The past three years of my life have been insanely transformative.

I crossed over into my 30s and the three years since revealed just how much I’ve changed. I welcomed two kids to my family, started a third in kindergarten, bought a house, cried at the mortgage payments, and made a career change.

But you came to this article not to hear about my efforts as an adult, but to talk video games so let’s get to it.

I recently beat Death’s Door, an action-adventure indie game from Acid Nerve. The combat, specifically, was tough and forced you to learn by dying in order to succeed, a trait common in roguelikes.

Objectively, this game was great. The setting was atmospheric, the music was enchanting, and the plot was deep. Dungeon crawling was particularly fun as it relied heavily on traditional top-down The Legend of Zelda gameplay.

I should’ve enjoyed everything about this game and yet, it revealed an underlying gaming trait I hadn’t been able to define until now.

The constant revisiting of the same area and boss fights made me dislike the game to the point that I stopped having fun. This realization came late in the game about the third boss (Betty) so I, possible unwisely, pushed through to the end.

I want to be clear that I do not think Death’s Door is a bad game. Like I said, it was a great game, objectively. Personally, it was not for me and a large reason for that was the difficulty and constant repeating of area and fights.

This brings me back to the beginning of this banter. The past three years is the biggest reason why the higher difficulty and roguelike gameplay is not for me.

Since I’ve embraced the stresses of adulthood, I’ve wanted my games to be an escape. My life is filled with intense stressors that need my constant attention. This makes those few hours a night I can game precious and so I want to make the most of them.

I’m OK with some challenge but playing Death’s Door showed me that I would not do well with tougher soulslikes such as Elden Ring and Bloodborne.

This is particularly hard because this genre tends to pull in the best scores of this generation. It’s hard not to feel like you’re missing out.

Still, I want to enjoy my gaming time and spending most of it backtracking to face the same boss fight continuously is not my idea of fun. Sure, it was rewarding finally conquering Death’s Door but the journey did not justify the completion, at least where I’m at in life.

That’s been the most interesting revelation from all of this. This current season of my life is largely why I don’t enjoy that style of game. This leaves the door open for these types of games to be more appealing in a different time in my life.

For now, I will embrace this time in my life and allow video games to help me through it, not add to that stress.

Has there ever been a genre or game that just isn’t for you? How has your personal life affected those tastes? What did you think of Death’s Door? Let us know in the comments below or head over to our Discord channel to join the conversation.

Featured Image: Devolver Digital (via Big Boss Battle)

Boss Rush Podcast – A Podcast about Video Games

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