I also don't think there's any powers the dev can bestow that feel quite as exhilarating as going exponential in a rogue like. There's also the chance for tension with a build that barely works that's hard to do via dev time.
It's to the point where even if you want replayability in an older title like Zelda: Ocarina of Time, you make it into a randomizer and randomize where you get items so sometimes you have to plan out and glitch around the game to obtain things.
Press A when I tell you to press A is going out of style. I think a lot of people really like to chart their own path through an obstacle and modern design gives devs the ability to make really sophisticated obstacles.
I've noticed that a lot of new smaller titles are rogue-likes/-lites. Why is that?
High return of playable content to Dev time
I also don't think there's any powers the dev can bestow that feel quite as exhilarating as going exponential in a rogue like. There's also the chance for tension with a build that barely works that's hard to do via dev time.
It's to the point where even if you want replayability in an older title like Zelda: Ocarina of Time, you make it into a randomizer and randomize where you get items so sometimes you have to plan out and glitch around the game to obtain things.
Press A when I tell you to press A is going out of style. I think a lot of people really like to chart their own path through an obstacle and modern design gives devs the ability to make really sophisticated obstacles.
They're more fun to make. Replaying the start of a roguelite a gazillion times is more pleasant than replaying the first level a gazillion times.
When you have a small dev team who also play tests, they're easy to debug too because all the content can be reached within 30 minutes to an hour.