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Comment by OscarCunningham | Hacker News Reader

I've been playing this daily for a while. The issue I've found with it is that your health recharges every 100 steps. This creates a divergence between the fun way to play and the way most likely to win. The optimal strategy is to spend a long time button mashing between enemies, and to run back and forth for ages when facing a powerful enemy. I think it would be better if your health didn't recharge (with the enemies rebalanced to accommodate this). This would force the player to actually make smart decisions.

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Isn't this a fairly central mechanic in many of the traditional roguelikes though? I know rogue and nethack both have this and it means that finding a safe place to rest for a while is an important part of your strategy. In nethack at least, there are more, faster enemies and you also have hunger to contend with so trying to rest to recharge your HP isn't an easy or boring way to play.

Sure, but in this version there's no hunger, and you can usually face the monsters one at a time.

> Isn't this a fairly central mechanic in many of the traditional roguelikes though?

It's half of the central mechanic. The other half is hunger—if you starve you die, so you need to keep moving to find food. That forces you to balance between moving too fast (and running out of health) versus moving too slow (and running out of food). If you take away half of that equation, the whole mechanic breaks.

Not true .. if you keep walking aimlessly, your health replenishes. I found that I could run in circles enough to replenish my health and kill all the monsters that way

In which game? If you’re taking about this game, then yes, that’s the problem.

Oh, sorry. I think I misunderstood the discussion.

I find self-imposed rules make things like this more fun. Sure, you could run around and get your health back. Or you could tell yourself "that's not fun" and just...don't do it.

If the mechanics are tuned to assume you'll regain health this way, self-imposed rules add a pointless challenge. You're just "gaming" the game in a different way that defeats the purpose.

Speed (low moves #) to win is an important bragging factor in some roguelike communities. Can be part of the score.

Or try adding a time->danger game mechanic like Spelunky.

They could also add a rest button? At least the 'proper' way wouldn't be too annoying then.

There is a rest button!

The proper way would be "hold '.' and pray nothing shows up to one shot you"

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