The best Roguelikes of the last decade?

[Drathnoxis]

Fair enough, although to be honest with you I don't remember what the artifacts even do - its been a little too long since I played the game I guess, ha. Oddly I do remember the game always being crushingly difficult, I wonder if the artifacts were something added after I played and moved on or if I just never unlocked them (or realized I could use them).

The Glass artifact gives you 500% damage and 10% health, so you kill nearly everything in a couple shots and once you get a few infusions and shields health is no problem either. The Command artifact lets you select what item you get from a chest, so obviously the game is broken in half the second that is enabled.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Oh! Actually I forgot to mention one that I had a lot of fun with: The Curious Expedition. Go on expeditions to explore and pillage new lands and become the most famous explorer in the land. It has an interesting combat system where each chaconracter has a combat die with different actions on it and you use multiple dice to do combos. You get a certain number of rerolls to get what actions you want. It was an interesting take on turn based combat. The food and supply management was done well enough as well. The content was interesting enough, but there's only enough to stay fresh for a couple dozen runs. It was fun enough for the time I spent with it.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Oooooh! Roguelike discussion! I love these games!

I see some of the classics are already mentioned like FTL, which is the goddamn gold standard for me for roguelike RPG type games. It's still a blast all these years later.

-

This one is more of a pseudo-roguelite, but...eh.

Hand of Fate 2:

This game is a mashup of a narrative deckbuilder game, where you move from encounter card to encounter card (some of them yours, some of them chosen by the story) and where combat turns into an Akrham-style brawler.

This takes the basic systems of the first game, and all the mini-stories that game told, and makes it all much more structured.

Now, each chapter is a very different style of challenge, necessitating a more thorough strategy of which cards to take with you. Some encounters are better suited to some challenges than others, and some weapons are better for certain enemy types.

What REALLY makes it shine is the variety of not just chapter stories, but the smaller stories the cards tell, as well as how completing certain card stories will upgrade those cards to provide new stories until you might eventually get a massive Platinum card upgrade that makes the card an absolute win to find in a chapter.

It's honestly delightful as a game and I'm DEEPLY sad the studio that made it has shut down and gone into "caretaker mode" for their games.


Risk of Rain 1 and 2:

It's THE best action style roguelike I've ever played.

You start of desperate and weak, trying to grab any loot you can that might buy you an edge, trying to herd mobs of monsters that all want a piece out of you, but also trying to go as fast as you can, because the longer the game goes, the harder the monsters get, until the game is laughing at you with it's "HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA" difficulty that just keeps getting infinitely harder.

That magical moment when you suddenly realize "I am no longer the hunted, I am the hunter" and can mow down anything in your way, so long as you don't get hit? It's beautiful.

The first game handles it in 2D as a sidescroller with a focus on melee enemies, and it's lovely.

The second game turned it into a 3D game and my god, it amped the juicyness factor up to 11. Now that magical turnabout moment has ME laughing maniacally. Also, being 3D means that it's much easier to spot the level exit. All in all, a pure upgrade to the already perfect formula.

There is a sequel, and its 3D instead of being a 2D sikescroller. According to everything I've seen, going 3D only made the game better and that much more hectic. I plan to try it sometime soon here, but I'm a little burnt on shooters at present.

Your assessment is spot on. You really should play it.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Tales of Maj'Eyal would be at the top of my list of the decade. It's incredibly good and I can't recommend it enough. Get it, get the expansions, and then forget what other games are for a few months.

Looking at the Steam page I think this game wins the thread for actually being the most like Rogue of everything mentioned.

 

[meiam]

Tales of Maj'Eyal would be at the top of my list of the decade. It's incredibly good and I can't recommend it enough. Get it, get the expansions, and then forget what other games are for a few months.

Looking at the Steam page I think this game wins the thread for actually being the most like Rogue of everything mentioned.

The games being in development for freaking forever, way before the new wave of roguelike, so that's probably why. It play more like a story lite RPG, a playtrough will take 5-10 hours to complete. There's a crapload of class, the balance is complete crap (it's hard not to win as a summmoner or oozemancer) but that's sorta by design, it's more about different playstyle.

The RNG can be pretty brutal because it'll sometime lead to crazy difficulty spike, the game auto generate monster by giving them random bonus and such and sometime it'll generate something crazy that can take 3/4 of your health in one attack while the rest of the dungeon can't even damage you, so you end up getting killed because you were cruising without paying attention. There's also, imo, a bit too much loot in it, it can be a bit of a pita to sort trough it. But the class leveling system is awesome, so many way to build your character, you can make this crazy weird build that use obscure talent and they can sorta work. Just be ready to have a the wiki open in a tab at all time.

