Yeah, I'm with cikomyr in thinking this game is a bit too random to be a really great roguelike. In a well-designed roguelike, you should have a pretty good idea of what got you killed in retrospect and how to prevent it again in the future. Got killed by an invisible monster in Dungeon Crawl? You learn to get some way to see invisibles earlier next time around. Have your progress blocked a tough monster out-of-depth the first time around? Evade it and take one of the 3 stairs down, then come back when you're stronger. In The Pit, there's only 1 way up and 1 way down for each floor. If you go down a floor and there's a fight you can't win waiting for you in the first room... you're just boned, through no fault of your own. And you know you can't exactly prepare for that the next time around, or put off the fight because this game drives you so much harder than other roguelikes with hunger because you generally can't eat your kills.

On the bright side, this game really plays up the survival elements because everything you use can be broken or run out, so it's a fun exercise in resource management. You'll often want to ask yourself whether or not a fight is worth spending one of your grenades, or whether you should go through a mystery trap because it's the only entrance into a room that might be full of loot. Health in particular is always a source of drama for me because there are so many gambles the game wants you to make with it. Is it okay to wait until you level up and replenish all your health for free or will you be killed beforehand? Do you want to rest for health and effectively spend food for health? Should you use a rare weapon/ammo to kill a tough enemy or just take the hits?

Since this is starting to turn into a review, let me wrap it up like one...

The Pit's hampered as a roguelike by how harshly it can randomly punish you. You'll find yourself dying through no fault of your own more often in this game than in other roguelikes. But is the game fun? Yeah, it's really fun despite its problems because it makes up for them with its own innovations that *makes the game fresh*. Considering how few roguelikes there are and how homogeneous the genre generally is, I'd say The Pit is very much worth checking out regardless of its flaws.