I'm tired of everything getting turned into a roguelite, but I'll make an exception for pinball

Games Roguelike I'm tired of everything getting turned into a roguelite, but I'll make an exception for pinball Features By Wes Fenlon published 15 May 2026 My weakness has been laser targeted. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: So Romantic) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 2 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Game developers are burning through genres, high concepts, and even annoying machines that scammed you on the boardwalk as a child to fuel quick-hit Balatro-likes or Vampire Survivors-likes at the same rate the smartphone industry's sucking down rare earth minerals. I get why: compulsive play is core to the design, they can be made relatively fast and relatively cheap, and a day or two on the Steam charts (or a viral Twitch stream or YouTube video) can drive 100,000 sales at a time when just surviving to make another game feels like a real win.But good lord are there a lot of them. 257 new roguelites have dropped on Steam in the last 30 days, according to SteamDB, and even discounting the shovelware there are too many to keep track of. There are the deckbuilders, the action games, the… Minesweeper-likes? That tag doesn't even cover games like Far Far West that prioritize weightier descriptions—FPS, online co-op, loot—perhaps because that combination of words carries an innate implication with it. Of course a co-op horde shooter with randomized loot is a roguelite. Duh.Perhaps this bite-sized style of repetitive play (with soothing metaprogression!) is what our fractured psyches are best suited to at the moment. They're the game equivalent of doomscrolling without looking up for four straight hours, most of that time wasted on glazed-over unblinking eyes except for the one really funny video that will stick in the mind (the game equivalent of a truly sick Balatro hand). At least we're playing "gambling" games instead of pouring the last dregs of our inflation-ravaged checking accounts into prediction markets, right?Latest Video [Conteúdo truncado para controle de custo.]