Roguelikesare an addictive genre to play. Procedurally generated maps make every run a unique experience, and the steady accumulation of randomized upgrades also means the way you prevail over the adversities will also always change.
Going Under
Curse of the Dead Gods
Risk of Rain 2
Have a Nice Death
Inscryption
Astral Ascent
Until You Fall
The Light Brigade
The 15 Best Roguelikes For Under $20
These are the best roguelikes for under $20 right now so you don’t have to worry about taking out a small loan to pick them up!
On the PS5, there are a few good roguelikes that are found both on Playstation Plus Extra and in the PSN store. If you already have a subscription, be sure to check them out. Otherwise, if you have a PS5 and love roguelikes, here are the best games you should be playing.
WHERE TO PLAY
Supergiant’s Greek game is the roguelike genre at its best. Between its amazing mechanics and beautiful story, Hades will capture your heart and make you fall in love with its world.
Easilyone of the best roguelikesfor any fan of the genre to experience,Hadeshas become the gold standard for roguelikes because of how well its simplified roguelike mechanics down to its core mechanics. Players take control of Zagreus as he fights to get out of the Underworld, intent on reaching the surface world. But along the way, his Olympian family will give him godly boons to increase his powers with.
This leads to a constant loop of the player making a run for the surface world, dying, going back to the House of Hades to develop the story, and then making another run for the surface world. Each trip back to the House of Hades also allows the player to spend currency to upgrade Zagreus and make future runs much easier.
9. Returnal
Returnal has a gorgeous presentation and an addictive gameplay loop. It also uses the PS5 dualsense controllers to create an immersive experience in a way more games should.
Returnalis the perfect game for any roguelike fan on the PS5. Withbeautiful graphics that take full advantageof the PS5’s hardware, clever usage of the Dualsense controller, available only on the PC and PS5, and an addictive gameplay loop make it a blast to play through.
Its gameplay can best be described as a combination ofNier Automata’s 3D bullet hell mechanics, and Hades' action roguelike mechanics. Except instead of godly boons like Hades, Returnal gives younew weapons, artifacts, and some consumable items to grow your strength. Also, while Returnal won’t have the dramatic camera shifts of Nier, the crazy bullet hell on a 3D plane mechanic remains a crazy fun experience to play through.
8. Going Under
Have you ever felt frustrated at your job at a start-up? Sick of yet another meeting about how agile development works? Going Under is the perfect roguelike for you to play to vent your frustrations.
Going Under is a dungeon-crawler that makes fun of the many eccentricities of corporate life. In this world, whenever a startup goes bankrupt, its employees turn into monsters and the company’s boss turns into a monstrous boss of a dungeon. Your job is to descend into these failed businesses-turned-monster-lairs and clear them out.
What follows is a cathartic mockery of both the language and the culture of corporate life. Each dive into the dungeons is a delightful cell-shaded beat ‘em up that’s punctuated with additional objectives like ‘clear a room quickly.’ The combat itself is hectic and challenging, but there’s a charm to turning the furniture in a company break room into an armory of make-shift weapons.
Curse of the Dead Gods tests how well you can adapt to an ever-changing temple, and while your builds can become fairly powerful, they’ll never overshadow how important solid, fundamental action gameplay is.
If you’re looking for a good action-roguelike with hyper-responsive controls that reward you for precise timing and smart building, then you’ll love Curse of the Dead Gods. Your first few runs will be painful because of the number of traps and patterns you have to familiarize yourself with. But once you get everything down,Curse of the Dead Gods has a unique flow to it.Parries, blocks, and perfect dodges become instinctual, and boss fights feel more like a unique dance similar to how a Dark Souls boss fight would once you’ve grown accustomed to their patterns.
6. Risk of Rain 2
RIght next to Hades, Risk of Rain 2 is another roguelike that’s simplified the formula down to its bare basics and refined them to create an unforgettable game.
Whether you’re playing solo or with friends,Risk of Rain 2will rarely disappoint if you’re looking for a straightforward roguelike to enjoy. It has a simple story and a straightforward loop: choose your favorite character, kill enemies to get money, use money to get artifacts that make you more powerful, and then use new power to kill more enemies. There’s nothing too fancy to disturb or distract from this loop, and even the story exists just enough to provide you with a reason why your character is on this planet and to give you an extra spice of flavor in the final mission.
