Roguelikes. They’re everywhere. Even most games that never had a rogue element now does – look at God of War: Ragnarok’s DLC, Valhalla. Today, we’re exploring a new top 10 list of some of the best roguelikes I’ve played over the years – some of them, putting in 100s of hours in over multiple platforms.
What’s a Roguelike Game?
You might already know, but for the uninitiated, a roguelike game is one that usually includes procedurally generated levels (think pre-created and randomized), permadeath (you die, you lose progress in most cases), and often randomized weapons, abilities or items. Roguelite, while slightly different, just means a game has the same features; it also features progression which helps the subsequent runs. We won’t go too much into the weeds about what does and does not constitute the differences. We just wanna talk about and celebrate fantastic games.
These are often tough games, but there’s something about them that just hook you in, and often, a good roguelike will give you that mindset of:
‘Just one more run…”
The feeling of it being 10:00pm and then the next time you check, it’s 1:00am. That’s a game that hooks you. They’re challenging, they’re engaging, and a lot of them let you know when you make a mistake; usually, you could’ve done something to avoid it.
Often, they’re grueling, with increasing difficulties or modifiers that change an aspect of the game. Other times, you find that build that just. Feels. Good. And you find yourself blasting through the rest of the game feeling god-like.
The really cool thing about these roguelikes: they’re all different.
Yeah, sure, these video games share some similarities, but Hades is vastly different than Moonlighter. And that is totally different than Vampire Survivors. I love these games – some of which I’ve clocked over 300 hours in. So let’s dig into why you need these roguelike games.
Dead Cells
We are starting strong with Motion Twin/Evil Empire’s hit-game, Dead Cells – the game that kept on giving until they announced the final update coming soon. After five years of support, countless crossovers with other indie games (like Slay the Spire, Terraria, Half-Life and many others), Dead Cells will be complete.
And it’s the perfect time for you to pick it up.
Never in my 25 years of gaming have I found a game that feels so fluid, so responsive, so dynamic, and so punishing.
Dead Cells is a platformer/action roguelike game that pits you against countless enemies in procedurally generated rooms. You eventually start with randomized weapons; a slew of unlocks go work towards, and plenty of abilities that help give you option on how to tackle your foes. A robust upgrade system is in place to help you arm and rearm against some really tough boss encounters too.
And if that’s not enough, the Boss Cell mechanic gives additional challenge and effectively increases difficulty of the game overall. Beyond this, Boss Cells also modify item rarity finds as well as boss encounters too.
And if the base content (which is exceptional, and include most crossover items) isn’t enough, optional paid DLCs are available, which add new biomes, bosses, weapons and more. Most notable is the Castlevania crossover DLC, Return to Castlevania, recently celebrating its first anniversary on the game.
Never in my 25 years of gaming have I found a game that feels so fluid, so responsive, so dynamic, and so punishing. It’s a whole experience which if you’ve not played it, you NEED to. And soon.
The Binding of Isaac: Repentance
Good lord, looking at my Steam account, I have clocked over 650+ hours into this game. Between the original flash release and here, I have no clue. But there’s a reason why Binding of Isaac has stuck with me. The sheer amount of content is vast, and the support over the years is second-to-none.
Binding of Isaac is one of the best and original roguelikes to be playing. You traverse down various dungeons underneath your own home in a revenge plot against your mother. Narratives are given by beating the game each time, or defeating a new endboss. Your weapons are your tears (sad, right?), and there’s plethora of grotesque upgrades and transformations to help you in your survival.
The newest update, Repentance, added a whole new parallel path of dungeons, new bosses, items, and more. This is doubling the already overwhelming amount of content available. Hard Mode ups the difficulty as well and gives additional unlocks per each character available. The game is just as hard as it is rewarding, with OP builds being quite generous.
The game itself is one that keeps on giving, with a 100% completion run taking quite a bit of dedication (still haven’t myself). If you’re a patient completionist and masochist, pick this game up today.
Slay the Spire
One of the first roguelike deck-builder games, Slay the Spire also broke into our list best Nintendo Switch games to own. The premise is that you choose one of four characters as you unlock them, each with their own unique deck. Each turn, you draw five cards from your deck to use; these can be attacks, setting up passive abilities or defending yourself. Through each room you clear, you choose a card to build your deck, crafting it to whichever play style suits you.
Special shout out to The Champ in Act II – I truly hate you.
Each character has their own gimmick as well; Ironclad can build up armor to use for offense or exhaust their cards for additional bonuses. The Silent, however, can utilize poison to wear down hear enemies or have a deck focused on free ‘Shiv’ cards to deal significant damage quickly. The Watcher has a passive/active orb mechanic through their cards and the Watcher can switch stances for high risk, high reward gameplay.
