Megabonk was made by one person, sold a million copies in two weeks, and its own developer calls it "Vampire Survivors but 3D" - which raises an obvious question. Is that all it is? A clone with a dimension added? I spent a lot of time with it trying to answer that honestly, because "clone" is a word that gets thrown around carelessly, and how we answer it determines whether this game deserves the attention it's getting.
If you've ever played a video game, you've probably died. Or at least lost. And depending on the game, that death could have looked completely different. Today, let's break down a mechanic that, in the roguelike genre, isn't just a feature - it's the entire foundation of the experience: permadeath.
We hear the term all the time in video games, most often in phrases like "I got terrible RNG during this run" or "My speedrun was ruined by bad RNG." In everyday gaming slang, players use it to describe the overall outcome of a game's random systems and how "lucky" they got - whether they managed to loot a powerful weapon, land a critical hit at a crucial moment, or draft cards that synergize perfectly.