We're here to help you find the best roguelike games you can play right now.
The genre is absolutely fit to bursting with fantastic games, which are most known for challenging you to survive successive runs through levels (that can often be procedurally generated). As you acquire abilities and upgrades along the way, permadeath gives you the incentive to try to overcome your foes and make it through to the end of the level - lest you have to start all over again and lost your progress. But failing and trying again is part of the joy of playing roguelikes.
25. Inscryption
Developer: Daniel Mullins Games
Platform(s): PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X
Somehow even harder to describe than Loop Hero, Inscryption is essentially three roguelike deckbuilders in a bloody trench coat trying – successfully – to sneak into a found footage horror convention. The less you know about this game going in, the more you'll enjoy it, as we learned after a deceptive first bite.
As a card game-shaped entity, it plays incredibly well, and strikingly differently over time. As a pseudo-escape room, it unfolds in a fascinating cascade. And as an eclectic combination of genres that by rights should not work, it is all but unrivaled, and only partially because it's basically the only one competing in this absurd competition that it invented and then invited itself to.
24. Ballionaire
Developer: newobject
Platform(s): PC
Ballionaire is the kind of creative, satisfying roguelike that's hard to put down once you get started. With its eye-catching, colorful visual style, you'll build up your own pachinko boards to try and trigger the most combos through its physics-based system in order to earn yourself more and more cash.
To get combos, you'll start by dropping just one ball to hit the bonker triggers you've placed on your board, which can then turn into more balls for added chaos and combos. When a new round begins, you'll get new boons or bonkers that you can use to try and land yourself higher earnings, but it's all about trying to make the ideal path for your ball. If you're looking for something a little different, this one's for you.
23. Gunfire Reborn
Developer: Duoyi Games
Platform(s): PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Mobile
Gunfire Reborn combines two things we don’t often see in roguelikes: first-person gunplay and co-op. It’s an FPS RPG with traces of Borderlands in its blood, grounded in a low-poly aesthetic and a concerted focus on crawling through dungeons with friends.
The unique heroes and guns do most of the heavy lifting and contribute a huge variety, and playing with a buddy or two brings everything to the next level as you start coordinating resources, combos, and strategies. Understated, oddly cute, and finely tuned through early access, Gunfire Reborn is a rock-solid multiplayer shooter that trades "one more match" for "one more run."
22. Streets of Rogue
Developer: Matt Dabrowski
Platform(s): PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Its name being a witty portmanteau of Streets of Rage and Rogue gives a surprisingly okay idea of what exactly Streets of Rogue gives you: the opportunity to punch bad guys with the freedom of a large top-down map. That being said, what makes Streets of Rogue so good is the way it blends so many systems together so efficiently. Like Noita, Streets of Rogue has a rather wonderful responsiveness to each action.
You steal from a bin, and maybe someone reports that and security becomes higher in the area, making your main mission a little harder. You decide to break a window to distract a guard but it instead alarms everyone around, meaning you can’t poison the air system. You are given a task and must complete it in any way you see fit, and the genius thing about Streets of Rogue is that you have to live with those decisions. Each dumb decision makes you a little smarter, your situation a little harder, and your game much more fun.
21. Wizard of Legend
Developer: Contingent99
Platform(s): PC, Xbox One, PS4, Switch
Wizard of Legend does something very good for a roguelike: it just lets you play. It's rather straightforward and more or less just lets you get on with it. You play a wizard trying to overcome the Chaos Trials in order to become the next Wizard of Legend. As such, you must travel through floors defeating enemies for a chance of beating the final boss.
It plays top-down and uses a variety of spells to make you feel like the badass wizard you always knew you could be. As well as some great explosions, it features nice swift movement mechanics and solid enemy design that can be manipulated and fought around in interesting ways. As you understand each enemy more, your style will change, and so will your wizard. Get in there and start casting.
20. Monster Train
Developer: Shiny Shoe
Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5, Switch
Since the rise of titles like Hand of Fate and Slay the Spire, roguelike deckbuilders have become some of the most loved and best Steam games. Monster Train manages to fit into this mold while also giving some great new insights into what makes the genre tick. Monster Train has you fight off hordes of monsters over vertically layered boards on the way to hell. As you can guess from this premise, it’s pretty goofy, and all the better for it.
This goofiness goes hand in hand with tons of content and a huge variety of cards to play from. As you attempt to protect the burning pyre of hell from the forces of heaven, you start to pick up on the subtle little bits of storytelling Monster Train gives you as you blitz through stages. With different mutators and a bunch of free DLC, it's earned a spot in your library.