Available to earn through fights, events and shops are relics, which will add variety to each run. These may help or hinder how you build your deck, so choose carefully. The replayability is addictive; honestly, the game is based off mathing out your attacks and cards to play each turn.
Complete with an ‘Ascension’ unlock with each completed run (think Hard Mode modifiers), the game offers hours and hours of entertainment and frustration. Special shout out to The Champ in Act II – I truly hate you.
Slay the Spire is available on Apple App Store, Android Play Store, Steam, Microsoft Store, and the PlayStation Store.
Hades
Hades is what really redeemed 2020 for me in what many consider to be a year we all want a mulligan on. I picked it up for the Switch after hearing so much about it and was instantly hooked. The narrative in Hades is unlike any other roguelike I’ve played; it truly weaved story into every run you completed, win or lose. And the dialogue was endless on unique lines, quotes, and quips. It drips with personality.
Based off the Greek Olympian gods, enter Zagreus, son of Hades, separated from the rest of his godly family who reside on Olympus. As with all the other roguelikes, Hades is run-based, where you actively select one of six available weapons before delving through the Underworld to escape Hades’ domain. These weapons have further upgrades as you progress through the game. Through the game, there are also permanent unlocks to Zagreus’ powers as well; investing in them give a sense of becoming more powerful each run.
To assist you, your extended family offer their assistance through Boons, which amplify or change up your regular and special attacks (all different based on your chosen weapon), your ranged cast, and your dash/evade. You can also call on them for direct assistance by filling your God Gauge, unleashing devastating attacks on waves of enemies.
The difficulty can eventually be modified to your own liking as well through the ‘Heat’ system. You can tinker with things such as purchase costs in the shops being higher, enemies do more attacks, or granting bosses different phases or movesets entirely. By completing a heat level, you unlock rewards; to keep gaining more rewards, you need to increase the heat level, thus making the game incrementally harder and harder.
I could go on and on and on, but it’s so much better if you go and see for yourself.
Spelunky 2
By far one of the tougher roguelikes I’ve played (because I’m admittedly not the best platformer), Spelunky 2 is a great addition to your library if you want a true challenge. Armed with bombs and ropes to rappel further into caverns, avoiding fiery pits, and even venturing into space, this platformer is TOUGH.
The premise is that you play the daughter of the original character from the first Spelunky (or you can choose other characters as well), who is in search of her parents, who ventured off to the Moon. Because they’re explorer and they do things like that. But all the while, you are avoiding hostile bats and skeletons, collecting rare treasure and finding yourself in more and more perilous areas.
Upgrades through the shop are based run-based, meaning if you die (in one of many, many ways – the game makes it a point to show you how you died too), you lose your money and upgrades. You learn something new about the game each time you play/die. Enemies are tough, but fair; there’s always a way either around them or a way to deal with them, and sometimes, you need to get creative with it.
If you enjoy platformers (i.e. Mario, Dead Cells, Celeste, etc.), and want a true challenge to overcome and gain bragging rights, this is for you.
(Also, side note, I highly recommend checking out some of Dan Gheesling’s playthroughs of the game – highly entertaining and he’s incredibly skilled at the game too)
Moonlighter
Moonlighter is pretty unique in terms of roguelikes on this list. There’s still the dungeon-diving, the fighting off hordes of monsters, bosses, etc. However, more than just a roguelike – it’s a very good shopkeeping and town-building simulator as well!
You play as Will, who dreams of being a hero but is also responsible for running the family shop. Forcefully inheriting it (as his parents both passed away from events before the game start), Will reluctantly runs the shop during the day while exploring the dungeons at night. This give the player the core gameplay loops; you collect loot from the dungeons and sell them the next day.
However, sometimes, the loot is cursed; maybe it can only be placed in certain spots in his backpack. Other items might outright destroy a neighboring item if placed next to it. As you sell your loot during the day, you earn money, which can entice other shopkeepers (like smithies, potion masters, etc.) to come and set up their shops in town, thus giving way for you to upgrade your kit for the next dungeon dive.
Moonlighter is a unique blend of roguelike and management sim that compliment each other very well.
Enter the Gungeon
Do you like quirky enemies and designs? Do you crave zany weapons and chaos everywhere on your screen? Then Enter the Gungeon. Or, go buy Enter the Gungeon, I should say.
Choose one of a handful of characters and dive into the Gungeon, a place where upon the end of the Gungeon is the most powerful weapon of all – a gun which can literally kill the past. Each character has their own reason for wanting to do so, motivating them to navigate each chamber with finesse.
The guns themselves – absolutely charming and fun to play. Raning from crossbows, pistols, to guns that fire literal bombs, guns which are calls to other games (like the Mega Man-esque gun), and a gun that shoots actual letters of the alphabet. It’s ridiculous and adds to the chaos of dodging enemies and flipping tables for cover. You gain currency through defeating bosses which can unlock more guns; upon this purchase, it adds the gun to the item pool, allowing them to be found in each later run.
