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.
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.
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.
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.
I’d cross balatro off this list. It runs on hype and will die off soon.
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.
Games like this one and Roll, Rollscape, the roulette roguelike, even Luck be a Landlord. They have limited shelf life due to being based on the “make the number larger” concept, which isn’t that interesting at the end of the day.
Compare that to weapon combinations in dead cells, crazy item synergies in Isaac, wands that do stupid things in Noita, perks in Hades… That offers more interaction and satisfaction.
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
I should have compared it with StS, you’re right. But even in that case, the important difference is that games like balatro still only provide you with one outcome in the end.
In this case a combination of cards which makes the score larger. Whereas in StS it’s the journey that counts, with the comparison being build differences as opposed to score differences.
Just my way of looking at it I suppose.