I don’t really like roguelites. At least I always thought. The only one I really tried was the Binding of Isaac. I never progressed far, I never really got the hang of it and had a lot of unsuccessful runs. I finally gave up on it. So I went for years without trying new ones. Until Hades. I played it quite a lot and had a lot of successful runs, but never fully beat the game.
I returned to it with the recent launch of Hades II into Early Access and finished (except a few achievements) my save. The gameplay and difficulty is very well-balanced for my skill level and it managed to motivate for several weeks. Overall I put over 100h into it and the pull was so strong, I got Hades II right away. I know not very patient of me. Another 40h later and I finished the content that is available so far. I can see myself diving back in for the 1.0 release or a big update.
Afterwards I looked for other well-received roguelites and picked up Dead Cells and all the DLC in a sale. Similar story here. 80h in, I made it to 2 BC and unlocked a most weapons and quite a big chunk of the outfits. My playstyle is rather slow and deliberate, but I enjoy the challenge a lot. 2 BC is kicking my ass a bit and I’m thinking about moving on again.
I’m currently thinking about what comes next. With the steam sale going on, I am considering Hollow Knight, even though I have very little experience mit Metroidvanias. Also Sekiro is a possibility. I never played a From Software game or our souls-like before. (Mostly) fighting human-sized enemies and a focus on parrying suits my preferences well.
If anyone has recommendations for other roguelites or games to jump to, please leave a comment.
I’m glad I tried a genre I had written off before. It resulted in a lot of fun playing hours. I recommend stepping out of your gaming comfort zone once in a while.
Ok, sticking to roguelites, here’s some other options:
Deckbuilding Style: Slay the Spire, Monster Train, Griftlands, Balatro
Survivor/Bullet-Heaven Style: Vampire Survivors, Brotato, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor
Realtime Combat (I’d put Hades/Dead Cells here): Hand of Fate 1/2, Zero Sievert, Wall World, Rogue Legacy 1/2, Risk of Rain 1/2, Heroes of Hammerwatch
FPS: Gunfire Reborn, Roboquest
Turn-based/Pausable: FTL, The Last Spell, Loop Hero, Dungeons of Dredmor, Darkest Dungeon 1/2, Backpack Hero, Into the Breach, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2
Sure I missed some other good stuff.
Not a roguelite/roguelike but if you liked the combat style of Hades, check out Bastion.
Noita is probably my favorite game of all time, and it’s an excellent rougelike.
It’s an amazing rogue like for sure. It’s tough to get started but before I knew it I had over 150 hours into it, a golden crown on my head and a golden amulet on my character.
Noita is great and extremely unique, but I dislike that once you find a few orbs of true knowledge your runs always start with getting those first. I’m usually too lazy to get the one at
spoiler
the pyramid
before ending mines, unless I can get a good teleport spell.
I don’t bother with those unless I’m specifically going for all the orbs. Like, I’ll get the closest one, but I don’t bother with the one you mentioned or the one that makes the boss spawn. There’s usually enough health to be had once you know your formations, and if you want mondo amounts of health, there’s always the heart mage trick. I don’t go out of my way to dig gold in the mines for the same reason. You can win without doing it, and it just breaks up the flow too much imo.
Roboquest is one of the most enjoyable games I have played in years, And the devs seem to really care, every update has made the game significantly more enjoyable and they seem to be actually listening to player suggestions and feedback. Highly recommended if you want a fast paced FPS Roguelite.
If you’ve played Gunfire reborn and are expecting more of the same your going to be disappointed though.
Gunfire Reborn is Roguelite first, FPS second Roboquest is FPS first, Roguelite second.
Same concepta executed and implemented very differently.
That’s a pretty excellent list. I don’t think I’d call Xcom roguelike since its campaigns are incredibly long endeavours, but they are good games.
I went back and forth on it. The campaign is just the meta progression, the missions are the randomized element. Comparing to Darkest Dungeon for example, it’s really similar in structure.
That’s a good comparison. I suppose both games use permadeath, but don’t end your run with them, and they both do feature the cyclical nature and variety of possibilities that you might expect from a roguelike.
One bullet-heaven game I’ve been enjoying is 20 Minutes Till Dawn. Each run is 20 minutes, and you try to survive at harder and harder difficulties and with different weapons or characters. There’s also a free demo of it called 10 Minutes Till Dawn.
