Lets talk roguelikes!
Roguelikes have a special place in my heart. When you know that your character is mortal, the stakes feel so much more real, and your progress feel so much more earned. You can’t second-guess the level design, because random, and sometimes things are simply not unfair, like when you get transformed into a cute mushroom, while your otherwise generic foe get transformed into a god. I consider unfairness, uncertaincy and chaos to be core gameplay components.
Here’s some roguelikes I liked, in no particular order:
Inscryption
Sort of like Slay the Spire with retro aestetics combined with the gritty feel of the SAW franchise. The most atmospheric and foreboding deckbuilder I've ever played. It is sort of a meta-game where you play a retro computer game in which you play a tabletop roleplaying game with a deranged dungeonmaster.
Noita
Looks like a rather generic pixelart side-view dungeoncrawl, but beneath the humble surface lurks Finnish folklore, a revolutionary physics engine and an insanely versatile magic system, likely the best in any game. The game is vast, both in sense of game world but also the numbers of monsters, spells, perks and secrets. I consider this the best roguelike, full stop.
Don't Starve
Craft to survive in an unforgiving wilderness, battling wildlife, hunger cold and insanity. Having to constantly collect resources makes this game a bit on the grindy side, but the hand-drawn artwork and a rich world to explore and unlock makes this stay fresh.
Jupiter Hell
This, the successor to DRL (Doom Roguelike), is the only classic roguelike I could ever get into. The top-notch visuals makes me literally forget that I'm playing a grid-based turn-based rogue-clone. Still, the game is rather lacking in variation, and there's no lore or story choices. While I think this is by design, the DOOM roots and whatnot, I'm missing the sense of exploration and wonder found in other roguelikes. But even with that, the game is cool and ever so dark, and there's quite a lot of depth despite the simple controls.
FTL
Simplistic and neat pixelart space exploration game. The meat of the game is space combat in real time with pause, between which you plan your route on a node-based overworld and make various choices. The game, while cozy, is quite intense. You're trying to escape a vastly superior fleet while fighting off incoming attacks and trying to not run out of fuel while hopefully improving your ship to survive as the stakes rises. Every choice you make feels like a life or death decision. The fights offers a lot of different tactics. There's various ships to unlock by completing various missions. The one downside is that you have seen all the different encounters way before you have everything unlocked, but the mod FTL Multiverse adds a lot of new content.
Into the Breach
Simple tactical turnbased on 8x8 fields, by the folks behind FTL. The main gimmick is that you can see how the enemies are going to attack in their turn, and try to counter it. This works surprisingly well and offers a lot of depth.
Depth of Extinction
Underwater turnbased tactical. The game feels like watching a cheap action movie from the eighties. Sometimes the missions can feel a bit samey, and the underwater setting could be more in forefront but this doesn't stop the game from being quite a lot of fun. I'm hardly an expert here, but I've heard people who prides themselves of their expertice at turn-based tactical gaming giving this one a lot of praise.
Retromancer
Arena-shooter with a very stylish retro aestetics which doesn't confuse you in the fast-paced chaos. This, combined with a RPG fantasy theme really make this stand out from the other twin-stick offerings. This is a game I consider a spiritual successor to the original twin stick shooter, Robotron 2084. Of course, you need to play the Hunter, the other characters doesn't have the Robotron-trademark mashine gun fire. There's a dash function which is quite handy when you're about to be cornered. There is not really any character building, although by scoring enough points you can unlock various pickups. I guess it is designed for local multiplayer (there's four characters to choose from) but I haven't tried this. Plays excellent with controller.
The Wrath's Den
This is basically Dungeonkeeper, but simplified into a turnbased pixelart game with keyboard controls. You use space to switch between minions, arrow keys to move them, X to do various actions. Besides the random room choices, everything follow simple strict mechanics, which sometimes requires a bit of observation to grasp. The one major downside is that you cannot save your game. Much suck! But other than that, this humble little game is quite easy to fall in love with.
Gotta shout out my favorite Roguelike, The Binding of Isaac. With all the DLCs it has an absolutely absurd amount of content, the gameplay loop is satisfying and runs are a decent length (30-45 mins depending on your route). And being a twin-stick shooter, there's lots of opportunity to get better with skill, which lessens the reliance on good RNG to be successful
Couldn't agree more - TBoI has been by my side, in various forms/devices, for at least the last 8/9 years. Seeing it gradually devlope into the beast it is today is a surprisingly wholesome feeling. It was relatively small when it first came out, but I remember being so surprised at the sheer variety each run could provide - OG Brimstone ftw!
During the pandemic, I sank countless hours on it alongside Northerlion and his Let's Play's/runs on YouTube - something about his commentary just connected so well with me!
Binding has been my number 1 for almost a decade now. One of the few games I’ve purchased over and over. It’s also one of only a few games I was really trying to 100%. I am probably 85-90% completed, but that last 15% is tough.
