It gave people who were intimidated by rogue-like mechanics the opportunity to pretend they were in on the fad. It accomplished this entirely by putting the word rogue in the title, because any actual similarities to rogue were stripped out.
Besides that, it's a fairly mediocre action platformer that actually gains some significant pacing issues due to the poor implementation of faux-rogue mechanics.
"allowed people intimidated by rogue likes to get in on the fad"? Jesus Chris, get off your gigantic high horse dude.
Maybe people just liked the game because they thought it was fun with no second intentions.