19. Crypt of the Necrodancer
Developer: Brace Yourself Games
Platform(s): PC, Xbox One, PS4, Switch, Mobile
Crypt of the Necrodancer turns familiar enemies and level designs into a dramatically different experience through rhythmic mechanics. The entire stage works as a musical level and all actions are done on the beat. If you fail to move on time, you don’t move. The same is not the case with enemies, who are relentless and consistent.
Basically, you get good, or you get dead. The formula of die, get used to the music, and get better is made much more appealing through the charming art and wonderfully catchy music, a must for a game like this. Fortunately, it nails it. It is so good that it also managed to make our list of the best rhytmn games as well.
18. Noita
Developer: Nolla Games
Platform(s): PC
Noita is a fantastic little roguelike "where every pixel is physically simulated." This essentially means the entire world is incredibly malleable, cracking under the pressure of various elements and attacks. These take the form of spells you create yourself to tackle each part uniquely.
These systems make Noita one of the most reactive games out there and well worth your time if you're looking for something new. It is also worth noting that ever since it came out in 2020, it has become one of the main go-to's for roguelike recommendations. It's also easily on of the best PC games that you can play today.
17. Loop Hero
Developer: Four Quarters
Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Switch, Mobile
Loop Hero is probably the least-deckbuilder-y deckbuilder on this list. It is, in fact, a card game, but it plays out as a fascinating blend of role-playing, idle games, and level design. Trapped in a time loop by an evil lich, you use card-based encounters and environmental features to assemble and expand levels for your heroes to navigate automatically. You aren’t fighting the battles; you’re placing the battles on a board and hoping for the best.
The roguelike spice starts to tingle as you cycle through loops multiple times, piling upgrades on RPG classics like the Warrior, Rogue, and Necromancer and praying you can assemble a hero strong enough to slay the big bad at the end. It's retro aesthetic and fixed, chunky menu invoke old-school RPGs, and Loop Hero presents a mish-mash of ideas and eras with style and care.
16. Enter the Gungeon
Developer: Dodge Roll
Platform(s): PC, Xbox One, PS4, Switch
Enter the Gungeon has a wonderfully consistent tone and world, which might lead you to believe it’s a gimmick, but it is actually one of the best action games ever made. It combines twin-stick combat with a roguelite progression system to keep you coming back. Almost everything in the world of Enter the Gungeon is a bullet or bullet-themed. You, a lone gungeoneer, go into the gungeon in search of loot, purpose, or perhaps something even greater.
From its dodge roll to pushing furniture, almost every mechanic feels carefully woven into to the base combat system. You might, upon entering a room, push over a chair for some cover on the go, or you might rush your enemies in the hope of taking them down quickly. The moment-to-moment gameplay is wickedly addictive, so after each death, you just reload and hop back in to fight another day.
15. Darkest Dungeon
Developer: Red Hook Studios
Platform(s): PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, Mobile
It’s debatable whether or not Darkest Dungeon is a roguelike or more of an RPG. Regardless, it is so phenomenal it wouldn’t feel right to not include it. To put it simply, you manage a group of interchangeable heroes who must investigate the everchanging dungeon below a manor.
Putting it simply doesn’t do justice to its unique stress mechanics, dark gothic graphics, and brutal difficulty. It utilizes this difficulty to reward you for each successful battle. You might come for its style, but you will stay for its expansive customization, haunting story, and punishing design.
14. FTL: Faster Than Light
Developer: Subset Games
Platform(s): PC, Mobile
With graphics and gameplay inspired by classic board game titles, it’s hard not to love FTL: Faster Than Light. It has you control a ship in a grid-based system as you make decisions and cower in fear of what decisions might have you do. You must use terminals to jump to other parts of the galaxy in an attempt to make your way through the eight sectors available to you.
You can start off with different ships and crew members, making each run responsive and unique and forcing you to truly adapt to the circumstances in front of you. Feeling somewhere between Reigns, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, and its own unique flair, FTL offers plenty of difficulty, challenge, and replayability. Read our Faster Than Light review for more on this gem.
13. Cult of the Lamb
Developer: Massive Monster
Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Switch
If you're looking for a roguelike with management features and base-building in the mix, look no further than Massive Monster's excellent, darkly humorous adventure, Cult of the Lamb. After being saved from become a sacrificial lamb yourself, you become the leader of your own cult where you can do the sacrificing if you so choose.
As you build up your cult of followers and deck out your base, you can also venture into and explore dungeon-like areas full of enemies and intrigue as you try to take down the non-believers. The areas change every time, and should you die during your battles, you'll lose the items you gathered, which gives it an element of risk and challenge. Satisfying, surprising, and very entertaining, this is one roguelike ewe need to check out.
