FTL: Faster than Light, and Into the Breach.

Both are fantastic and made by subset games. FTL the better of the two imo, but that’s personal preference.

CDDA, Dwarf Fortress, and FTL all had a huge impact on the genera of Rougelike or free-form games, and all 3 have slight variations in the degrees of free-form game play which is very welcome.

Most rougelikes I enjoy have a set ending, that being death, or rarely triumph, and playing after either isn’t possible or just not the point for me.

As for the most memorable moment? To set the stage, I was 13, playing FTL blind. I had made a few runs before it, but I had just reached sector 8, the federation base and the last stand for the federation against the rebels.

I had fought the flagship once before, so I knew it was a big-fuckoff flagship with multiple weapon systems, but I had died really quick.

I had my faithful burst lasers, Artemis missiles, and beam, and was charged and ready to take this ship down. And it was a slog of a fight, I lost a lot of ship HP, and was in the red from the flagship missile launcher.

But it died, as my final shot landed, I rejoiced as its left wing broke apart, until I realized the noise and flash of FTL. It escaped. It had multiple stages.

I resolved to chase it down and desteoy the ship once and for all, victory or death! I died to the supercharged drones in about 2 mins flat.

It was then I learned, you don’t win FTL, you just do a little better every run. It still kills me on the harder starts with Captains Edition on.

When he was alive, TotalBiscut made an excellent video on it which does it far more justice than I can in text here.