I remember getting it in a humble bundle and thinking “what a stupid looking game.”
I'm on my way to a second dead god save now and I can tell you, it doesn't get easier lol. The Binding of Isaac has a few characters that are just brutally difficult no matter how good you get at the game. I love it though.
The modding community for it is also fantastic. Haven't seen modders get so invested in a game outside of Bethesda titles.
Love, love, love roguelites.
My favs are probably Have a Nice Death, Hades, and Risk of Rain 2. I enjoy the sheer content in Dead Cells too. Ember Knights is quickly rising up those ranks as well.
RoR2 coop with my buddy is one of the best gaming experiences I have had in recent memory. I enjoy the first game but the move to 3D made the game significantly better in my opinion.
One classic Roguelike I haven't seen but played a lot of - Dungeons of Dredmore. Alas, it hasn't aged that well; if you have a 4k screen the UI scales poorly. But it was a lot of fun, quirky enemies and graphics, and many, MANY dungeon crawling builds to experiment with.
Of course, Nethack is the classic. One of the games I am most proud to say I have beaten.
In the optionally Roguelite camp is the good 'ol warcrime simulator, Rimworld - crash land on a planet, make a space colony, and everyone dies! Enslave enemies, steal their organs, and get them addicted to narcotics! Maybe occasionally build a ship and escape the planet!
Dungeons of Dredmore was a great true roguelike.
You beat nethack? That is legendary. I have ascended, but I cheated - I savescummed. I don't think I could beat it otherwise.
Yep, one non-scum ascension as a Valkyrie (admittedly the easiest class with which to do so). I spent far too many hours back in college doing that instead of homework and studying, though...
I absolutely love Dungeons of Dredmore, and still play it regularly whenever I get the itch for a classic roguelike. It's fun to gradually learn what the different skill progressions are and how you can combine them to go really, truly Haywire!
Also love me some good old fashioned Heroic Vandalism!
Man, I played so much Dungeons of Dredmor, love that game. The weekly build challenges on /r/Dredmor were a lot of fun.
Can we talk metaprogression for a moment?
Sometimes I’m into it. It’s the drip feed that keeps me coming back, run after run. It’s fun to “harvest” whatever resource it is as you go through the game, knowing that you’ll get to spend it later to make yourself more powerful or expand the game world or item availability or whatnot.
Sometimes, I’m over it. It feels like an artificial limitation designed to waste my time. Just let me have max stats to start! Why do I have to go through the trouble of accumulating or unlocking so many things?! It feels like the game is designed to be an arbitrary grind for X hours before it actually even really starts.
I haven’t figured out why I feel differently about the idea depending on the game. Sometimes metaprogression is what keeps me going and sometimes it causes me to bounce off the game almost immediately.
I guess what I’m looking for in bringing this up is: what are your best and worst examples of games that utilize metaprogression? And, more specifically, why do you feel that they’re good/bad?
You raise a very interesting question.
I think part of it is how necessary the resource feels, and how slow the progression is. When I think of the games with systems like that that I like, they could all technically be beaten on your very first run - it just gets a little easier as you keep going.
‘Sidegrades’ or new items like weapons that don’t necessarily make you stronger but shake up the game are also a great way to do meta-progression that doesn’t feel like an artificial gate.
Basically, it stops being fun when it starts to feel like a chore you’re doing just to get to the actual game.
Man. Hades felt like the worst example of this to me. Locking the weapons is fine, I wish they were a little easier to farm but whatever, I never did max them all out.
However, the game didn’t even feel like it was worth playing until you fully unlock the mirror.
I have to disagree. I found the mirror upgrades were more nominal and did a really great job of subtley adding to the core skill-set of the gameplay I was building, but the real meta-progression that kept me going with the game was the character interactions and hub-world dialogue.
Really? That’s a wild take to me because I love Hades but I certainly haven’t come close to fully unlocking the mirror. I’ve escaped Hell just the once, have maybe half the upgrades, and the game totally feels worth playing to me. I love that no matter how far I get in a run, I can look forward to new conversations and other meta-progression when I end up back home.
This is a good callout and as a lover of roguelikes I'm in the same boat. I like metaprogression generally, but something that makes a great roguelike for me is having a game that you could--in theory--beat in a single run. Like, you probably won't, but you could, if you are both very skilled and very lucky. The meta is what helps you get closer to the goal over time, but shouldn't be the goal itself in the sense that it's absolutely required to get anywhere in the game.
Otherwise it's exactly what you said: artificial walls that force grinding the same not-very-many levels just to extend the game's playable time, without actually adding anything to the experience. This is exactly why I fell off of Hades, even though I think it's a very well-made game. (For contrast, my wife loved it, put probably 1500 hours into it, and platted it, and she doesn't even like roguelikes, so YMMV.)
