I do however, have an opinion on Permadeath, regardless of how informed it is in your game. Powder, another roguelike, does it very well, in that it allows you to load your last saved game, but at the cost of not getting onto the high scores table (I think, I can’t remember. It might just label you a cheater). I think that works well.

One of the awesome things about roguelikes is that the adventure is different every time, and dying forces you to start a new adventure. If you have a system that allows you to reload your game with no consequences, then you’ll probably end up playing the same adventure over and over until you win, which isn’t the point. However, some adventures are just too cool to give up entirely, so letting someone play it again with the caveat that they’re labelled a cheater, or can’t save a high score, kind of does the best of both. You get to continue when you want to, but have an impetus to keep trying new adventures.

I have no idea if this applies at all to Hamquest, but that’s my two cents.

Also, if somebody wants to mess with their saved games, I’d totally let them screw it up. Maybe (and I’m not a programmer so, again, I might not be making sense) you could generate and save one of those hash code things based on the contents of the tables, and just not allow loading if they don’t match? Seems like a good idea when I have no idea what’s going on.

Apparently if you play tic tac toe with images of Super Mario vs Anime Breasts accompanied by your favorite unlicensed music, it’s insanely entertaining.