Things I Hate About Roguelikes (via)
This is a great four-part series about Roguelikes from the GOLDEN KRONE HOTEL website.
Part 1: Burden of Knowledge
Part 2: Identification
Part 3: Terrible Controls
Part 4: Bog Standard Dungeons
Roguelikes are one of my guilty pleasures, although I don't play a lot of different ones and I can safely say I've never heard of most of the games mentioned in this series (my first experience with Rogue was on a UNIX machine when I started at Lucasfilm).
One of my many side projects is working on a roguelike. I've never made one before, so it's a fun exercise. Technically it's not a roguelike (no random dungeons, no permadeath (not like it's traditionally used)), but it feels like one. I guess they call these roguelites. Or maybe it's the other way around?
It's been fun to try and deconstruct the genera and see what is important and what is just legacy cruft. But much like deconstructing adventure games to "just the fun parts", it's easy to boil them down to something that isn't an adventure game anymore. Not that that's bad, but don't call them adventure game (or roguelikes) anymore. Maybe you've stumbled onto something new.