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WHEN Apple launched the iPod Shuffle, people complained that its shuffling function didn鈥檛 work as advertised 鈥� songs by the same artist seemed to be clustering, so one David Bowie track, say, would swiftly be followed by another.

In fact, this kind of clustering is exactly what we would expect. A random algorithm makes no effort to 鈥渞emember鈥� what has come before, so it makes for an unsatisfying listening experience. In the end, Apple tweaked its software to avoid repetition. 鈥淲e鈥檙e making it less random to make it feel more random,鈥� said the CEO at the time, Steve Jobs.

I was reminded of this playing Rad, a game set in a 1980s-tinged future following not one, but two apocalypses. As you explore a nuclear wasteland and vanquish enemies, your character randomly mutates to gain new abilities, such as an arm that shoots fire or a snake head that spits poison.

Rad is a roguelike, a genre named after the 1980 game Rogue, which sees players delve into a dungeon full of monsters and magic items (itself inspired by the classic Dungeons & Dragons). Rogue uses text characters to represent everything in the world, for example, the @ symbol is the player. Meanwhile, the dungeon is generated by an algorithm each time you start up, giving it the potential for huge variety.

I like to think of roguelikes as storytelling machines 鈥� ideally, your experience will be completely different from someone else鈥檚, making it fun to swap anecdotes with friends. That said, like the altered version of the iPod Shuffle, roguelikes aren鈥檛 truly random 鈥� if they were, you鈥檇 end up with a game that was impossible to complete. In other words, a dash of order is key to making randomness enjoyable.

鈥淩oguelikes are not truly random 鈥� if they were, the game would be impossible to complete鈥�

Unfortunately, Rad hasn鈥檛 quite got the balance right. Surprise and discovery are a huge part of the roguelike genre, but with Rad, I found myself acquiring the same mutations again and again. Each time I died and started a new game, I had less of an urge to continue playing, as it felt like I wasn鈥檛 seeing anything novel, which doesn鈥檛 make for a great story.

Other roguelikes are well worth checking out, however. Spelunky, the king of modern roguelikes, is a near-perfect balance of order and chaos. The levels are never the same, but everything within the game is utterly predictable, allowing you to set up chains of actions such as throwing a bomb to blast a stone into the air, triggering a trap to kill a snake. You can鈥檛 help but laugh as you play.

For my taste, though, Spelunky is still a bit unforgiving as you start from scratch every time. I prefer Rogue Legacy, which sees you play as a member of a long-running dynasty, each with their own quirks such as short-sightedness or vertigo. When you die, you get to keep certain items and upgrades from the previous run, allowing you to progress further into the game鈥檚 randomly generated castle. This persistence isn鈥檛 completely true to the roots of the roguelike genre, but it strikes the right balance for me.

Finally, some roguelikes abandon the dungeon trapping, but retain the randomness to generate unique experiences. If you are a Star Trek fan, check out FTL: Faster Than Light, which has you command a spacecraft and crew. Hopping between star systems, you can live out your Captain Picard fantasies, managing power levels, or depressurising the ship to put out fires. Just don鈥檛 jettison the crew.