Why Roguelite and Not Roguelike?

My preference has always been for roguelites—games with meta-progression, where players can gradually grow stronger across runs. Pure roguelikes rely entirely on player skill, but roguelites introduce a layer of long-term progression, making each attempt feel like meaningful progress. This ties into game enjoyment, target audience, and how difficulty is structured.

For a long time, games trended toward being more accessible and streamlined - and too often just too easy. That shift went so far that it helped fuel the rise of games like Dark Souls, which pushed back with a more traditional approach to difficulty. Now, I feel we’ve hit another extreme—some games lean into "difficulty for difficulty's sake", catering to a niche audience but often alienating more players than necessary.

Mastery and accomplishment are major motivators—most people don't enjoy a game that’s too easy all the time. Roguelites handle this well by baking adaptive difficulty into their core design. Meta-power ensures that even if a player struggles early on, they can still progress over time. At the same time, well-designed roguelites make it possible to complete the game on a first run with just in-iteration tools, giving highly skilled players an extra layer of challenge.

In Echoes of Myth, I want to make first-run completion possible, but that’s for the truly exceptional players—speedrunners, challenge seekers, and high-level achievers. For most players, the goal is to complete a full run in 10–20 iterations, with enough meta-power available for those who want to grind and make things easier. Achievements will recognize low-iteration victories for those who want to push themselves.

The real challenge is balancing in-iteration power progression with meta-power growth. With the current alpha version of Act 1, I feel I have a solid foundation. I also want variability within a single run—finding the right divine echo and treasure combos should create temporary power spikes that let players dominate for a while, before the difficulty curve catches up and demands another boost.

One concern I’m still working through is avoiding early-game repetition. If every run starts too similarly, it can become stale, forcing players to go through the same motions before reaching the real action. I don’t have a perfect solution for this yet, but it’s on the list.

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