Somehow I knew Noita was going to be brought up once I read this sentence (which may or may not have reminded me the dangers of a certain purple liquid). For anyone who haven't played it, I definitely recommend giving it a shot!
As far as other games go, other roguelikes/lites I played include:
Oh man, that's so cool! I loved Necrodancer and played a bunch of it. I still put on the soundtrack on occasion. The singing shopkeeper is still one of my favorite things in any video game.
I think it's the closest we'll ever get to an official Zelda randomizer.
Nuclear Throne is definitely the one I've sunk the most time into. It's what got me into the genre. I remember playing it during the beta and seeing the big updates every Thursday, when they had placeholder programmer art for some perks or crowns. You never get too powerful defense wise as you said, which makes it so satisfying when you get an OP weapon or the gold (permanent) version of your favorite weapon.
Adding my vote for Darkest Dungeon and Darkest Dungeon II, roguelites that look a lot like party-based RPG and has a very novel Sanity/Insanity system that adds challenge and prevents runs from getting too steamrollery.
Co-sign fully Monster Train, Loop Hero, Inscryption (don't read spoilers or watch trailers), Hades, and Slay the Spire.
Do you like one more over the other? I have about 150 hours in DD1 but 2 just doesn't do it for me for some reason. I mean it looks beautiful but the gameplay loop is just off for me. Runs too short to be a campaign but too long to not matter if you lose. Then the cart driving annoys me, too passive and time consuming. The combat... Haven't decided yet.
I know plenty people like it so that's fine. I can respect they didn't turn it into just a pretty DD1 though, but it's a bit too evolved for my taste now.
Upon reflection, I think I'm in the same boat. DD1 is what I fell in love with and my hypeness caused me to play and enjoy DD2. DD2 is a fun sequel but yes it doesn't have perfect balance like DD1 and the cart driving is suspenseful at first but tedious and a bit annoying (rng) later. I still sunk dozens of hours.
Maybe it's best to say play them in order? :)
I'd been eying DD2, but still haven't even scratched much of the surface for DD1 (well, I did but got myself in a bad way after leveling up too few characters too quickly). I'll discard any purchasing ideas for 2 at least until I've thoroughly played through 1; thanks for the input!
To add some stuff not mentioned-
More traditional:
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup- What got me into the genre. Soooo much content and has only been getting better year over year.
Caves of Qud- Probably the pinnacle of the genre in my eyes. So much great stuff going on. Actually has interesting combat which is unusual for these style games.
Just the "die and start over" style:
One step from eden- Megaman battle network style game that is just insanely re-playable.
SNXRX- Snake + battlechess. Really straightforward and simple, runs on a potato, great time killer.
Peglin- Peggle + roguelike concepts. Another simple timekiller.
One Step From Eden may be my favorite game of all time, I am not very good at it, but damn I can play that game for hours. Super excited for the new game just need to find some friends to play with, hopefully they are about as good as I am lol
Consider this a second for the curse of Peggle. One run, you'll be one shoting bosses with a mega crit build - the next time you'll have a no crit build that just launches giant boulders that clear the screen.
Love SNKRX, a surprising amount of depth for how simple it is, and the soundtrack is killer
I have tried so many times to get into CoQ, but I have yet to figure out what I'm doing lol.
Cogmind is very similar, but you're a robot trying to get from the trash heap at the bottom of a factory to the surface and freedom.
I tried cogmind and it never quite clicked.
Have you just followed the starting quests from joppa? It's got a main questline which can really help someone learning.
When it first came out was there a quest, or didn't it just drop you right into the world with no direction?
I'll try again since there's a main quest lol.
It will just drop you in the world still but if you chat with everyone in the village you should pick up at least two. Gives you some direction
I've found the roleplaying difficulty (non-permadeath) to be really helpful in figuring out how to get out of Joppa and not get stoned to death by baboons lately!
Quite frankly I don't understand the point of Caves of Qud, nothing inherently wrong with it, but the devs still haven't implemented an ending to the game. I feel like there's no end goal objective whatsoever in the game since I know the only way to end it is by dying, the game feels incomplete. At least with a game like CDDA there's crafting, building and survival mechanics, so there's something to keep going besides better gear.
Even getting halfway through the main quest is a pretty difficulty accomplishment depending on how skilled you are with these games and how familiar you are with the map.
That said there's plenty of end game style content to explore and complete. I'll agree an ending would be nice, (the traditional orb run and what not), but just getting insane builds off the ground is actually fun in qud, to the point that it's neat to see just how insane your character gets.
Monster Train is worth a mention. Deck builder like STS, but lends itself to frequent OP runs which are fun.
I loveddd StS but for some reason I really couldn't get into Monster train as much (I only have about 60 hours in it, compared to my 800 in StS), and I'm not quite sure why it's not clicking for me!
