinations, Binding of Isaac is seriously addictive. With a dozen different final bosses, countless synergies, and delightful randomness promised with each run, the temptation to start a new game after every run is almost insurmountable.

Art Design: 3

I always preface an introduction to Binding of Isaac by warning people that this game is weird. The main character is a naked baby that shoots tears, and his enemies range from bugs to poop to demons. The aesthetic design for this game is unsettling for sure, but it’s also weirdly kind of… cute? The graphics and animation are quite clean and combine nostalgic 16 bit graphics with modern processing to create cleaner visuals. No other roguelike looks quite like it.

Narrative: 1

The game provides minimal story elements, relying on cryptic cutscenes and item descriptions to hint at deeper themes. The Isaac obsessed may be able to decipher some deeper meaning or connectivity between these cutscenes, but for most players the narrative touches will do little more than convey a vibe.

Unique Twist: 0

Isaac is a top-down dungeon crawler similar to 2D Zelda games. While I think it’s probably the best roguelike of this nature, it’s not the first and the concept isn’t that different from the original roguelike, Rogue.

Total: 52 (S-Tier)

With a total of 52 points, this puts Binding of Isaac in the S tier of my tier list. It’s one of the best roguelikes I’ve ever played, and I think hugely influential on the genre. It’s a great game for burgeoning roguelike players to start with as its simple mechanics and UI won’t overwhelm them and it will teach them the mentality one must have when approaching games in this genre. If they’re anything like me, they’ll be playing this game ten years later and having just as much fun as they did on day one.

As I mentioned, I’ve played a lot of roguelikes (31 as of writing this), and I’m excited to talk about all of them, so be on the lookout for more of these posts! And please feel free to let me know your thoughts on Binding of Isaac, roguelikes, my grading system, or give any suggestions for roguelikes I should try out.