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Not every roguelike needs to justify its loop, but the ones that stick with me the longest often do, and I think Moonlighter 2 (alongside its predecessor) may have one of the best ones yet. Poor Will and his friends haven't just had to flee the town they called home in the first game, but have to pay rent in their new refuge. In the world of Moonlighter, your reason to complete multiple runs is simply because it's your job to do so, and you better be ready for the rise and grind of working hard.
Though for Will that involves swinging swords, spears, and bigger swords to smash in the heads of aggressive fantasy creatures while hoovering up loot (should've been called Henry instead of Will), there's still something wonderfully relatable about the whole situation. At the end of the day, we all have to pay rent. Moonlighter 2 understands that economies are a vital part of any game's design where you buy and sell your way to improvement, and solidifies that concept as a core part of the roguelike.
Job well done
After all, who among us hasn't shuffled bleary eyed into the break room to be offered three different types of coffee, with the chance that one of them will buff the quality of our work throughout the day (or, if you're looking for a challenge run, to avoid the caffeine fix altogether)? In Moonlighter 2, delving through dungeons to grab stuff to sell isn't all you do – you also have to play through the preparation part of the adventure and, when you get back to your shop, put in the work to sell it.
On the Radar with Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault: Delving beyond the early access launch of this roguelike RPG with exclusive developer access.
Which means a core part of Moonlighter 2's foundational roguelike loop is, um, actually not playing the roguelike portion? Funding your journeys, and making the most out of the loot you've 'legally acquired' isn't something to gloss over, but a key mode shift, and Moonlighter 2 is all the better for not minimizing that (though, I think it could go even further – that landlady could do with being a bit meaner, something I never thought I'd willingly type).
Moonlighter 2 isn't the only game to simulate the loop of a working day, but it's the only one I can think of that makes it part of a fantasy action RPG roguelike. I dig that it uses this concept to ground the action of repetition in something familiar, while at the same time not being too overbearing with it. Action in Moonlighter 2 is larger than life, so I don't want to feel like I'm struggling to make rent that much, but the narrative pressure is a huge plus for the worldbuilding.
Again, I don't need a reason to play a roguelike that much, just like I don't need an excuse to jump back into arcadey classics. Why do I play Tetris over and over? Because that is the way of things, not because the L-block is always having to restock deliveries into the Tetris warehouse every day (actually, that's a good idea – I should write this down). But a solid roguelike narrative structure can be an excellent hook for guiding players through a specific narrative journey, which can make a roguelike take you from onboarding to a solid conclusion that lives within its endless nature. Clear Hades 2 a few times and finish out storylines and you could stop there, confident in a story well told – but now you've got the itch, returning is always an option.
Roguelikes often approach this in different ways, but when done right it can really elevate an experience, offering a persistent sense of progression on top of the itch simply to replay. The original Hades, for example, simply has Zagreus returned to his underworld home each time he dies, with mythical pals to chat with before he tries to escape to the surface once again. Rogue Legacy, on the other hand, has a very simple generational structure that means narrative can still be kept minimal, choosing the children of your recently perished hero who each have different traits, from color blindness to simple baldness – impacting play. Moonlighter 2's job-based hook may be simple, but it's a great way to keep me coming back. But I should be getting overtime, is all I'm saying.
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