Roguelikes aren’t designed to be played until they are beaten they are designed to be played until you die. Playing it is the main thing that matters. In what other genre of game can you choose to play a flying wizard octopus wielding eight rings of power, commanding an army of undead warriors, who worships a snail god as old as the universe itself, which in turn gives you the power to turn back time? The best roguelikes not only let you play any kind of character you can possibly imagine, they let you use a variety of tactics to achieve your ends that other types of games simply can’t match… and the truth of the matter is that when gameplay is satisfying and infinitely variable, beating a game ceases to be the reward mechanism. Roguelikes routinely put players in situations that would be downright impossible in other games. A question that is often asked is why anyone would want to play a game with graphics so crude that they can literally be represented by just a bunch of punctuation marks and gameplay so cruel that you might have to start over from scratch after pouring hours into a game.
