Run, Die, Repeat: How Roguelike Games Helped Us Get Through 2020
Video games can offer immense, immersive open worlds — but for some players, the small-scale grinding repetition of the games known as "roguelikes" is a better way to pass the time.
Run. Die. Repeat.
This is how I have gotten through 2020. Not the only way — not my only comfort, of course — but a big one. The pandemic, lockdowns, the election, the world. Things have been rough. Bleak on the good days, horrifying on the bad ones. I don't sleep a lot anymore. My focus is shattered into a hundred small pieces that I painstakingly assemble into days. I have lost things that I will never get back. We all have, whether we want to cop to it or not. But we find ways to stitch the days into weeks and the weeks into a year that has felt like ten of them or a minute or forever.
Video games have always gotten me through bad times. I've used them like medicine, like magic to stave off