12. Dicey Dungeons
Developer: Terry Cavanagh
Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Switch, Mobile
One look through Terry Cavanagh’s work will show you the slew of cult classics he’s found himself creating, from the smart VVVVV to the minimalistic Super Hexagon and, finally, Dicey Dungeons.
Like Slay the Spire before it, Dicey Dungeons is a roguelike deck builder, but it's imbued with so much personality that comparing the two feels asinine. The entirety of Dicey Dungeons takes place in a weird meta-game show where cards are played and decided by dice rolls you make. This makes it a little less strategic than Slay the Spire but arguably a whole lot more interesting.
11. Caves of Qud
Developer: Freehold Games
Platform(s): PC, Switch
After 15 years of Early Access-aided development, sci-fi roguelike Caves of Qud finally launched in 2024 on PC, and found its way to Switch in 2026. Caves of Qud has, for years, delivered more content – more possibilities, more ideas, more experiences – than most games can begin to imagine. It is an irresponsibly deep retrofuturistic world wrapped around a delightfully reactive and creative simulation that sits somewhere between a classical roguelike and a text RPG.
With dozens of factions, inventive turn-based combat, functionally limitless character-build paths, and multiple game modes that can feel like different games entirely, Caves of Qud is one of those roguelikes that makes immortality seem tempting just because an eternity might be enough time to wrap your head around this thing fully.
10. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
Developer: Edmund McMillen, Nicalis
Platform(s): PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and Switch
From the brains behind Super Meat Boy and uhh Gish came The Binding of Isaac, a wonderfully dark roguelike centered around a young boy locked in a basement fighting his way through it with tears. Yeah, it’s a bit of a weird game. This overt weirdness embodies practically every second of Isaac, which pits you against biblical monsters, moving feces, and even your own mother.
It plays a clever role in analyzing the dogma of extremism and rather personally talks about creator Edmund Mcmillen's own struggles with religion. This personality, charm, and connection to Edmund as a creator have kept us coming back a decade after its initial release. If you want to know more, check out our The Binding of Isaac review.
9. Balatro
Developer: LocalThunk
Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Switch
The self-proclaimed "poker roguelike" takes much of what makes Slay the Spire great and twists it into a bizarre, deckbuilder vision of gambling that looks familiar until the world starts to come apart at the seams, and you find that even illegal hands like five of a kind don't cut it. And that's before getting to the 150+ Jokers that break the rules so hard that some of them could almost qualify as sequels.
Endlessly replayable and unflinchingly cruel, Balatro pulls you in for run after run of bet-it-all hijinks that constantly jump between making you feel like the smartest player to ever sit at a table and the dumbest peabrain ever to be dealt a card. It's a fiendishly clever buffet of systems and strategies that wears the poker veneer like a jacket and uses it to build an utterly essential game about cheating in plain sight. See why it was counted among our pick of the best games of 2024.
8. Spelunky 2
Developer: Mossmouth, Blitworks
Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Switch
Spelunky 2 is exactly what you'd want from a sequel to Derek Yu’s classic roguelike platformer: more stuff, with more polish, and more devious ideas under the hood. Simplistic 2D platforming in lovely tiled levels quickly becomes a rabbit hole of deliberately subtle, outright hidden, and often game-changing mechanics.
Random items and characters can propel you forward or shoot you straight back to the all-too-familiar Game Over screen, and controlling the randomness becomes part of the fun. Spelunky 2 feels more balanced and dynamic than the original game, and manages to fit in many new ideas without ever feeling bogged down. It’s also not-so-secretly one of the most unforgiving games on this list – a true giant of “sounds easy, feels impossible.”
7. Returnal
Developer: Housemarque
Platform(s): PC, PS5
A rare third-person bullet hell shooter, Returnal drops you into a time loop nightmare shorn from cosmic horror and science fiction. Survive on an alien planet as Selene, taking advantage of ancient technology and strange weapons to deal with monstrous creatures that spit out countless tracking, exploding, arcing, rotating, and sizzling projectiles.
When you inevitably don't survive plenty of times, you'll start all over, increasingly unnerved by the bodies of your past selves that seem to be piling up. Returnal is at its best in intense combat, and even more so in the post-launch co-op, but it also presents a disturbing world that keeps you guessing right up to the end. And after the end. I still don't know what it's really about. Discover more in our Returnal review.
