The Night of Baba Yaga

by Akira Otani

translated by Sam Bett

There is something about the structure of Roguelike and Roguelite video games that I find immensely appealing. Rogue itself, too, though I prefer NetHack but that name failed to beget a genre, so to the Rogue go the spoils.

If you’re unfamiliar, the genre is defined by procedural generation—I surprised myself by not defining what Roguelike/Roguelite games are while writing about them years ago. Each time you play the same overarching goal exists, but the obstacles to reach the goal are shuffled, as are the possibilities of assistance for your character. What actually happens–the items you get, the monsters you face, the layout of the maps–are all randomly generated. This can lead to impossibly difficult or delightfully easy paths through the game. Typically, if your character dies, they’re gone, and you start over from the beginning with a brand new person that will make their way differently through whatever mishmash of generated content the game spits out.

The standard distinction between Roguelike and Roguelite is that a Roguelite retains some sort of incremental in-game character growth (perhaps if you make it to a certain point in the game, a shortcut unlocks so you can “start” your run without completing the simple opening areas, or you unlock higher chances of getting more powerful items earlier). Roguelikes are, like Rogue, games wherein each time you start it is functionally like the first time you ever played: no retained items; no character skill-growth; no item-pool unlocks; no bonus monies. Attempt one hundred is the same as attempt one.

Roguelikes (and to a lesser extent, Roguelites) do a good job avoiding the pitfall of making in-game character growth meaningless—when you have excellent items that work together well, your little guy feels very strong. If this was the case in a non-Rogue-inspired game, developers tend to plan around synergized item & skill combos, lest they inadvertently create some sort of optimal template (often called a “build”) that every player who checks out some internet websites might default to using. If one itemization and character growth schema reigns supreme—and 90 percent of players end up speccing (which I’m pretty sure is slang that derives from “specializing,” as in putting your limited resource of skillpoints into a particular talent tree; my guess is it came from some MUD or EverQuest, though I wonder how one might find the genesis for this term) into that particular playstyle—why even spend the development time to add in the other options?

Rogues avoid this by having your build largely dictated by randomness. Because the goal of Roguelikes is to make the best choices you can with the skills and items you end up finding, their structure is fundamentally about repeatability. All in-game character growth is temporary, so you are allowed to be wildly broken in ways that would feel limiting if your goal is optimized in-game strength for a longer, complete game experience. Roguelikes are more than just each individual attempt; the true game is the cumulative stacking of attempt and failure, of discovery and mistake, of victory and defeat. Non-Rogue games do not employ a full power curve: if you stumble upon a skill combination that moots most of the other input options by being overly effective, that’s bad.

So success and failure are not goals but simply end products of discovery. It doesn’t get boring to be halfway through the game and be able to clear the dungeon/climb Ygdrissal the Worldtree/retrieve the amulet/topple almost any obstacle because of a weird combination of items, skills, and their oblique application to game mechanics, nor does it become frustrating if you run headlong into a fight that is practically unwinnable. At least, not for me. On a technical gameplay level, these outcomes are fun because they mean I don’t have to worry about feeling strong in the story not translating to feeling strong in the game. Once you’re strong in a Roguelike, you’re strong. No new monster is going to come accidentally wipe the floor with you–if you can beat Medusa, then no new color of skeleton with max damage resistance or bandit with a +5 Holy Avenger will suddenly appear to pose some sort of artificial challenge. It makes no sense to have enemies like grubby bandits now have magical swords and armor. If the bandits had gear of that quality, they likely would become nation-state actors, or at least wealthy enough to not be simple highwaymen preying on solo travelers. How many max-level adventurers do you think a threat level like that would need to waylay to continue their magical-item upkeep?

If my avatar represents peak human performance and I’m walking around in the woods, I don’t think a level-scaled rat should be able to damage me. Additionally, any new area probably shouldn’t be populated with, like, red rats that are just stronger; the townsfolk borne into the red-rat zone, by and large, either wouldn’t be able to defend themselves against ultra-strong miscellany, or would be able to travel to the “weaker” townships and simply wreck house. Dirt farmers on the same footing as local heroes? Categorically unreasonable.

I like Rogue’s short scaling and restart-focused gameplay loop as answer to the power-scaling issue in video games—if you’re strong, you’re strong, and it doesn’t obviate challenges because the game is all about becoming strong, not simply appearing strong and making the enemies gently rise to meet you.