Same here, with similar hours. IIRC you had to pick two classes out of 4 with Monster train. So that means that you have 50% chance that you have the class with the little monsters you have to sacrifice (it has been years since I last played it), and that just made the game stale very quickly for me. With StP you have 4 classes, and they are all completely different.
yeah, honestly i think having just 1 class go through a run in monster train would make the game feel a bit more streamlined. Maybe I'll find more as I play though, the only synergy i found was big monsters from the red class and then heal them up with the green class, and that feels kinda stale at some point.
I also really enjoyed Monster Train! Pretty enjoyable game, especially trying to get broken combos.
Lots of some of my all-time favorites being shared here. Surprised not to see Enter the Gungeon, which besides having some of the tightest game-play for a 2d shooter I've played, is also one of the brightest love-letters to video games I've ever gotten to experience.
Similarly, on the note of Don't Starve, Don't Starve Together, the multiplayer version, is incredible fun and inevitably ends in some mistake being made. Parallel to DST, but not quite a roguelike really, although spiritually similar, is The Long Dark. I understand the developers goals, but good god I'd love to see a multiplayer version of that game.
To add slightly to the discussion of roguelike/lites generally, I think I prefer meta-progression generally in that it keeps me better engaged while developing core-skill in the base gameplay. While there was probably a point where I could have beaten The Binding of Isaac without any upgrades (definitely no longer the case), I never would have gotten there without the grip of unlocking items and secrets scratching the dopamine itch in my brain.
Enter the Gungeon is phenomenal and I wish I had beaten it, but for some reason I can only get 10-15hrs and the skill to make it through a couple bosses before I get zapped on it and uninstall. It plays so smooth and I really can’t explain why I don’t hang with it. I’ve put thousands of hours into The Binding of Isaac and Gungeon really scratches a similar itch.
Speaking of which, Isaac did such a good job of incentivizing chasing unlocks. Characters feel different a fun, the more you unlock the more the runs become unhinged, and Greed runs are 👌
One small roguelike I would add is Loop Hero, a game that takes the gameplay loop and puts it into a literal loop. I would describe the genre overall as a tile-based deckbuilding roguelike autobattler, if you can imagine such a thing. The gameplay mechanics are really innovative and fun, and the art and story are pretty great too!
For anyone (at least in the USA) interested in Loop Hero, it looks like it will be given away next week (August 3rd - 10th) from Epic Games.
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/
I see mostly roguelites being mentioned here, which I do love as well, but for roguelikes that stick closer to the original formula, here are some that I have enjoyed:
Bonus Roguelites not mentioned in the thread: Rogue Legacy and Rogue Legacy 2.
Surprised I haven't seen anyone mention Returnal so far. It's a masterpiece and one of the best PS5 titles to date!
As much as I enjoyed the moment to moment gameplay of Returnal, I really found it to be shallow in terms of the rooms it used to build each area and as well as the overall meta-progression.
I love roguelikes! Junethack was fun; looking forward to TNNT to flail around and never ascend for yet another year ;)
To add to the list of recommended roguelikes, I'd like to pitch in:
Shattered Pixel Dungeon. It's a mobile game (well, originally anyway -- it's on Steam/GOG/itch.io now), but it has such a great amount of content -- shorter than your typical roguelike, but definitely not coffee-break. It follows in the spirit of traditional roguelikes: turn-based, tile-based, unidentified scrolls and potions, 25 floors grouped into dungeon sections, plus you even delve into the dungeon to grab the Amulet of Yendor!
It started as a fork of Pixel Dungeon, which I also recommend! Open-sourcing PD was a godsend, and resulted in the proliferation of all these variants. Shattered is my favorite because of the sheer amount of content it has added (artifacts, new classes, improved graphics and music) and its dedication to keeping a well-balanced metagame. The additions are so huge and well-polished; Evan has truly made his own game out of it.
Thank you for the Shattered Pixel Dungeon recommendation. I hadn't heard of it, so I downloaded it while watching some TV and it's been great so far. I like the mechanical simplicity (just click the tiles) paired with the complex interactions, items, etc. I'm looking forward to sinking more time into this!!
Tildes here introduced me to Shattered Pixel Dungeon. Super fun (though I think The Duelist still needs a little tweaking), makes me wish it kept going.
I've always been a fan of A Dark Room. The app version's story is a wee bit more overtly depressing.
I wish I could forget playing A Dark Room to be able to do it again from the start.
I'm a lover of roguelikes and roguelites! To be super pedantic, if i remember correctly, roguelikes have more meta progression, and roguelites don't, although everyone kinda uses them interchangeably at this point. (Check @Tigerbot 's comment for the correct definitions!)