6. Blue Prince
Developer: Dogubomb
Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X, PS5
Blue Prince is one of the most innovative entries on this list. Instead of permadeath, this first-person mystery sees you start each day with a set of steps as a movement resource, controlling how much of this mansion you can explore per day. Each day serves as a "run", to use a popular term among the best roguelikes, with the house's room layout changing day in, day out, depending on certain discoveries you've made in previous days.
Its absorbing blend of mystery, puzzle, and roguelite charm has cemented it among the best games of 2025, and since it's available on the majority of major platforms, you'll definitely want to check Blue Prince out for a very different roguelike journey.
5. Dead Cells
Developer: Motion Twin, Evil Empire
Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Switch, Mobile
Dead Cells takes some of the main points of Metroidvanias and roguelites but manages to create a totally fresh "Roguevania" experience. You play a mass of cells that basically puppets a corpse. You can then take that body to fight your way through each area in a vain attempt to kill the boss at the center and make your way out.
You will die in Dead Cells. You will probably die a lot, but that’s what makes it so rewarding. There’s something very cyclical about the combat system; learning how weapons work and how to slowly upgrade them for subsequent runs gives a clear sense of progression that feels not only rewarding but earned. Every moment in Dead Cells is built on hard-earned progress, and that is what makes it so entertaining.
4. Vampire Survivors
Developer: Poncle
Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Switch, Mobile
Vampire Survivors might be the most hardcore casual game of the past decade. It's a screen-destroying, time-devouring, reverse-bullet hell roguelike about building the strongest monster killer possible by vacuuming up XP crystals and treasure chests and a zillion other things that tickle your brain giddy. It's instantly compelling, dangerously replayable, and one of the strongest "oh it's 2 am games" in recent memory – so much so that it spawned a whole new subgenre of so-called bullet heaven roguelikes, or at least jump-started a towering new wave of such games.
Seemingly endless collectibles, items, enemies, areas, and unlockable characters add frankly terrifying depth to an already hard-to-put-down roguelike with dead-simple controls and rewarding progression. At just $5 for the base game and $2 to $3 for the DLCs, you'd be hard-pressed to find a game that can match Vampire Survivors on dollars per hour of fun.
3. Risk of Rain 2
Developer: Hopoo Games
Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Switch
Risk of Rain 2 offered a surprising yet brilliant departure from the style set in the previous one six years prior. Instead of the side-scrolling shooter before it, it is now a fully 3D over-the-shoulder action game. But it's still a roguelike under the hood. You are stranded on an alien planet and challenged to find teleporters to get to the next area.
It can be played entirely in co-op, and each level finish is topped off with a nice standoff against progressively harder aliens charging right at you. It just feels and looks grea,t with plenty to do, plenty to unlock, and plenty to kill. Seriously, give this one a try. I'd still say that it's one of the best co-op games to play right now, as well.
2. Slay the Spire
Developer: Mega Crit
Platform(s): PC, Xbox One, PS4, Switch
Slay the Spire is one of the most wonderfully unique, tightly designed games you’ll ever have the pleasure of playing. It's a roguelike (obviously enough) deckbuilding card game. You play one of four central characters, all with different builds and card types, and must make your way to the top of the spire to defeat the boss at its core. Each battle gives you new cards to choose from and more gold to spend on your current run.
You debate between buying potions to survive the next battle or buying a relic for the future. You might want to take on an optional boss to get better gear in return for weakening you. These small decisions often snowball in engrossing ways, forcing you to change your playstyle to prepare for the future. Somehow, it manages to express interesting ideas, has great combat, and generally engages you through the whole experience with nothing but four decks of cards that seem to support infinite playtime.
1. Hades 2
Developer: Supergiant Games
Platform(s): PC, Switch 2
Just when we thought Supergiant peaked with Hades, Hades 2 came around to prove us wrong. Building on the godly heights of the 2020 release, the sequel succeeds at delivering a roguelike that's bigger and better. Of course, we still absolutely recommend you check out Zagreus' escape from the Underworld, which was one of the best games of 2020. But the follow-up truly shows how Supergiant has gone from strength to strength in the world of roguelikes, with incredibly satisfying combat, rewarding progression, and an engrossing story you'll want to uncover as you make your way through more runs.
As new protagonist Melinoë, who's the immortal princess of the Underworld, you can play around with an arsenal of weapons and gain powerful godly boons to aid in your attempts to make it through the mythic world to face Chronos, the Titan of Time. Packed with memorable characters, a gorgeous art style, and so much attention to detail, Hades 2 earns its top spot here and then some. If you're curious to learn more, be sure to check out our Hades 2 review.
Looking for more fun? Check out our pick of the best Metroidvania games.
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