Oh and the game is actually free if you download it from the main website.

Some other rogue like that haven't been mention and are pretty small:

Sky rogue, if you like ace combat (jet plane) and you want it in rogue like format. No story and blocky graphic but decent gameplay, honestly overpriced (gets repetitive pretty fast) so get it while on sales.

Dungeon of the endless, a tower defense/RTL roguelike, you have to find a crystal in every level and then escort it back to an elevator to continue. It's pretty brutal and you have to make some tough choice with very limited resource.

Haven't played hand of fate 2, but the first one was a great concept brought massively down by a terrible combat system. Think bland batman arkham combat system.

 

[EscapeGoat_v1legacy]

The Binding of Isaac is a shoe-in, but the one I keep coming back to personally is Rogue Legacy; it has basically everything I want from a roguelike. I love the dinky presentation, the game is dead simple, its upgrade system provides tangible benefits between runs so it always feels like you're making progress towards an achievable end goal, and the core concept of the game is just really smart.

 

[Squilookle]

Bomber Crew is the only one I saw through all the way to the end, so that one, I suppose. It's pretty rad.

 

[Squilookle]

Outer Wilds as well, is pretty rad. Can't believe I forgot that one. By the way, does The Occupation count as a roguelike? or nah?

 

[Drathnoxis]

Slay the Spire

Love slay the spire, but I gotta say I think the RNG is a bit too much in it. You collect artifact that give you random power and these go from completely worthless to broken. So it always feel like your run are more based on how lucky you are than on doing the best with what you're given. This is especially bad when some of them work best when you build your character with certain spec in mind. Like for example one of the character can specialize in poison ability, if you don't get the right artifact it's pretty meh, but if you do it'll let you reach the last boss without any trouble.

On top of that some artifact have downside which can royaly screw you over, but you sometime don't really have a choice but to take them. Some artifact let you do more action every turn, all of them have downside, but some of them the downside is trivial and others might as well just game over you right away. But to progress you pretty much need some of them, so sometime your forced to take the terrible one.

Okay, I've put quite a few hours into this game at this point and I agree it feels too random. I'm probably not the best at deck building, but I don't know how I'm supposed to do well consistently what cards I get to add to my deck is random, the relics that supplement my powers are random, and the order I get the cards in is random. I've beaten the 3rd floor with all four characters and reached the final boss (?) on the fourth once, but I just don't feel like I have enough agency to win the game on my own.

Some runs just give everything to you, like the one where I got 5 potion slot relic, double potion efficiency relic, a card that let me make potions, two cards that let me copy a card 3 times, and a card that let me double use skills. I was drowning in potions. But most runs I just scrape along until I die late second or third floor, because I just can't keep up with the dps the enemies are throwing at me, or there's an enemy (or boss) that my current build just sucks against and they chew me up, or I just plain don't get the cards I need and die. After seeing the final boss, I just feel like giving up, because it seems like it's so OP that there would be no way to win outside of just happening to get a REALLY lucky run, and who know how many hours and hours that could take.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Okay, I've put quite a few hours into this game at this point and I agree it feels too random. I'm probably not the best at deck building, but I don't know how I'm supposed to do well consistently what cards I get to add to my deck is random, the relics that supplement my powers are random, and the order I get the cards in is random. I've beaten the 3rd floor with all four characters and reached the final boss (?) on the fourth once, but I just don't feel like I have enough agency to win the game on my own.

Some runs just give everything to you, like the one where I got 5 potion slot relic, double potion efficiency relic, a card that let me make potions, two cards that let me copy a card 3 times, and a card that let me double use skills. I was drowning in potions. But most runs I just scrape along until I die late second or third floor, because I just can't keep up with the dps the enemies are throwing at me, or there's an enemy (or boss) that my current build just sucks against and they chew me up, or I just plain don't get the cards I need and die. After seeing the final boss, I just feel like giving up, because it seems like it's so OP that there would be no way to win outside of just happening to get a REALLY lucky run, and who know how many hours and hours that could take.

In my experience, every word of that applies to FTL as well. Sometimes you just don't get any scrap, or nobody will sell you anything useful; even if you do make it to the

Spoiler: Not for you, for everyone else

Rebel Flagship

there's no way you can possibly defeat it.

 

[Drathnoxis]

In my experience, every word of that applies to FTL as well. Sometimes you just don't get any scrap, or nobody will sell you anything useful; even if you do make it to the

Spoiler: Not for you, for everyone else

Rebel Flagship

there's no way you can possibly defeat it.

FTL at least has some pretty OP ship layouts. Crystal B, is just so amazing at boarding that it weighs the odds in your favour quite a bit. You do need to pick up some good guns, but you get more scrap and rewards from boarding so it generally isn't as much of an issue.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

I'd like to stick an honorable mention in here for that Mooncrash DLC for Prey 2017.

