Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate

Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is the fifth entry in the classic Japanese roguelike series from Spike Chunsoft, and on PlayStation Vita it's one of the few games of its kind that made it to the West at all. The wanderer Shiren and his talking weasel companion set out for the Tower of Fortune, where fate itself can supposedly be rewritten, specifically to save a girl whose death has been foretold. The path there runs through dozens of randomly generated dungeons governed by strict, unforgiving rules.

Every step you take is also a turn for the enemies, so the game plays more like a chess problem than an action game. Hunger drains with every move, found items are unidentified, and a herb can just as easily heal you as blind you, while death means losing levels and most of your gear and starting over from scratch. That's exactly where the tension comes from. Every item thrown, every dash up the stairs, every decision on whether to risk another floor carries real weight. You can ease the grind by storing supplies in a warehouse and forging blades, but the game always remains fundamentally a fight over resources. There are also companions to hire along the way, shops inside the dungeons, and a number of special floors with their own rules, so even after dozens of runs you'll still stumble onto something you haven't seen before.

The Vita suits a game like this perfectly, since descending a few floors takes only a few minutes and the game can be put down at any time. Visually it's a clean, drawn style with clearly readable icons and hand-painted character portraits, and the music is calm and folk-flavored, providing a pleasant contrast to the constant threat of failure. Critics praised the depth of the rules and the fairness of the randomness, but noted a steep difficulty curve for newcomers unfamiliar with the genre. Today this Shiren is regarded as one of the best entries into the mystery dungeon genre and a quiet gem of the Vita library.