Inscription is a nice one, but I'm surprised that you're mentioning it with Slay the Spire but you don't have StS on your list! My favorite and most played game of all time is Spire, and I think we have a couple of more fans in Tildes too. StS is closer to a roguelite, with the exception of the first couple of levels where you unlock some extra cards and relics. Since I've beaten it at this point at A20H for all characters, I've been just making silly runs in Silent and Defect depending on how I'm feeling.
Also, if you've never played Hades, it's probably one of the best action 3rd person roguelikes since Binding of Isaac probably, (unless I'm forgetting something)
You've got roguelikes and roguelites backwards. Roguelikes are literally "like rogue", that is a randomized turn based dungeon crawler with no progression. Roguelites are games that take portions of that concept and usually add on meta progression.
Ah yes, that's what I get for being pedantic, haha. At this point it's just me noticing that people use them interchangeably when technically they're not. Thank you for the correction though!
If you've not tried Sundered, I highly recommend it. The hand-drawn art style is awesome (think old Disney animation) and the creepy Lovecraftian motif is excellent. It's somewhat short but each playthrough can be different as you can access mutually exclusive skills, which increases playability.
The boss mechanic is pretty cool, too, as the bosses are so much larger than you; you need to quickly adapt to the new proportions. I really felt like I was straddling that line between winning and losing throughout the game.
The skill tree is satisfying and a nice reward after having inevitably perished. I feel it adds bonuses to pace the game well.
I wish they made another one of these. I think I've just talked myself into a replay!
I never got into the traditional turn-based grid dungeon dives, so I'll mostly mention roguelites that hasn't been mentioned yet in the other comments.
Platformers
Spelunky: This is one of the OG platforming roguelites. You've got the chain reactions that lead to stupid deaths, the random trusty rock lying on the ground that you will depend on for literally everything, and the perpetually angry shopkeepers who you'll start killing first in self-defense and because the shotgun they carry is just that good. No meta progression besides unlocking shortcuts.
Space Gladiators: It's a roguelite with Hollow Knight's gameplay made by the dev who would go on to create Brotato. 8 different characters with the same 5 difficulty ascensions. Some meta progression in that the characters level up to 5 times and items are unlocked via achievements.
20xx / 30xx: These two games are if Megaman X and Zero was a roguelite with 2P Co-op. The first game you can brute force by just stacking attack power, but the second game puts more polish into customization and power usage. You can mix-and-match your difficulty as well if you're feeling up to the challenge. Lots of meta progression: meta-currency is collected for permanent upgrades and to unlock new items.
First Person Shooter
Gunfire Reborn: A very polished 4P Co-op game that also has a Survivor-esque side mode. You've got 6 different characters in the base game and 4 DLC ones with different ways to build them during the run and different guns to synergize with. It also has a pretty unique aesthetic with animal people in fantasy Asia. A moderate amount of meta-progression to fill out the skill tree and unlock characters with meta-currency, but enough of it drops to be freely spent in the Reincarnation mode difficulty.
BPM: Bullets per Minute: An FPS where you shoot to the (half-)beat while playing as a Valkyrie defending Asgard. Lots of meta-progression: beating each difficulty with a character unlocks a starting ability with them, items need to be bought at the store for them to carry more stock, and the bank only accepts up to 10 coins for deposits each time it spawns.
Deck-builders
Vault of the Void: 4 different characters with 2 starting loadouts each. Light meta-progression in that beating runs with a character lets you pick a card to be given as an option to start with in future runs (only 1 card per run to take out of 10 unlockables; meta-currency for cosmetics and challenges). What makes this different from other Slay the Spire-inspired games?
Your deck must carry 20 cards (not counting curses), but you can freely swap out cards between encounters.
Each floors has a hex map that falls apart as you travel on it so you have to route properly to plan for the encounters and rewards you want.
You're encouraged to discard cards for energy and you can leave cards in your hand when ending the turn at the cost of reducing card draw.
Alina of the Arena: Imagine Slay the Spire combined with Into the Breach. It's a hex grid with the typical 3 energy per turn while doing your best to deal damage and avoid getting hit. Movement is costly though because you only get one free movement card per turn that exhausts if not used first. Slight meta-progression with a meta-store at the start of runs that you can purchase goods from with the results from your previous run.
Dicey Dungeons: A bit different than the norm. You place cards in your equipment to be triggered by the dice that's randomly rolled each turn so you have to plan for the different results, what your deck is building towards, and the size of each equipment. 6 characters with 6 levels for each, though I would definitely call the Witch and the Engineer the trickiest. No Meta-progression.
Mentioned elsewhere in the thread
Enter the Gungeon: It's just a fun twin-stick shooter with references everywhere in it's adorably gun-themed pixel aesthetic. 8 different characters (and the Cultist, the dedicated Player 2 character). I think it's actually easier on the twin-stick shooter side of things, it's mostly pattern recognition to learn what an enemy does with pretty low execution needed. Meta-progression is gathering meta-currency to unlock new items (and a meta-currency tax to play the boss rush).
