His games are often tightly-focused explorations of a single mechanical aspect of the roguelike genre, set on unusually small grids.

[4] Wired Magazine called Brough's games "corrupted" and "brilliant",[5] while The Guardian wrote that his work is "strange" and "elegant".

[6] Michael Brough graduated from The University of Auckland with a MS Degree in Mathematics under the supervision of Bakhadyr Khoussainov.

[7] Brough also identifies another design problem in roguelikes which he likens to Zugzwang in Chess, when the game forces you to move into a bad situation.

To try to innovate on this Zugzwang problem, 868-HACK lets the player use ranged attacks, as well as consume resources to use a ".WAIT" ability if they have acquired it.