Luck vs skill: how the best roguelikes make randomness feel fair

♠Randomness is a tool

Every game at our table is random in some way: card draws, dice rolls, bouncing orbs, reel spins. The difference between a great roguelike and a frustrating one is not how random it is, but how much you can do about it.

♥Show the next move

Games like Shogun Showdown, Monster Train 2 and Cobalt Core show you what enemies will do before they do it. That turns random situations into puzzles: the randomness sets the question, and you find the answer.

♣Give the player levers

Removal, rerolls, upgrades and route choices let you steer luck. Luck be a Landlord is the clearest example: every spin is random, but removal and reroll tokens let you shape the machine until it behaves.

♦Make bad luck useful

Dicey Dungeons is brilliant at this: equipment that wants low numbers, splits dice or combines them means a bad roll can still be a good turn.

♠Our luck meter

Every review on this site has a luck-vs-skill meter. It is an editorial estimate of how much the outcome of a typical run depends on randomness. It is not a score: a high-luck game can be brilliant, as long as luck is designed well.