Not only does it provide a clever set of mutations on a common map, and lots of objectives to accomplish, but it's got some great little narrative beats as well. The whole game feels like you're peeling back individual layers until you get to the truth.

And speaking of that...

Outer Wilds as well, is pretty rad. Can't believe I forgot that one. By the way, does The Occupation count as a roguelike? or nah?

I have been trying for the past 15 minutes to think of some way to discount Outer Wilds as a Roguelike, as it's more of a giant interconnected Organic Puzzle game than a Roguelike.

And literally the only thing I can think of that might discount it is the lack of randomness/replayability. The game is damn near a roguelike all things considered.

(Also, can't wait for the weekend, when I'll have time to make that final push to the ending. Not that I have much faith in myself. What I think the game is asking me to do is goddamn terrifying and feels damn near impossible.)

 

[NerfedFalcon]

FTL at least has some pretty OP ship layouts. Crystal B, is just so amazing at boarding that it weighs the odds in your favour quite a bit. You do need to pick up some good guns, but you get more scrap and rewards from boarding so it generally isn't as much of an issue.

Considering the amount of effort it takes to unlock, including beating the game several times and having to hope the game is willing to give you enough resources to even hope to beat it all of those several times, that strikes me more as a reward for bragging rights than an actual ship for getting through the game.

But I'm getting off topic. My point is to approach Slay the Spire like FTL. Sometimes you're just never going to get what you need, and the only way to get it in seeds that you can win is to take a lot of risks and learn to manage those risks. Sometimes you're going to miss a shot or draw a dead hand at the worst possible time. Sometimes, by the middle of Act 2, you'll have a deck that'd take an anti-miracle to lose. That's just how a lot of non-action roguelikes are, dating back to Rogue itself.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I'd like to stick an honorable mention in here for that Mooncrash DLC for Prey 2017.

Not only does it provide a clever set of mutations on a common map, and lots of objectives to accomplish, but it's got some great little narrative beats as well. The whole game feels like you're peeling back individual layers until you get to the truth.

And speaking of that...

Shamus made that game sound really good, I'd like to try it some day when I finally get around to buying a good computer.

Outer Wilds as well, is pretty rad. Can't believe I forgot that one. By the way, does The Occupation count as a roguelike? or nah?

I have been trying for the past 15 minutes to think of some way to discount Outer Wilds as a Roguelike, as it's more of a giant interconnected Organic Puzzle game than a Roguelike.

And literally the only thing I can think of that might discount it is the lack of randomness/replayability. The game is damn near a roguelike all things considered.

(Also, can't wait for the weekend, when I'll have time to make that final push to the ending. Not that I have much faith in myself. What I think the game is asking me to do is goddamn terrifying and feels damn near impossible.)

I missed that comment. Outer Wilds is a roguelike except it's nothing like a roguelike. There's no permadeath, there's no procedural generation, no randomness of any kind, the game is completely the same from run to run, there's no resource management, and no emergent gameplay. The game doesn't meet a single point of the key features of roguelikes listed on Wikipedia. I love the game but it's basically a walking simulator with a jetpack and a spaceship. If we are going to call Outer Wilds a roguelike the term has lost all meaning.

FTL at least has some pretty OP ship layouts. Crystal B, is just so amazing at boarding that it weighs the odds in your favour quite a bit. You do need to pick up some good guns, but you get more scrap and rewards from boarding so it generally isn't as much of an issue.

Considering the amount of effort it takes to unlock, including beating the game several times and having to hope the game is willing to give you enough resources to even hope to beat it all of those several times, that strikes me more as a reward for bragging rights than an actual ship for getting through the game.

But I'm getting off topic. My point is to approach Slay the Spire like FTL. Sometimes you're just never going to get what you need, and the only way to get it in seeds that you can win is to take a lot of risks and learn to manage those risks. Sometimes you're going to miss a shot or draw a dead hand at the worst possible time. Sometimes, by the middle of Act 2, you'll have a deck that'd take an anti-miracle to lose. That's just how a lot of non-action roguelikes are, dating back to Rogue itself.

Yeah, I probably will keep trying to beat the game. It's hard for me to give up on roguelikes. I was playing a couple of runs today too. I'm just really bad at building my deck and deciding what cards I should take or if I should just leave nearly everything I find.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Yeah, I probably will keep trying to beat the game. It's hard for me to give up on roguelikes. I was playing a couple of runs today too. I'm just really bad at building my deck and deciding what cards I should take or if I should just leave nearly everything I find.

