Best Roguelike Games

Roguelikes are known for offering players an unforgiving experience where defeat carries a heavy toll. Devilishly challenging and addictive, roguelikes are for players that like to pepper their gaming with a generous helping of struggle and hardcore gameplay.

Permadeath, a run-based structure, and ever-changing procedurally-generated levels stand as the defining characteristics of the genre, but roguelikes are as varied as ever, mixing and matching themes and gameplay elements to create genuinely unique and replayable experiences. While these innovative titles may stray from the tight confines of the hotly debated definition of a roguelike, they are no less worthy of your attention.

In the spirit of highlighting some great games free of the pedantry of a strict definition, we’ve included roguelikes, rogue-lites, and roguelike-likes. From Hades and The Binding of Isaac to Spelunky 2, here are some of the best roguelikes you can play right now.

Hades

With a trophy case’s worth of Game of the Year awards under the belt, Hades is a shining example of everything a modem roguelike can be. From its story, charismatic cast of characters, and engrossing run mechanics to its chugging soundtrack, superb voice acting, and artwork, Hades is a testament to developer Supergiant’s game-making chops.

Steeped in Greek mythos, Hades cast the player as the rebellious Zagreus as he vies to escape hell lorded over by the titular Hades, his father, with the help of a few sympathetic Olympians. Along the way, you’ll gab and form bonds with the likes of Sisyphus, Nyx, and Achilles.

In keeping with the spirit of the roguelike genre, each death triggers a cyclical reset. But, by latching each run to advancements in Hades’ branching narrative, each one feels like progress. Rewarding even. Whether that’s through romancing deities, unlocking new abilities and weapons, or decking out the House of Hades with upgrades that persist through future reincarnations. You’ll fail, but Hades offers ample motivation to tend to your wounds and try again.

Hades backs all this up with a fast-paced, frenetic brand of hack n’ slash combat thanks to a dizzying array of power-ups, challenging boss encounters, hordes of diverse enemies to plow through, and procedurally generated series of rooms.

As a companion to the game, we also recommend Noclip’s excellent multi-part documentary for some great insight into Hades’ development from Early Access to full-blown 1.0 release.

Into the Breach

Into the Breach is a turn-based roguelike where the combat veers more to the tactical and souped-up mechs are the star of the show. Developed by the same folks behind roguelike royalty FTL, it’s a game that channels retro games of old in both its art style and grid-based gameplay that’s part battlefield chess and part XCOM.

Charged with battling a formidable force known as the Vek, whose tactical nous requires careful and considered planning on your part, you’ll need to weigh up the merits of each move as you clear out a succession of islands with procedurally-generated objectives and scenarios.

Things get complicated as there’s a fixed number of turns to each head to head. Along the way, you’ll pick up an array of new weaponry, mech-driving soldiers, and skills to try and mitigate the mounting threat. As with any roguelike, defeat sees you pulled back to square one, but a lone time-traveling pilot retains any earned abilities and experience to aid future attempts.

Despite the surface-level simplicity of each skirmish, Into the Breach conceals substantial strategic depth adding flavor to each run. Wisening up to the impact of each Vek attack through play makes this one highly replayable for those that like their games tense and challenging but gratifying.

Darkest Dungeon

Darkest Dungeon is brutal, dishearteningly so. It’s a dark, brooding dive into procedurally-generated dungeons crawling with disease, dread, and the very real risk of lunacy affecting your troupe of ragtag heroes lurking around every corner.

While this bleak setting alone makes Darkest Dungeon worth visiting, it’s coupled with devilishly challenging turn-based combat. You’ll not only need to defeat corrupted monstrosities but also manage both the mental and physical well-being of your party. Should one meet an early death, it’s permanent.

Darkest Dungeon’s brutal affliction system means anything from contracting blight from a marauding enemy to watching the death of a fellow fighter weighs heavily on your heroes. Mismanage this, and their mental state deteriorates, hampering your chances of navigating this bleak subterranean nightmare with any semblance of success. Some foresight in planning and dishing out resources to the right folks helps, but Darkest Dungeon’s mechanics are out to get you, and don’t shy away from making life difficult.

Sometimes cruel, but always compelling, the beauty of Darkest Dungeon is that despite its grime setting and punishing gameplay, it’s a game with a uniquely rewarding appeal that will have you jumping back in for one more go time and time again.

Risk of Rain 2

Risk of Rain 2 abandons roguelike tradition, dropping players in a fully realized 3D third-person shooter. Marooned on an alien planet, you’ll loot and shoot your way to a, hopefully, swift escape, all while improving your armory along the way.

The planet is dotted with teleporters. Locating them is only part of the puzzle, as they’ll need activating, which involves dispatching hordes of varied alien enemies and challenging bosses until it hits 100%. Linger too long, and the numbers and fighting chops of these pesky enemies crank up every few minutes.

Downing enemies grants currency used to unlock chests that themselves contain precious loot. Each successive teleporter ups the difficulty level, and the real challenger of Risk of Rain 2 is keeping up.

Death throws you back to the start, but items persist, allowing you to carry over modifiers, characters with different abilities, and items that drastically alter the way you approach each new run. A genuine blast to play, Risk of Rain 2 also has a top-notch co-op mode to share the misery of failure with friends.

Slay The Spire

With Slay the Spire, developers Mega Crit Games set out to meld the very best aspects of card games and roguelikes into one sleek deck-building battler, and boy, did they deliver. The concept is simple; reach the top of the Spire. Play your cards right, quite literally, and land a chance to duke it out with the ultimate boss, the Corrupt Heart. Falter, and back to the beginning you go in true roguelike style.