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It has good replayability. Yeah it’s having a surge of popularity but it’s a solid game that’s pretty unique with good longevity for those who enjoy it, I think it’s going to be popular for quite a qhile and probably start getting people making inspired games in the “deckbuilding with real cards” space.
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I’d liken it a lot more to FTL or STS than hades or dead cells. The skill is in the building and planning, not in the gameplay. Making do with the resources available to you, deciding on risking a suboptimal decision now that could payoff a lot more later, and thinking about how to make what you have into a successful run is the focal point here. Whereas with hades, sure perks are nice and add to your power as you play more, but the real skill in hades is your actual gameplay with the character. Both are perfectly valid, it just sounds like you’re a person much more focused on direct action skill.
This isn’t to say that the games I mentioned don’t have that aspect too, but I find in general it’s way easier to for example play a hand in slay the spire optimally or have a fight in FTL optimally than it is to clear a room in hades or a nasty section in dead cells optimally. The skill expression is just kind of focused on a different aspect of the game. Nothing wrong with you preferring one to the other, just wanted to mention that not everyone has the same tastes =D
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Y’all, Metroidvanias are not Rouguelikes. Randomly generated levels are an essential element for a game to be a Rouguelike, and fixed levels you can memorize are an equally essential feature of a Metroidvania.
So I feel like Spelunky needs to be mentioned here. I haven’t played it in ages and need to give it more of a chance, but a lot of people love that one.
both Hades and Dead Cells have randomly generated levels
I was thinking about how Hollow Knight got included in this post. It’s fantastic but not even a little bit Roguelike.
Not necessarily. But some random element that changes each playthrough is.
A lot of great options named in the thread but I’ll also add Slice and Dice and Crypt of the NecroDancer. Seconding FTL too, that was one of my top games of the 2010’s.
I also recommend Cobalt Core, which is not quite patient as a past November release. Great for FTL fans or anyone that likes tactical card battlers.
Slice & Dice is also one of, if not the best game that is playable on mobile, imo. Such an excellent one.
On Play store:
“Demo: Single IAP unlocks full game.”
Wow THAT’S rare to see on Android. I’m giving that a shot! 😁 Thanks!!!
Tbf, it’s possibly a little nicer on desktop, some of the buttons are a bit small on mobile though not bad. It’s nice having a couple things that I can play on phone though.
Hollow Knight is my favorite game of all time. It’s tough though, and you will feel lost and “where the fuck am I supposed to go?”.
I recommend that new players install the mod manager and enable “free” Gathering Swarm and Wayword Compass charms mods. Frees up 2 charm slots for two QoL charms – those two free slots will make the midgame a tad easier.
Edit: The mod manager you want is called “Lumafly” (formerly Scarab).
I hadn’t heard about the charm mods, thanks. Wayward Compass being permanently free by default should have been a thing. If it weren’t for the awful map system, I would have felt Hollow Knight was a flawless game.
I really liked enter the gungeon. It was one of the first roguelites I played. It’s fairly basic in terms of mechanics compared to some newer entries in the genre. But it’s just good arcadey fun. Bonus is that it runs on a lot of systems. It’s still one of my go to’s for plane trips or other offline scenarios
Here are my recommendations:
Bad North: Real time island defense with procedural islands and character permadeath.
Inscryption: Roguelite deck builder (but it’s more than that, hard to describe without spoilers. just play it)
I realize these might not be the exact type of roguelike you’re looking for, but I highly recommend them.
+1 for Inscryption. It’s easy to “break” but that’s part of the appeal.
I’ve never heard of Bad North. Will need to check it out!
Edit: £3.83 in the steam sale so picked it up
If a 2D tarkov-esque extraction shooter roguelite sounds interesting, check out Zero Sievert. I recommend playing on Hunter difficulty (lose all carried equipment & loot on death) for the real extraction shooter experience.
Other Note: You’re not going to like 5BC in Dead Cells because the game mechanic it introduces (Malaise) requires you to play fast or the game gets way harder.
I really like sievet a lot and would recommend it but it seems like or is getting worse with each iterarion.
I also cant stand early access bullshit so I recommend pirating a slghtly older version!
I love Rogue…likes, lites, “super gently inspired things” because it’s something I can do over and over which my brain loves doing.