5. Have A Nice Death
You play as the Grim Reaper and have to take your company back from your misbehaving employees. This game is the perfect blend of metroidvania and roguelike with fun combos to use in combat.
The Grim Reaper has set up a company in the afterlife called Death Inc. where souls are sorted to where they should go in the afterlife. After filling out ages worth of paperwork, Death checks in on his company to discover that some of his employees have staged a coup and plan to overthrow him. With your trusty scythe in hand, you’ll get to remind everyone that you’re the Grim Reaper.
In-game,Have a Nice Deathplays out like a fast-paced version of a classic Metroidvania game. Combos and abilities are executed quickly, and the animations of every attack look liquid and smooth. Between the story, overall grim aesthetic, and entertaining fights, Have A Nice Death is a fun roguelike to unwind with.
4. Inscryption
Residing among the upper echelons of the best deckbuilding roguelikes, Inscryption has a unique mechanic that’s both intuitive and fun to master. But what will keep you coming back is the story offered in this game.
Need a game to whisk you away into another world for a bit?Inscryptionuses deck-building and roguelike mechanics to tell an amazing story with plenty of meta-narrative notes. Without indulging in spoilers, the story itself serves as a wonderful commentary on video game development itself and the struggles any developer must face between the many elements required to make a good game and how to balance them. Once you start your first few runs, you’ll be pulled into its ever-immersive world that starts out seemingly unconnected with anything resembling a large plot, but stick with it and you’ll find yourself pulled into a perplexing, yet intriguing story.
This game is best enjoyed if you go in blind. Don’t spoil anything for yourself and let yourself be surprised by what happens.
3. Astral Ascent
A smooth, flowing combat system with gorgeous pixel art and a chill soundtrack is what makes Astral Ascent such a special roguelike.
Out of the games on this list,Astral Ascentis the most relaxing one to play. The comforting music, beautiful pixel art, and endearing characters create a lively world for players to explore. But the main attraction is the fluid combat system.
Each of the four characters has unique spells they can use, but once the spell is used, it’s moved to the back of the queue like a card in a deck-building game. After that, the next spell takes its place, and so on. In this way, Astral Ascent simulates a deck-building mechanic without using a deck, but it also gives the player more special attacks to experiment with. If you’ve built your character well, the end of the run becomes a delicate balance between landing basic attacks to generate energy followed by a vicious unloading of all your spells to burst your opponents into the ground.
2. Until You Fall
Until You Fall takes the barebones of a roguelike, throws it into a VR space, and makes it an addictive game to play. A large part of its charm is how, once the run starts, you’re almost constantly doing something with very little downtime between fights.
Until You Fall takes the action of Hades and combines it with the unique input of the PSVR headset. Players can choose their favorite kind of weapon to slash, smash, and stab their way through multiple arena-like levels. Each arena completed rewards the player with a crystal to upgrade their stats and bestow a passive ability on them.
What makes this game fun for roguelike fans is how it has an almost single-minded focus on just combining the roguelike experience with VR. There’s barely a story, and the enemy types don’t change very much across the levels. But this simplicity means you have few distractions between you and another run, and once you’re on the run, the VR control scheme creates an immersive experience you won’t find in many other roguelikes. Being able to dodge, block, and slash with your actual body movements while gaining upgrades after every exhausting fight is a fun treat for any fan of the genre.
1. The Light Brigade
Good gunplay mixed with beautiful cel-shaded and an engaging roguelike system is what makes The Light Brigade such a fun game. Plus, who doesn’t want to smite enemies with holy bullets?
Prefer using guns and want a more “complete” feel to your roguelike? The Light Brigade has more features and meat on its bones than the charming simplicity of Until You Fall. The player can arm themselves with different kinds of guns and different kinds of light magic to imbue more power into their bullets. Along the way in each run, you may find other NPCs to return to your camp and more upgrades to unlock for future runs.
But one of the key separations between The Light Brigade and Until You Fall is how each game handles its movement. Until You Fall has you teleport from place to place and enemy to enemy. This creates a fast-paced, almost non-stop sequence of action for the player to enjoy. In The Light Brigade, players can walk around at their own pace to explore the surrounding area first. The traditional VR teleport is still in the game, but it becomes the equivalent of an invulnerable dash to quickly evade enemies.
10 Best Roguelike Games on Xbox Series X/S
Here are the best roguelikes you may play on the Xbox Series X/S that will have you dying again and again.