Slay The Spire is as much about deck synergy as experimentation. The sheer variety of cards and random relics allows for a staggering range of combinations, some duds, some winners, and others completely altering your planned playstyle for a particular run.

Each time you ascend the ever-charging, procedurally-generated Spire, there are branching paths to discover, four character classes to choose from, over fifty unique combat encounters, and hundreds of cards and items to unearth. Every run feels unique, whether through frustration or the pure thrill of piecing together a cohesive deck build. Every move has weight and repercussions. Decisions taken during a run’s opening act can shape what’s to come, setting you up for success or failure.

Dead Cells

By bridging the gap between roguelikes and Metroidvanias with a smattering of Souls-like combat thrown in for good measure, Dead Cells is a more forgiving experience than most of the games on our list.

It retains the classic run structure but injects a good dose of progression to each attempt by allowing you to retain any hard-won power-ups and items. These make each successive run through an ever-morphing castle, which is always fresh thanks to an ever-revolving set of areas, enemies, branching paths, and weapons, a little less intimidating.

Despite easing the consequences of failure, Dead Cells is by no means straightforward. The Souls influence shines through consistently challenging enemies and bosses, whose move sets need to be learned and mastered through multiple attempts. Encounters are fast and fluid, and mistakes carry a heavy price. Death comes swiftly and often.

Add in a gorgeous pixel art style, polished level design, and the fact you can hack your way through hordes of enemies with no more than a frying pan, and Dead Cells succeeds in delivering an engaging, original, and rewarding roguelike experience.

FTL: Faster Than Light

FTL: Faster Than Light has you chart a course into deep space to deliver data with the potential to turn the tide on the ongoing war between the Galactic Federation and the Rebellion. Simple enough if not for the matter of a hostile enemy fleet hot on your tail.

Navigating through various sectors defined by unique procedurally-generated events, you’ll manage on-ship systems and fuel levels, gather new equipment and crew members, and engage in real-time combat with the pursuing fleet. Cruelly, defeat wipes your save file from existence and sees you swiftly booted back to the start.

Heavily-reliant an RNG, each run proffers up something fresh for the player, whether through the oft-harrowing decision-based narrative beats or the many permutations of ships, crew, and weaponry. It’s a game of adaptation and making the most of the cards you’ve been dealt that’s intensively addictive and repeatable.

The Binding of Isaac

A daunting, troubling plunge into the complex struggles with religion of creator Edmund McMillen, The Binding of Isaac, and the 2014 remake The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, is rightly praised as one the best roguelike games ever. In some circles, the game is even lauded as one of the best ever made, an assessment we’d be hard-pressed to argue against.

Infantile yet harrowing in its themes and subject matter, The Binding of Isaac’s tone is as challenging as its gameplay. You play as the titular Isaac, pushed to flee into the basement of his family home after his mother receives a bleak faith-testing demand from God to end his life.

Gameplay mirrors the dungeon-crawling found in Zeldas of old with some twin-stick shooter flair – fast, precise, and unforgiving. Through a labyrinthine network of monster-infested caverns teeming with grotesque and biblical imagery, you’ll take down enemies from fecal aberrations to Isaac’s mother using no more than your tears.

A true roguelike, The Binding of Isaac doesn’t lighten the sting of death with any progression whatsoever. Deplete Isaac’s limited health bar, and you must start the harrowing tale anew.

Spelunky 2

Spelunky 2 is a 2D-platformer roguelike that has you explore and fight your way through a danger-filled, ever-changing network of lunar caves. As Ana, your mission is to track down your missing parents while pocketing some ritzy treasure along the way. Die – and you will, repeatedly – and the game boots you back to the surface to repeat the cycle.

Each successive Spelunky 2 run walks a tightrope between fun and heartbreak due to the machinations of a seemingly hostile procedural generation. But, there’s an indiscriminate fairness and persistent intrigue to the level design that make it as moreish as any roguelike out there. Compounding knowledge from previous disastrous runs sees you dive ever deeper, besting previously insurmountable obstacles and discovering yet more about this elegantly multi-layered game.

Naturally, Spelunky 2 wouldn’t exist without the original. The impact of designer Derek Yu’s seminal 2008 work reverberates not only in the 2020 sequel but the roguelike and side-scrolling platformer genres as a whole. Few games can boast such a seismic influence that persists to this day. Spelunky 2 is a natural extension that refines the core formula and injects some narrative gloss without losing any of what made the first so intensely engaging.

Enter The Gungeon

Goofy, messy, and with guns aplenty, Enter The Gungeon is for those that like their roguelikes light and cheery. As one of four gungeoneers, you dive into the gun-themed Gungeon, all in pursuit of a mythic gun capable of righting the wrongs of the past by outright killing it.

In action, Enter the Gungeon is a top-down bullet hell roguelike rendered in cutesy but gory pixel art, where you dodge and gun your way through floor after floor where absolutely everything is gun-themed. It’s a twitchy shooter that leaves little time or space for respite. The real delight is in carving a path through the chaotic maelstrom of bullets and projectiles that invariably fills each chamber, not to speak of the superb boss fights.

Collecting guns is a core part of the experience, and you’ll amass an enviable armory by beating bosses, uncovering chests, and the occasional visit a friendly trader. Over 300 different guns offer just as many ways to storm through Enter The Gungeon’s dungeon, adding fresh variety to every run. Death is inevitable, but the loop is so satisfying you won’t mind firing up a new run if only to try out a new outlandish weapon.