My usual go to is Wazhack. Simple, quick to get back into a game when you die (very important to me)
Recently I was playing the Blue Prince demo and can’t wait to for that to fully release, hoping soon!
You got some big ones. Just know what sorts of games you like to play and look for well reviewed roguelikes in those genres.
I think the problem you may have had before is that you mistook roguelike for its own pure genre, when in the modern sense it’s actually a game format and platform for gameplay, and the gameplay can be anything, from turn based to action, 2d to 3d. Traditional roguelikes like nethack are a genre, but roguelites/roguelikes nowadays can play like anything.
Personally in the FPS roguelike department I’ve been really enjoying Roboquest.
Spelunky2 is worth checking out. Spent a lot of time on this one. Random procedurally generated levels. Maybe you’ll get a lucky run…
I would highly recommend Rogue Legacy 2 over Hollow Knight. Hollow Knight is more of just a metroidvania, it’s great, but didnt satisfy that rogue like itch for me.
Yeah, I saw a couple of people mention Hollow Knight and was confused, it’s not a rougelite/like game at all, just straight-up Metroidvania.
Rouge Legacy 1 & 2 are both great rougelite games.
Two very charming (and not too expensive) roguelite games I haven’t seen in the comments yet are Blazing Beaks and Dicey Dungeons… I played them on the Switch, but I’m sure they can also be purchased through Steam etc.
In Blazing Beaks, you play different birds with different characteristics and shoot your way through various levels while collecting useful items and annoying debuffs/handicaps like for example, “you cannot shoot while you run” or “every coin you collect deals 1 damage” These debuffing items are the core mechanic - you can collect and exchange them for some really nice stuff that helps you in the long run. Lovely pixel art and really great as a 2 player local coop!
Dicey Dungeons is a little hidden gem where you play as a little dice character and have to fight turn-based encounters in order to escape the dungeon of Fortuna. The mechanics are quite simple: Roll some dice and use them to deal out damage, shield yourself, poison your enemy etc. For example, you might start with a weapon that says “deal X damage points”, so if you roll a 4 and insert it into the weapon slot, the enemy takes 4 damage points. There are a handful of different characters that all work differently (my personal favourite is the roboter where you have to gamble if you want to roll another dice to use in attacks, because once you roll too high, you lose the dice you already rolled for this round). Also, each character has a handful of different modes/rule sets so it doesn’t get repetitive. Bonus points for a pretty art style, charming enemies and some catchy tunes!
Btw, Hollow Knight is not a roguelite but a metroidvania since the levels, items and encounters are not randomized and unique in every play through, but it is absolutely worth playing!
I went on a similar journey but instead of being pulled back in by hades, for me it was risk of rain 2. Now I’ve played risk of rain returns, hollow knight, and I’m just starting to get better at noita. Dead cells and hades have been on my radar for years, just haven’t had time to pull the trigger on them yet
I’ve been playing a ROM hack of Pokemon Emerald called Pokemon Emerald Rogue, and it’s been a blast. Every run is a new opportunity to use Pokemon you’d normally never use, and every fainted Pokemon hurts as once their health is depleted, they’re gone for good (mostly). Items and Pokemon are reset every time you lose, but you also get money to buy items to bring into new runs and also the opportunity to catch a new “starter” Pokemon. It entirely changes the way you play the game and there’s a ton of choices on how to progress. A new version is currently in the works which’ll make it even better. The trainers are also no pushovers and have well-built competitve teams unlike the main series, so it’s not a total snoozefest. Highly recommend.
I don’t know rogue-lites too well, but I know Hollow Knight quite well, and I know Sekiro very, very well. Hollow Knight is the best 2D game I’ve ever played, and I think it’s worth at least checking out. The music, the art, the atmosphere, everything is really well done. For less than $10 it’s worth trying for 2 hours and if you don’t like it you can always refund it.
As for Sekiro, I think it’s got the best gameplay of any game ever. That being said, it has a very steep learning curve. Eventually the game will click, but until then it’ll be incredibly frustrating and very difficult. Once you get past that though it’ll feel amazing to play. Every one of my friends gave up on it before it clicked for them so there is definitely some risk but I truly believe if you push through until it clicks you’ll find it incredibly rewarding and satisfying to play.
