“Before Spelunky and The Binding of Isaac, roguelikes were strictly for hardcore gamers, says Mewgenics developer.”

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Mewgenics may have overtaken Hades 2 as the most-played roguelike on Steam, but co-creator Edmund McMillen reflects on how the genre was once seen as niche, appealing only to “the nerdiest of nerds” before he helped elevate its status.

In a conversation, McMillen, known for creating The Binding of Isaac in 2011, credits another iconic roguelike developer for sparking his interest in the genre: “I’m pretty sure Derek [Yu], before he made Spelunky, was writing a lot about traditional roguelikes.” While he was somewhat aware of a few text-based or ASCII-art roguelikes, it was Yu’s recommendation of the 1997 title Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup that truly captivated him.

“I really loved it, I really loved the genre,” he shares, acknowledging that the abstract nature of many early roguelikes deterred players. “Some of them didn’t have any visuals at all, and only the nerdiest of nerds would entertain that stuff.”

He believes Spelunky was pivotal in reshaping the roguelike’s image, merging the format of Stone Soup with platforming elements reminiscent of Spelunker and Mario. “It worked so well. To me, it felt like this was the new arcade game, the new Pac-Man, the new Donkey Kong. Suddenly, scores mattered again. Lives mattered again. Everything mattered. And it was so cool that you could have an endlessly replayable game like that that felt so dynamic and neat.”

After Yu demonstrated the concept’s potential, McMillen felt it was just the beginning, anticipating that “everybody in the world was just going to go and grab onto another genre and do it.” For his part, he embraced the Zelda-inspired dungeon crawler with Isaac, which quickly became a major indie success in the early 2010s, alongside Spelunky’s console debut, solidifying the action roguelike genre.

Tyler Glaiel, McMillen’s collaborator on Mewgenics, noted that the genre has “exploded over the last 10-15 years,” evolving to the point where roguelikes are no longer a strict genre. “It doesn’t feel like a genre to me; it feels like a structure—it’s not that rigid a thing. Genres aren’t really that rigid anymore, but it does feel like you can put any genre you want on top of the roguelike structure and have something interesting. They just don’t get boring.”

Mewgenics could very well earn McMillen a second spot on our list of the best roguelikes.