Roguelites–where some of your progression remains so that new play sessions have some level of power-creep baked in–sometimes have silly storyhooks to explain away the looping, cyclical nature of their gameplay. There is friction with the good parts of the genre–the more you play a Roguelite, the stronger your character becomes: the difficulty is therefore pinned to encompass your intended growth. If you are “allowed” to get better items the 30th time you play, then it is probably assumed that you’ll need better items near the end of the game. I personally don’t find Roguelites to be Rogue-anything, but that’s just me. People want to see an ROI on their gameplay time. Yuck.

Writing, however, has an even tougher time handling over-skilled or overpowered characters–in books or almost any piece of fiction that borrows from bildungsroman or quest tropes, it is not really feasible to try and jump the power curve by having Perrin face down a Myrddraal early for a chance to get an overpowered weapon drop or bonus EXP. You’ve gotta write Allanon or Gandalf out of the plot for a time so their magicks don’t just solve every problem (there’s that “one overpowered spec build” issue, again), or have a weak character hold their own against what should be an overwhelming onslaught of the strongest villain because the villain is soliloquizing or holding back or bound by honor or other some other such nonsense. 

I do not like when a reader can see a problem in a story that you know could easily be solved by the “conveniently” missing character. 

All of this is relevant to The Night of Baba Yaga because the book handles an intensely powerful character in an appealing way, a way that really reminds me of how Roguelikes handle power scaling. The main character Shindo simply whoops people’s asses. This is not a book that is within my typical oeuvre–it’s quite heavy on the graphic depictions of physical violence, which is not really my thing:

Suddenly, she realized she was taking deep, heavy breaths. Unable to hide her excitement.

This was fun. Preparing for a journey that could end with everybody dead.

She made two fists. Barehanded. That’s how she wanted it. If Masa was as strong as everybody said, she wanted to make contact. She wanted to feel her fists break through his flesh and bones. To feel the terror of a dagger cutting through her skin.

Ah, she was no good…

It kind of has a Roguelike hook: Shindo is a brawler–incredibly tough, intentionally violent–and she’s allowed to be. Nowhere is she held back by contrivance, or weakened to increase tension. To have an unleashed protagonist that doesn’t have to metaphorically spend time battling palette swapped fauna just to keep up the illusion of growth is a good feeling.

Beyond the basic tenet of understanding how relative power-scaling should work, Baba Yaga has an intensely cool fakeout that, unlike some books that rely on their twist to actually function, is interesting without being required. The twist surprised me, and was cool, but enjoyment of the book isn’t predicated on a reader having the rug pulled out from under them. It also avoids the translation/localization thoughts that tend to crop up for me (this is not exclusively the domain of books translated from Japanese, because I am dying to know if The Divorce has a reference to “Tropicana” in the original Swedish.) Baba Yaga just assumes a level of (likely anime-gleaned) understanding of Japanese language and culture that I appreciate:

A white shirt poked his head into the kitchen.

“Yanagi-aniki, Shindo…san, uh, the boss would like to see you.”

Shindo hadn’t spoken face to face with Naiki since day one. She looked over at Yanagi. 

“Shindo-san, huh? Sounds like you’ve upped your status, too, Yoriko.”

This also extends to snack foods:

There was mugicha in the fridge, so she poured herself a cup.

gotta get my mugicha

Did I originally order mugicha from the onigiri kiosk because it looked like Mugiwara? Yup. Is this the type of baseline understanding—of honorifics and barley tea—that Baba Yaga expects from you? Perhaps. Has mugicha become one of my favorite treats? Also yup.

The back cover references Baba Yaga’s sexual politics, and one of the blurbs calls it transgressive, and perhaps that is true but I don’t know how to speak to it. Nothing feels intensely out of step beyond the actual violence portrayed and the explicit scenes of violence that are horrifying in their specifics.

When it comes time to choosing a book, sometimes you want to completely start from scratch—no carry-over of thoughts, concepts, items, or experience points. A fresh take, a new run at reading. The Night of Baba Yaga clears your progression, starts you from nothing, and gets you all the way to the end. A complete story that could have gone in any direction—lucky for you it turned out the way it did.