So I have been poking at a roguelike called Brotato, and I will say it is a fun little game, but it has shown me an interesting flaw in its design that I never would have thought would be a flaw until I encountered it.

Namely, it's an arena roguelike, where you have to survive until the timer runs down. Most of those are actually wave based and the round will end when you kill the last enemy.

Not Brotato.

Brotato says you're in this arena for 60 seconds and by fucking god you will face down infinite enemies until that minute is up.

And that is actually our flaw.

It cuts the feeling of being overpowered, if you get an OP run, off at the knees.

In Binding of Isaac if I get an OP run I blaze through a floor that can take 20 minutes in 3 or 4.

In Slay the Spire if my deck is banging on all cylinders then I'm finished with the fight in 2 or 3 rounds instead of 7 or 8.

Going fast in a roguelike is the reward for lucking and building into an OP powerset.

But it doesn't matter in Brotato, and that is the problem. The literal only round you can speed up is the 20th, which is the last one.

This is brought to you by the fact that I just finished a run where I didn't realize I was on an OP as fuck build, until that 20th round where I one-shot the boss.

Yeah for all your (justifiable) complaints about Gungeon this is also something Gungeon nails with aplomb in most cases

if you get a really stupid run then you clear a room in like seconds

so the fact it does not really give you the feeling of being overpowered is.... roguh

Yeah, Gungeon's another great example of OP build = go very fast.

The other flaw Brotato has is the one Isaac seems to have injected the whole roguelike milieu with, where every time you win with a different character (and there's like 30) you unlock a new item or weapon, which means in super short order you're diluting the item pool riduclously.

Yeaaaah, which is definitely a thing gungeon also has problems with.

Also in a lot of cases you unlock something related to the gimmick of the character you just won as so like it's a perfect item for the run you just finished and probably don't want to do again because it's 25-30 minutes per run depending on how levels and shops treat you.

-that- part at least, gungeon doesn't have problems with

most of gungeon's unlocks are at least like, generally across-the-board useful.

Oh there's none that're useless so far, I'm about halfway through the unlock list.

But like... if I do a run where the gimmick is I can only use weapons with the primitive tag (tags in Brotato are basically synergies across the weapons you carry, you have up to 6 and you want tag overlap for passives) then having my reward for that being the best weapon in stat terms with the primitive tag is like.

Kind of a slap in the face?

It'll still be useful on other runs but it does feel a little too little too late.

Yeaaaaah.

Still it's fun and cheap so I do suggest it.