On top of this, there are various items and upgrades to be found, such as lockpicks, air strike controls, and many others which can aid the player in their quest to kill the past.
Be sure to pick up this classic roguelike – it’s been around for awhile, but I find myself often going back to it to experience a few insane runs of fun.
Darkest Dungeon
Possibly one of the toughest and hair-rippingly difficult roguelikes on this list. Darkest Dungeon doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to punishing the player. The atmosphere reflects the grim tone, giving a truly immersive feeling that everything just plain sucks and there’s no hope. The goal: to clear the Darkest Dungeon. How to get there: a hope and a prayer.
It’s a game where “overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer”
There’s 10+ different classes of characters, each coming to the camp with their own skills and abilities; to further twist the player’s mind, there’s a slew of traits a character can come with (or pick up in their quests). Maybe you have a character who gains accuracy in the light (there’s a whole lighting system that correlates with party members’ stress levels – which can literally kill you if too high), but they are also a kleptomanic – so there’s a chance that they steal a treasure you find which could help the whole party.
If a character you’ve built up dies, they’re gone for good (mostly). And character which are higher in level will refuse to participate in easier quests, making you rely on other, lesser used characters.
However, the game does provide some options to help; there’s a tavern to relieve stress (if your character isn’t a cheat at gambling, thus barring that form of stress relief from them), a blacksmith to upgrade weapons and armor, and other areas which can provide different assistance to the player (like a sanitarium to forcibly remove that klepto trait).
The game is uncompromising, challenging, and brutal. It’s a game where “overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer” (kudo to Wayne June for exceptional narration, giving gravitas and dread into every line).
Into the Breach
From the developers of one of my favorite (also roguelike) games, FTL: Faster Than Light, comes Into the Breach. Strategy game lovers, if you don’t have this game already, you’ll want it. It starts off in the grim future where the Vek, alien-like monsterish bugs and monsters who are invading humanity. You and your team of mechs are tasked with stopping them and saving civilians, towns and grids which power defenses used by humanity (think of those as your life counts – run to 0 and it’s game over).
Should you fail a level, your final mech is saved and sent back in time to another timeline to warn humanity and prepare to fight the Vek all over again, thus the run-basing. Additional types and teams of mechs are available through different runs and meeting certain objectives. Each are outfitted with their own set of weapons, armors and movement types.
The strategy comes with fighting the Vek themselves; use an attack that pushes them back a space and you can push them into water (instant death) or to cover holes that spawn more Vek. Or, push them into each other for more damage. Often, you need to sacrifice some health of a team member to save a city from damage. Or maybe friendly fire just may push a teammate out of harm’s way. Think of the game as isometric Fire Emblem meets FTL-like customization and art style.
This is one that make you think – there’s no immediate chaos to deal with. You see the turns the Vek will take should you not stop them, so you can plan carefully on what your mechs will do each time. You know if you messed up, and you know it was entirely on you too. If you like thinking with your video games, go get Into the Breach now!
Vampire Survivors
Possibly the game I underrated the most, and I’m so glad I gave it a shot. The movement, the catchphrase of “Be the Bullet Hell,” and the art style just didn’t catch me at first. And then it came to iOS, free of charge, and I bit. And bit. Then reallllllly sunk my teeth into Vamp Survivors. It hooked me and it’s still a go-to game on my phone and Steam Deck.
You play one of several available or unlockable characters in search of a vampire to hunt (which we’ve yet to find). Through each run, and by fighting wave after wave of continually spawning and increasingly difficult enemies, you gain new weapons, power up and gold. The gold can be applied to permanent passive skill increases or purchasing newly unlocked characters. It has other purposes, but I won’t spoil them here.
Weapons grow stronger and can be combined to make newer, stronger weapons. Levels and maps are unlocked through completions, and the story takes really weird and unexpected turns. You just have to experience it. The levels of secrets hiddne in the game make it captivating. You also get the constant dopamine hit of seeing the numbers go higher and higher with monster kills and gold gains. Vampire Survivors is literally a dopamine hardline into your veins. The chests that elite monsters drop are reminiscent of hitting the lottery with the flash and celebration of free weapon/passive upgrades.
If you play on mobile, there is absolutely NO reason not to pick it up (again, it’s free). Otherwise, it’s dirt cheap on other platforms and supports a very passionate developer if you do buy it.
Honorable mentions do go to Balatro and Luck Be A Landlord. Balatro is one I just started (and very well could be on a future iteration of this list) and Luck Be A Landlord was just edged out.
Regardless if you’ve played one or all of these games, they are accessible on many platforms including Steam, Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and more.
We’re always on the lookout for more roguelikes, so let us know your experiences with the listed games or any other out there! Happy Gaming!
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