One Step From Eden: It's inspired by Megaman Battle Network but with 4x4 grids for each side of the field instead and with roguelite deck-building. You have 16 different starting loadouts, 13 ascensions + the 1 hp challenge, and 3 different endings depending on whether you kill or spare the bosses. Getting lucky with the right card or artifact can definitely spiral the run out of control, but you can generally get by through raising Mana Regen and Max HP. There are accessibility options too to control the enemy speed and damage taken if needed. Light meta-progression: you can start runs with 2 random artifacts depending on your progress for the previous run.
Crypt of the Necrodancer: A traditional rougelike if all the turns take place in time with the beat instead. It's a super fun game with 11 base game characters and 7 DLC ones. Skippable meta-progression: you can unlock items and permanent upgrades by collecting meta-currency, but everything is already unlocked when choosing All Zones Run which is how the game is meant to be played.
Dead Cells: The modern hard but fair side-scrolling roguelite. RNG is for finding weapons and getting the right prefixes on them, but it's otherwise all skill. The recent updates have added accessibility stuff though like restarting the area upon death instead of perma-death and superpowers that are basically cheats, but they prevent moving on to the next boss cell. Moderate-High meta-progression: meta-currency for permanent upgrades and unlocking new items.
Slay the Spire: The deck-builder that basically kicked off a new genre. You've got 4 characters and 20 ascension difficulties to gradually up the challenge as you get used to things. Light meta-progression: each character has 5 levels to unlock new cards to use (a total of 15 I believe).
Monster Train: One of the deck-builders that catch up to Slay the Spire's reputation. When starting a run, you pick one primary and secondary clan out of the 5 (+1 with the DLC) classes to pair up with and a champion from that primary clan for a ton of variety. I would compare it to Magic where you summon monsters onto each floor of your train base to defend against the encroaching angels. Things can get busted if you know what you're doing and you can plan out the entire route of the game from the beginning. Light meta-progression: each clan has 9-10 levels to unlock new cards to use, and a new champion at level 5.
Nuclear Throne: Honestly I would call this more of an arcade game, but it does have more variety than the usual and it is that fun. Death comes very, very quickly for both the player and the enemy, but the endgame fun comes from seeing how far you can continuously loop the game. Just be sure to grab the Nuclear Throne Together mod for multiplayer and to remove the 30 FPS cap. Some meta-progression in bringing back a starting gun and unlocking crowns that modify the game.
Alina of the Arena was the surprise hit for me this year. I bought it as part of a Steam bundle with several other deckbuilding strategy games including Tainted Grail, which was the game I really bought the bundle for. I liked Tainted Grail but not enough to finish it, and Alina ended up being the one I played the most and liked the best. Just really tight mechanics and challenge ramp, with nice touches in the presentation--simple but creative pixel graphics, surprisingly good sound design for a game that's only 200MB. Huge amount of fun for the price and the install size.
Fans of dice-based roguelites like Dicey Dungeons should also check out Slice & Dice, a fantasy RPG where you have a party of different classes and roll dice to power up their spells. It's a simple but charming small indie game with a fun gameplay loop with tons of replayability and things to unlock.
I'd like to mention a couple of mods for StS: Downfall, which lets you play as a bunch of villainous characters (most of which are bosses) and even one new hero, and
In Spire TogetherTogether In Spire, something of a successor to Spire with Friends... Which adds multiplayer! These two work together, allowing (with a setting tweak or two) for such shenanigans as The Champ joining The Ironclad, The Silent being backed up by The Gremlin Gang, or The Guardian defecting with The Defect. Each of the added characters have cool new mechanics (though some are easier to grasp than others); I'm partial to The Guardian in particular (who can add a new type of card called "Gems" to his main cards to enhance their effects).That's a great game! I looks pretty boring, "oh, some dumb dice", but there's a huge variety and it's also funny. Not easy, very rewarding.
I'm going through my second love affair with Spelunky right now. The first was in 2014, I think, with Spelunky Classic. Now I've been playing HD for the last few months. I should check out those other platformer style ones you mentioned.
I'm a little disappointed I haven't seen Slice & Dice mentioned. It's a dice-rolling rougelike that's a ton of fun. Like Into The Breach, you know what moves the enemies will make. You also have an unlimited undo button, which really brings the game into the "find the perfect turn" territory. Which you have too, because this game is tough! (However it's very well balanced.) There are a ton of different enemies, heroes, and items.
You've convinced me to reinstall FTL and try out the Multiverse mod... and my goodness. The mod is a complete overhaul. It might as well be FTL 2. Here's some links about it:
As an aside, this isn't a traditional "rogue-like" but I've been having a lot of fun playing STALKER Anomaly (specifically GAMMA) in azazel mode where upon death you take over the body of another stalker in the zone and continue playing. This has lead to a lot of fun fights where I become the character who killed me or somesuch. Ironman mode also scratches this itch where your save is deleted on death if you're playing normally.