In Act 1, you need to pick cards up just to be powerful enough to handle the boss. If you can start seriously building into a theme for your deck, that's a nice bonus, but for the time being you just need to be stronger. In Act 2, you can start being more choosy with your spoils of war, and hopefully your deck should be finished or only need one or two extras by Act 3.

Don't avoid elites; the relics they drop are often more useful than extra cards. Getting in regular fights as well early on can also help you build up gold to buy useful stuff (card removal, key relics/cards) from the merchant, as well as improving your deck, but later on when you don't need any more cards, it's better to avoid fighting regular enemies if possible. You can look at the map at any time to plan your route ahead.

You've probably worked all that out by now anyway, so regarding theme: try to pick cards that do the same thing, or affect other cards that you already have a lot of. If your Silent deck has a lot of Shiv generation, look for Accuracy. An Ironclad with a lot of block cards wants Entrench, Barricade, and Body Slam. The Act 1 and 2 bosses are guaranteed to drop three rare cards, so if you're still indecisive by the end of Act 1, that might help you decide on a theme for the deck.

I don't know if you've noticed yet, but it's possible to tell which boss you're due to fight at the end of each act by the icon that appears at the top of the map.

Overall: experience is the best teacher. The more runs you play, the more you'll be able to figure out when to take a risky route, when to take or leave cards, and how to handle an unfinished deck until you get what you need.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

I guess I'm the only fan of this around here.


Can't praise this one enough. I adore the style (Imagine if Fury Road was a Ren and Stimpy episode), the gameplay is easy to get into, and it's very satisfying to complete a run even when the game seems to keep trying to screw you over (and it will try, oh yes...).

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Outer Wilds is a roguelike except it's nothing like a roguelike. There's no permadeath, there's no procedural generation, no randomness of any kind, the game is completely the same from run to run, there's no resource management, and no emergent gameplay. The game doesn't meet a single point of the key features of roguelikes listed on Wikipedia. I love the game but it's basically a walking simulator with a jetpack and a spaceship. If we are going to call Outer Wilds a roguelike the term has lost all meaning.

Well, I can't comment on Outer Wilds but the list of key features of a roguelike is stupid because they're just a list of features for the game Rogue. This thread probably won't even be a thing if roguelikes continued just being Rogue clones. I'm guessing 90% of the games listed in the thread aren't roguelikes if you go off that list of key features. Roguelikes actually became a genre because devs stopped trying to just make same game over and over again. This video by Mark Brown [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx7BWayWu08] goes over history of roguelikes.

 

[meiam]

Like most term rogue like is a vague description, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. You can capture the idea of something even if you don't copy all the elements of it. The point is to give people a frame of reference when talking about game. If every time you had to describe a game from scratch it'd be a pain in the ass, and the usual vague description like "action/adventure" and so on are incredibly unhelpful.

Ultimately I think the only really important aspect of rogue like are the randomization and the expectation that player will die and have to restart the game. I think everything else is optional

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Hand of Fate 2:

This game is a mashup of a narrative deckbuilder game, where you move from encounter card to encounter card (some of them yours, some of them chosen by the story) and where combat turns into an Akrham-style brawler.

This takes the basic systems of the first game, and all the mini-stories that game told, and makes it all much more structured.

Now, each chapter is a very different style of challenge, necessitating a more thorough strategy of which cards to take with you. Some encounters are better suited to some challenges than others, and some weapons are better for certain enemy types.

What REALLY makes it shine is the variety of not just chapter stories, but the smaller stories the cards tell, as well as how completing certain card stories will upgrade those cards to provide new stories until you might eventually get a massive Platinum card upgrade that makes the card an absolute win to find in a chapter.

It's honestly delightful as a game and I'm DEEPLY sad the studio that made it has shut down and gone into "caretaker mode" for their games.

Whoa, say woah! They shut down? I was not aware of this till now. Loved both games dearly, and am surprised they'd not bring the success their acclaim implied. Like Darkest Dungeon, the narrator very much brings it nearly all together.

Hm, Dead Cells is great, probably the greatest feeling when you get into the rhythmic sidescrolly high-speed dodge-roll murder. It doesn't seem like rng plays as much a factor like most others do, though some bosses get a bit speed-spammy and I've not reached late game bosses yet.

Darkest Dungeon am trying, dear Azathoth am trying.

Wanting to try Crypt of the Necrodancer, Sunless Seas (and its sequel) and Slay the Spire still. One day. Soon.
Enter the Gungeon I respect more than enjoy, as it's bullet hell and that is a whole load of undesired frustrations.

 

[meiam]

Darkest Dungeon am trying, dear Azathoth am trying.

Darkest dungeon is very counter intuitive because it's a game that punish success and reward failure, once you realize that it becomes very manageble.