“Rogue-like” Games have existed for quite a while. Effectively, these titles have some form of permadeath or perhaps a heavy penalty when your character dies or loses, but the most important part is that many aspects of the game are randomized. The idea is, effectively, that every play through is going to be different. This is contrary to most titles, where each play through is the same.

However, while the idea dates back some ways, it’s lately started to gain popularity to use “randomizer” software to randomize those formerly static games, in order to effectively “create” new games from them. Typically, they have restrictions such that items are randomized such that you can get them all.

Over the past week or so I’ve been using my SD2SNES SNES Flash Cartridge to play a Randomized Link to the Past. It’s been an interesting experience; A number of times it seems like I got “stuck” only to find a required item secluded in some random treasure chest. Effectively, the randomizer will randomize the locations of items and will also randomize change a number of other aspects. It has certainly made the game interesting, to say the least.

One can find a list of Game Randomizers here. I personally have had a lot of fun previously with a tool called “ObHack” which was a Doom II Randomized WAD generator which was a modified version of Oblige. I also changed the Lua so that I could generate ridiculous quantities of monsters, because why not. Often in the “open” Levels, I would be immediately spotted by vast hordes of enemies, as well as bosses in the distance, so I would have to be dodging attacks while attempting to battle through the enemies nearby. When this was the first level- staying alive became a trick of it’s own.

Paired with User-generated content such as ROM hacks and custom level sets, Game Randomizers can make a playthrough of your favourite games less samey than usual.

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