If you like monster tamers, try Azure Dreams. I prefer the GBC version over the PSX version because it has more monster and combat content vs the dating sim aspects of PSX. When you die you lose everything but your monsters and monster progression, so you'll never lose your monster friends, which is a plus for me, but it might be a drawback for the more hardcore nuzlocke-enjoyer type crowds. Of course you can always make your own personal rules!
The game has a really fun fusion system where once you reach about level 10, you can fuse any two monsters you have together which can merge their abilities, give monsters elements they wouldn't normally have, and even make brand new monsters. There's also town building and equipment upgrading! (though you'll always feel weak and in danger because you lose your levels often)
This is my favorite gameboy game of all time, give it a try!
Azure Dreams is one of my all-time favourites.
Fun fact, the Gameboy Color games with black cartridges (including Azure Dreams) also work on the original Gameboy and Gameboy Pocket (albeit without colour). I always enjoyed the original Gameboy the most.
Great list!
I'd like to point out that Noita is back getting content updates again after the team disbanded to do other work.
Arvii and Petri are back together and working on new content. No spoilers here but it's looking to be better and better as they add more to the beta branch.
There's not a better time to get into Noita (especially if you've never heard of it).
I just picked up Caves of Qud but haven't had enough time to really get into yet. I've also been meaning to give Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead a try. Right now my favorite is definitely Tales of Maj'Eyal.
ToME is probably my favorite roguelike of all time. I romanticize Crawl, but who am I kidding, I’m awful at it. ToME just feels way more naturally intuitive to me and you really get sucked into it.
My one gripe with the game is that the, arguably, most interesting class is damn near impossible to win with, Arcane Blade. I think this is one of the things that pushes newbies to the game away from it. No one wants to play barbarian first play-through and they see AB and think “hell yeah that sounds awesome” only to die off early mid game.
I love love love CDDA. The interface isn't super intuitive but it's very powerful once you get used to it (Vim text editor comes to mind). It's open source so it's possible to modify the game in almost any way you can imagine if that's your thing (magic, dinosaurs, backrooms, futuristic etc). If not, the core game is a ton of fun without any modding, and constantly has awesome new stuff added.
If you check it out I recommend looking up Vormithrax on YouTube. Their videos were a huge help when I was getting started.
I personally don't like roguelikes much, because I find the loss of progress and repetitiveness somewhat boring. That said I enjoy Hades a lot. The sheer variety of voice lines means that you literally are progressing the story every time, there's very few runs where you don't bump into something else. And you almost always get enough currency to metaprogress so it's not a loss. And the amount of variations each run is wild and you can make many things work. I really like that.
Into the Breach is another roguelike I like, but I do despite the roguelike mechanics. I personally find the small puzzles really interesting.
Into the Breach saddles that nice little boundary between a straight puzzle game and roguelike. The mechanics are consistent enough that it tickles that puzzle box part of my brain while the aesthetic and style tickle my love of big mechs and pixel art.
Hitman GO is another game which is also a satisfying puzzle box type game with a cool style and aesthetic which you might also like.
I’m enjoying Noita right now, probably 40ish hours in, still confused and killing my self with spells all the time.
I decided to avoid googling how to “Beat” the game, just enjoying the numerous ways the spells can be stacked onto different wands, it’s so unique. Love it.
My two favorite traditional rougelikes are Caves of Qud, which as been mentioned already, and UnReal World.
UnReal World is one of those games thats been in dev forever and is absolutely massive, Mandalore did a review a few years ago if you want an idea of what it's like. The version on the website is a bit behind in updates but is completely free, if you want the most current updates you can support the game on Steam. It's a very old-school style game, from it's gameplay to it's graphics and controls, but once you get passed that theres a game of incredible depth that can keep you occupied forever.
Unreal World is great! I come back to it every few months, survive for a days fishing, start building a trap fence and starve to death because I got it wrong but it's just really fun to do so!
Atomicrops is one of my favorites. It’s like the opposite of a relaxed farming game. It’s a shooter like Gungeon with exploration combined with hectic farming. While mechanically not deep gameplay wise as Gungeon, I think once you hit a certain stride with the game it starts to come together really well.
I'm actually running a podcast on roguelike games at the moment. Taking suggestions for an upcoming listener request episode soon as well.
Many of the games mentioned here we've covered as well.
Great lists so far, almost all are on my list (except Necrodancer, I get really frustrated).
Wanted to shout out Tiny Rogues*. Bullet hell mechanics, unlockable classes, random weapons, damage types, traits, starting gear, etc. all that good stuff you expect. Been playing it on my steam deck and just unlocked most things in under 10 hours, waiting for the next big update coming soon. Worth the $6, but I got it on sale for around $4 so no complaints about value.
Deadlink just came out today. If you're into cyberpunk and/or Doom Eternal, you should probably check it out.
I've been obsessively playing I Am Overburdened for the past couple of weeks. It's barebones simple for a roguelike, with only a smidge of meta-progression as you collect any of the artifacts for the first time and kill different monster types enough times, and very short-- I can get through a good run in under fifteen minutes.
I'm also a fan of Runestone Keeper, though I'm not sure if it exactly counts as a roguelike. One with an odd, almost godlike exploration mechanic, I'd describe it, where it's more like clearing Minesweeper levels. Same very short, just-one-more-run type of game.
I have played a lot of Gnollhack recently, which is based on NetHack 3.6.2 but adds a GUI, animations, voice acting and quite a few customisations while managing to preserve the nostalgic "feel" of NetHack, more or less (on the appropriate "expert/classic" difficulty level). There's also an ASCII version but at that point you may as well be playing the OG. It has a very nice Android app which I would thoroughly recommend if you are looking for a mobile roguelike fix.
Red Rogue is the first roguelike game I played and--other than Noita--I haven't stumbled upon any other roguelike games that satisfy the itch for me. It's a 2D platformer/side-scroller/dungeon-crawler that looks pretty simple, but is filled with different monsters, weapons, armor, a good handful of magical enchantments and a few secrets here and there. Discovering new things is half the fun of playing it.
It was originally a flash game, but you can download it as a standalone executable file. It's possible to play on your phone, but playing with a keyboard works much better.
I love roguelikes! I especially like ones that allow you to be OP by the end of the run of you make the correct choices. That's always what I liked about RPGs and roguelikes allow you to do that without sinking dozens of hours into a run.
I don't know if Children of Morta has been mentioned but that one stands out for me because I like how the story was gradually told as you played. The main game mode is more aRPG with roguelikes elements but there is a roguelike run mode that was made available after release.
Enter the Gungeon is one that I've always wanted to like but I felt the runs were too long and the difficulty was a little too high. I don't mind hard games but I feel like some choices for Gungeon were made just to make it harder so increase the play time and not make it more fun. One thing I liked about Binding of Isaac is how there is so much post game content that you could choose how far you wanted to go and so had some control of the difficulty while still being able to get a sense of satisfaction even without unlocking everything.
It was already mentioned in a list by another commenter, but I wanted to also chime in that Gunfire Reborn is an amazing 4 player CO-OP FPS roguelite. My friends and I recently put almost 100 hours into it and we still have some things left unlocked ..
It's similar to Risk of Rain 2 where there's tons of items and thus different builds you can get, but I'd say the builds you can get in this game are possibly way better, more interesting and fun compared to Risk of Rain 2.
Absolutely worth playing.
Barony
It's a first person action rogue like with a lot of death. Playing with friends the game is amazing. solo it's a bit too hard until you get 60 hours of experience.
I played a fork of Angband called Angband Vanillin which was the base game with some qol features like auto explore and it was really great! It's amazing what a few modern conveniences can do for a game!
The creator seems to have deleted the github repo and reddit announcement and stuff though so I'm not too sure what happened there.
Most modern Roguelikes have an option for ASCII graphics e.g. TOME, Cogmind, Caves of Qud, Dwarf Fortress, Brogue, Infra Arcana, etc.
Sil-Q is a pretty good modern Angband fork!
I'm a Don't Starve and Don't Starve Together fan too. I enjoyed Desktop Dungeons when I played it though it has been ages, and Rogue Legacy was pretty fun. It is a refreshing genre to play inbetween adventure and other genres, because you learn the core skills and then everything changes around it.
Crypt of the Necrodancer is one of my go to “oh, I’ve got half an hour to kill, let me do a run” games. The mechanics are simple enough that I don’t feel like there’s One True Build, the names of all the monsters are silly puns, and it never feels stale. I don’t get sucked in for several hours the way I do with Hades or Don’t Starve.
Is dwarf fortress a roguelike? I view it as kind of having it's own thing going on. I wouldn't call RimWorld a roguelike either, necessarily - though I can definitely see some inspiration in both.
There's a separate roguelike mode (albeit currently disabled), into which you can import worlds from the main colony sim mode.
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Adventurer_mode
Oh shit, you're right - I totally forgot about that. What a crazy game.
It's only disabled in the official steam edition. The free ASCII version of DF still has adventure mode available. Adventure mode for the steam edition is forthcoming.
I’ve been deep into nethack these past few weeks, it’s still under active development.
Oh man, I played that for hours waiting for a standby flight on my netbook I'd installed Linux on over a decade ago. Reminded me of the original Rogue, loved the heck outta it, but of course once I was back at my normal computer, I completely forgot about it.